Chapter 4

I found out later that “business trip” was a private dinner Camille's father had hosted somewhere in Southern Europe. Dante attended as the future son-in-law.

Then my mother had a cardiac episode. The surgery would cost half a million dollars, and without the deposit, they wouldn't operate.

Half a million. Even if I emptied every account I had and worked the rest of my life, I'd never get there.

I stood at the emergency entrance for a long time, phone in my hand.

My mother had always told me: don't ask people for things. Ask once, and you're in debt forever.

But I had no choice.

I scrolled to Dante's name and stayed on it.

Not a loan, I told myself. This was nothing to him. Emergency funds. I would pay back every cent with interest.

I called.

He hung up immediately.

I called again. And again. Twenty times. Nothing.

My mother's condition was getting worse. I stared at the screen, hands starting to shake, and kept dialing.

On the fiftieth call, someone picked up.

I almost exhaled with relief.

Then I heard the voice. It wasn't Dante.

It was Camille, low and languid, like she'd just woken up.

“Hello?”

“Camille.” I kept my voice even. “Is Dante there? My mother—”

“He can't talk right now,” she said lightly, cutting me off. “I'll have him call you when he gets a chance.”

“Just put him on for one minute—”

“Distracted even with me? Baby. Look at me.”

The voice came through before I finished. It was Dante's, ragged, breathing hard.

Then the rustling of sheets. Then Camille's voice cracking open, loud and uninhibited.

Then Dante again, low and unmistakable: “God, Camille. You're so much better than boring little Mia ever was...”

The line went dead.

I stood on the steps of the emergency wing with the phone still against my ear.

The pain hit first. Then the rage. Then everything at once, and the tears were already coming with no way to stop them. I pressed my lips together and tried to swallow the sound. Couldn't.

I thought about him kneeling in the hospital corridor, putting slippers on my feet. I thought about him on his knees in front of me, crying, begging me to wait two more years.

Every one of those moments meant nothing now.

When I finally ran out of tears, all that was left was a kind of cold clarity, like ice water poured over everything I'd ever believed.

The emergency alarm was still going off somewhere inside. I made myself stand up. I could not fall apart. My mother needed me.

I wiped my face on my sleeve, took a breath, and started calling everyone I knew.

Twenty-one people. I borrowed from every single one. I wrote down every amount and calculated the interest myself.

When I handed over the deposit, the woman at the cashier's window counted the bills one by one, a thick, crumpled stack of small denominations, and looked up at me when she was done.

I recognized that look. She'd seen it before: people in these corridors scraping together survival money.

She didn't say anything. She gave me the receipt.

I took the thin slip of paper, and my legs buckled. I sat down on the floor right there in the hallway.

That's when I noticed I was in a thin T-shirt. December, nearly one in the morning, and I'd sweat through it twice.

My mother survived the night, but I came out of it buried in debt.

My creditors were people who had nothing to spare. I had to pay them back fast.

So I worked every hour I had.

Days, I did books for a small family operation at the docks. Evenings, I went back to Madonna Rose to wait tables. After two in the morning, I rode my motorbike to a bar on the edge of the port called Black Spade.

Black Spade was in no man's land, nobody's territory, nobody's rules. A lot of street girls operated out of there. An old Sicilian ran it. He knew who I was, didn't ask questions, paid by the night, thirty percent above standard rate.

Dante found me there a month later.

He walked in wearing a black suit, too clean and too sharp for the place. He spotted me and kicked my crate of bottles over. Glass scattered across the floor, caught my ankle, and drew blood.

The old Dante couldn't stand to see me get a paper cut. This one didn't even blink.

“Are you out of your mind?” I stared at the mess, a whole night's work on the floor, my pay probably gone with it, and something in me snapped. “What is wrong with you?”

“Me?” He almost laughed, but it wasn't funny. “Mia. Do you know what Black Spade is? Is this how you're going to embarrass me?”

“I'm earning money with my own hands. There's nothing embarrassing about that.”

He pulled out his checkbook and wrote a number right there. Tore the check out and held it in front of me. “This covers this month. Next month I'll have it transferred automatically.”

“Dante. I'm not your kept woman.”

He pressed the check into my palm. “Everyone in this city knows you're my woman. I'm giving you money. What's the problem?”

“I won't.”

“Won't? Yet you're here, in a place even cops avoid, drinking with men?”

“I'm not drinking. I'm just moving inventory.”

“Moving inventory.” He laughed, cold. “This whole street is working girls, and you're telling me you're just here to move boxes? Who's going to believe that? Moving them right into men's arms?”

I looked at him. I wasn't angry. I was just tired in a way that went all the way down.

I remembered when we'd first met. Some guy at a family dinner had made a crack about me still waiting tables, and Dante had shoved him against the table, told him there was nothing shameful about earning your own money.

Back then, his eyes were lit up. I thought he understood me.

I was wrong.

I dug the check out of my palm and tucked it back into his breast pocket.

“Dante. We're not the same kind of people.”

He frowned. “What does that mean?”

“You think a woman who needs money should find a man to give it to her. I think money you earn yourself is the only money you can actually hold onto.” I looked at him. “The people working in this place, they're out here fighting for their own lives. That's not something to be ashamed of.”

I turned around and went back to work.

I didn't watch him leave.