Chapter 7 - A Voice from the Grave of Memory
"I did not!" Leo shouted back, rushing after his brother toward the threshold. "It was just water! It's already dry!"
"Boys, where are you?"
The voice drifted through the dark wood doorway like a summer breeze cutting through a tomb.
It was her.
It was the exact, melodic voice that had whispered his name in the dark of his bedroom on Commonwealth Avenue. It was the voice that had read poetry on the balcony while the harbor mist rolled in. It was the voice that had pleaded with him six years ago: “Dominic, look at me. Whatever it is, we can fight it together. Don't do this to us.”
The sound of her voice did not merely enter Dominic’s ears; it detonated inside his nervous system, stripping away six years of hardened cynicism, six years of mafia brutality, six years of calculated detachment, leaving him completely raw, defenseless, and bleeding on the cold beige floor.
"Lucas? Matteo?" her voice called again, closer now, accompanied by the rustle of expensive fabric and the metallic chime of a handbag chain. "The waiter just brought the dessert. If you don't come out right now, I'm going to let the chef take it back..."
Julian turned toward Dominic, offering him a small, conspiratorial smile. "We have to go, mister. Mom doesn't like it when we make the waiters wait."
Dominic couldn't answer. His throat was an open wound.
Slowly, using the edge of the marble basin to steady his trembling frame, Dominic Moretti began to rise.
His six-foot-two height unfolded like a waking titan, his broad shoulders squaring beneath the charcoal-black suit, but his posture lacked its usual predatory arrogance. He stood with his right hand still buried deep inside the lapel of his jacket, his fingers locked in a death grip around the velvet box containing her engagement ring. His left hand hung at his side, the fingers twitching with an unbearable, electric tension.
Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run, to protect her from the darkness that followed him everywhere, to disappear through the service exit before she could see him. But his boots remained cemented to the beige marble. He had spent six years living in an emotional graveyard; he would rather be executed on this floor than look away for another second.
The rhythmic clicking of her heels reached the threshold.
The dark wood archway framed the entrance to the lounge. A shadow fell across the warm, golden light of the floorboards—a slender, graceful silhouette that Dominic would have recognized in the blackest night of a blackout.
The air in the room grew thin. The scent of bergamot and cedarwood was suddenly overwhelmed by a fragrance that hit Dominic with the force of a tidal wave: white tea, night-blooming jasmine, and the faintest trace of vanilla. It was her signature scent. The scent that used to cling to his pillows, to his shirts, to the leather seats of his car for months after she had left.
The four boys clustered around the entrance, chattering at once in their bright, overlapping voices, blocking her view of the deeper recesses of the lounge where the tall man stood in the shadows.
"Mom, look! Julian has his sketchbook!"
"Leo was playing with the water!"
"I was not!"
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"Hush, all of you, settle down," she said, her voice rich with that warm, patient maternal exasperation that Dominic had never heard from her before.
Then, she stepped past the dark wood threshold.
