Chapter 3 - The Coffee Shop on Eighth
We didn't go to a restaurant. We went to a small, drafty diner three blocks from the terminal where the coffee tasted like burnt copper and the vinyl booths were cracked down the middle with gray foam spilling out.
Sophie sat in the corner booth, happily coloring in a fresh page of her sketchbook with a box of crayons the waitress had handed her. She was entirely oblivious to the ticking time bomb sitting between the two adults across the table.
Camille sat upright, her hands wrapped so tightly around her ceramic mug that her knuckles were white. She hadn't taken off her jacket. Every muscle in her body was coiled like a spring, braced for an impact that had been delayed for over two thousand days.
“You tracked us,” she said. Her voice was barely above a murmur, cold and defensive, masking a deep, subterranean terror. “How did you find us? I paid cash for the tickets under a maiden surname. I changed apartments in the twelfth arrondissement twice before we left Europe.”
“I didn't track you, Camille,” I said calmly, taking a slow sip of the black coffee I hadn't ordered. “Your daughter chose her seat.”
Camille blinked, her eyes widening in genuine shock. “What?”
“The boarding agent at Charles de Gaulle reassigned my seat to 14A,” I explained, my tone flat, unreadable, locking my gaze onto hers. “Sophie was sitting beside me. She spent four hours drawing the Eiffel Tower, told me about your gallery meeting in New York, and opened her sketchbook wide enough for me to see the photograph taped inside the cover.”
Camille closed her eyes, a sharp shudder wracking her frame. She let out a breath that sounded like a prayer gone wrong. “God... of all the planes, on all the airlines, in all of Europe.”
“There are no accidents, Camille. You taught me that.” I leaned forward across the laminate table, lowering my voice so it wouldn't reach the child playing ten feet away. “Six years and two months. That’s the math. I want to know why you ran.”
Camille’s eyes snapped open. The fear in them flickered out, replaced by a sudden, blazing fire of maternal fury.
“You think I ran because I wanted to deprive you of a child?” she hissed, her voice vibrating with suppressed rage. “You were bleeding out on the floor of a warehouse in Marseille when I found out I was pregnant, Alessandro! Your father’s enforcers were hunting down everyone connected to your inner circle. They torched my studio. They left a warning carved into my front door. If I had stayed in your world, my baby would have ended up in a pine box before she ever took her first breath!”
The words hit me like a physical punch.
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“My father died six years ago,” I muttered, the old bitterness rising in my throat. “The internal war was over within forty-eight hours of the ambush.”
“And how was I supposed to know that while I was hiding in a basement in the south of France with a positive pregnancy test and men with guns kicking down doors looking for the remaining Vitali bloodline?” Camille fired back, tears finally spilling over her lashes, though she refused to wipe them away. “I didn't run to hurt you, Alessandro. I ran to keep her alive.”
