The next morning, feeling somewhat refreshed, I arrived at the front-business office on time. The design studio operated under a legitimate retail license, one of several clean-money outlets the Valenti network maintained, though my work there had always been genuinely mine. Jewelry design was the one thing I had built with my own hands, untouched by the politics of Families or the weight of whose name protected whose.
The manager held my resignation letter, and when she heard I was going back home to get married, she looked both happy and wistful.
"With you leaving, I'm losing one of my best team members."
Unsure of what to say, I gave her a hug and thanked her for all the support over the years. She had never asked why I kept no photographs on my desk, or why certain calls made me leave the room. In this world, people learned not to ask. I was grateful she had extended that courtesy to me as simple kindness rather than fear.
After completing the formalities, my colleagues heard the news and insisted on a farewell meal to celebrate my upcoming wedding. They knew only the surface of it, an engagement to a man from a good family back home, the kind of clean, respectable story I had practiced until it sounded true.
I didn't decline and booked a table at a restaurant Damien and I frequented. It was one of the few restaurants I knew, and the food was genuinely good. A mid-range Italian place on neutral ground, not flagged as any one Family's territory, the kind of establishment where a woman could eat without her presence being reported to anyone.
Halfway through the meal, I excused myself to go to the restroom, only to run into Alessia.
She greeted me warmly. "Didn't expect to see you here, too! You know, this was the restaurant Damien first brought me to back in college. We've come here so many times."
I gave her a polite smile and was about to leave, not considering our relationship close enough for small talk. She stood in the narrow corridor between the dining room and the restrooms as though she belonged there, as though every surface in the city carried some memory of hers that predated mine.
But she didn't seem to feel the same distance I did. Just as I was about to go, she stopped me again.
"I noticed last time that Damien always rinses the shrimp in water before peeling it for you. Do you also not eat spicy food?"
The word also made me pause for a moment.
The truth is, I do enjoy spicy food. But every time Damien peeled shrimp for me, he'd insist on rinsing it in water. He always said it wasn't good for a girl to eat too much spice. I had always thought he was looking out for my health, a small, private tenderness in a relationship that had so few public ones.
But now, I realized it was simply a habit.
The one who didn't eat spicy food, the one he was thinking of, is Alessia.
I stood in the corridor and felt the understanding settle into me like cold water filling a glass, slow and precise and impossible to pour back out. Seven years of small gestures. Seven years of rinsed shrimp and careful hands. None of it had ever been mine.
