273.💍 THE LAST SUNDAY TABLE

Chapter 07 - The Woman at Table Six

Luca stared at the approval line for so long that the letters ceased to mean anything. He did not remember approving an environmental complaint. He remembered approving plenty of things he hadn't read, which was beginning to seem just as bad.

Alice Park asked him to turn his laptop around. She examined the email chain, then sent it to a digital forensics firm. "We're not going to guess who typed your name," she said. "We're going to find out where the message came from and whether the attachment changed."

"My access was shared with Dorian's office," Luca said.

"Then we'll document that. Not announce it as an excuse."

That was how Alice spoke: plainly, without trying to rescue anyone from responsibility. Luca found himself wanting the room to contain more people like her and fewer people eager to tell him how important he was.

The report arrived before lunch. The approval had been added after the complaint was submitted. A clerk had forwarded the original chain to Dorian, who returned a revised version with Luca's name inserted in the body. The metadata did not prove who made the edit, but it established that Luca had not sent the original approval.

"Enough to ask questions," Alice said. "Not enough to win a case by itself."

Meanwhile, Celia Bellini invited Luca to meet her in a hotel dining room overlooking the river. He went with Alice, who sat at another table within sight. Celia wore a gray suit and a narrow gold bracelet. She had the practiced kindness of a person who rarely had to be kind to strangers.

"Vanessa tells me your engagement is becoming complicated," she said.

"I didn't come to discuss the engagement."

"Everything becomes one discussion when families are about to join."

Luca slid the eviction notice across the linen. "Your company financed this acquisition. Are you aware the lease release is disputed?"

"Our counsel examined the file."

"Your counsel is Dorian Vale."

"An excellent lawyer."

"Someone submitted an inspection complaint using Rosa Caruso's name. The paperwork passed through your office."

Celia adjusted her bracelet. "I'm sorry for Mrs. Caruso's feelings. I can't be responsible for every administrative decision beneath me."

"It's her restaurant, not her feelings, we're discussing."

For the first time, Celia's smile tightened. "Your father accumulated liabilities that your mother and son can't charm away. My money kept the company solvent while you were trying to appear respectable. Perhaps gratitude would be more productive than accusation."

Luca felt his temper rise. She had touched the one part of the Moretti history that still made him feel like a boy in an expensive suit.

"If my father owed money, show me the debt," he said. "If your company holds a legitimate lien, we'll address it. But you'll stop acting as though the people inside the building are incidental."

Celia rose. "You may regret making an enemy of me."

"I already regret several friendships."

He went straight to Caruso's afterward, not for comfort but because the restaurant had the only people who were telling him exactly what they thought. Lunch service was almost over. Gianni sat at table six peeling an orange in a slow continuous strip.

"Your father sat here when he needed to think," he said. "Never the good table by the window. He liked to hear the kitchen door swing."

Luca drew out the chair opposite him. The vinyl seat had been repaired with green tape. Gianni broke the orange in half and offered him some.

"Rosa says I made you wait too long," the old man said.

"For what?"

"For the ring. I wanted you to come here on your own. I thought one day you'd want Sunday dinner again. Then the eviction notice came and I stopped being proud."

He looked around the room, bewildered for a moment by the years that had passed. "Your father didn't save the restaurant all by himself, you know. People like to tell that story because it makes him the hero."

"Who else helped?"

"The women. They always made the figures come out right. Rosa kept the kitchen alive. Teresa caught the missing wages. Evelyn went to the bank when my wife got sick. Your father supplied money, but he couldn't have made this place last without them."

He looked at the peeling corners of the booth and wondered how many decisions in his office had begun with a number nobody had bothered to visit. He had once told investors that a building was an asset, independent of whoever happened to occupy it. Sitting here, with the kitchen door banging behind Rosa and the radio leaking an old Sinatra song, he could hear how foolish that sounded.

A man at the next table tipped his hat to Gianni. The old man answered without looking up from his orange. He knew the man by the sound of his shoes; they'd been customers long enough for that to be possible.

Emma came in from the street carrying a folder and stopped when she heard him. She had changed out of her maid's uniform for the last time. Her coat was thrift-store wool and her boots had been repaired at the heels.

"I found Mrs. DiFazio's old phone number," she said. "She remembered something else."

Gianni touched the signet ring, now sitting in its box beside his cup. "Show her, Luca."

Emma turned the ring over. The inside of the band carried a faint inscription she hadn't seen before. Not a romantic sentence. Four small words and two numbers: TABLE SIX. FILE 18.

"He wrote instructions in the ring?" Luca asked.

"He was afraid paper would vanish," Gianni said. "He couldn't write much else inside."

Rosa brought out the old seating chart from a drawer. File 18 meant nothing to her until Emma noticed that the earliest accounting folders had been stored under table numbers, one drawer for each section of the restaurant. The original filing cabinet had been removed in 2017, when they renovated the back room.

"Where did it go?" Luca asked.

"To Mrs. DiFazio's brother," Rosa said. "He used it for screws and paintbrushes."

They drove to a small garage in Canaryville. The cabinet stood between bicycle tires and a lawn mower, its label slots still carrying faded cards: SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT. The drawer under SIX stuck halfway open. Inside were rusted washers, a paperclip, and a thin cardboard folder marked 18.

Emma lifted it out without speaking. The folder held bank deposit slips and a handwritten ledger of wage-fund payments. Some entries were initialed A.M. Others were initialed T.R. The final page had been torn out.

On the inside cover was a single line in Angelo's handwriting: ASK DORIAN ABOUT THE WOMAN WHO PAID HIM TO REMOVE PAGE 47.