Chapter 4 - The Unopened Bottle
The week leading up to the wedding turned the Duca mansion into an armed camp disguised as a festival.
Florists from Newbury Street arrived in three refrigerated vans, unloading towering arrangements of white lilies, cascading orchids, and silver eucalyptus that made the high-ceilinged rooms smell like an expensive crypt. In the ballroom, caterers were setting up long tables covered in imported Belgian damask, polishing crystal champagne flutes until the morning light split into a thousand blinding shards against the parquet.
Clara kept Noel in Chelsea. She had paid Mrs. Higgins, the widow on the second floor, five dollars a day from her wages to keep the child inside, away from the windows and the freezing drafts of Marginal Street. Noel spent her days lining up her three pebbles on the scarred linoleum, waiting for the mother who returned each evening smelling of expensive lemon oil and exhaustion.
In Brookline, Clara worked until her knees were numb. She moved like a phantom between the decorators and the deliverymen, carrying buckets of hot water, scrubbing out the tracks of muddy boots, and wiping down the mahogany balustrades that had been touched by a hundred careless hands.
On Thursday evening, two days before the ceremony at St. Leonard’s, Clara was sent to the library to replace the heavy velvet draperies that had been dry-cleaned for the reception.
The house was uncharacteristically noisy. In the conservatory, a string quartet hired by Victoria Vance was rehearsing a Mozart divertimento, the thin, sweet scrape of the violins drifting through the heavy oak doors like an intrusion from another world.
Clara carried her stepladder into the library. The room was empty, the fire in the great marble hearth dying down to a bed of glowing red embers.
On the center of the oak partner’s desk sat the bottle of Barolo.
It was ancient, its dark green glass covered in a fine veil of dust that had not been disturbed in fifteen years. The label was yellowed, the edges curling like dried leaves, bearing the vintage year Raphael’s father had purchased it: 1994.
Beside the bottle sat a single, cut-crystal glass. It was empty, shining under the low light of the desk lamp.
Clara stood on the third step of her ladder, her hands reaching up to hook the brass rings of the heavy drapery onto the iron rod. Her left ankle throbbed with a rhythmic, dull beat that matched the tempo of the violins downstairs.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
"You're working late," a voice said from the shadow of the tall wingback chair beside the hearth.
Clara gasped, nearly losing her footing on the ladder. She grabbed the heavy velvet to steady herself, the brass rings clinking violently against the rod.
Raphael was sitting in the deep shadow of the leather chair, entirely obscured by the high back until he leaned forward into the firelight. He was still wearing his overcoat, his leather gloves tossed onto the small side table beside him. A heavy crystal tumbler sat on the floor near his feet, but it was untouched.
"Mr. Duca," Clara breathed, her knuckles white against the velvet. "I didn't see you. I’ll come back in the morning."
"Stay," he said.
It was not a command given with anger; it was an invitation delivered with the quiet weight of a man who was tired of being alone with his own thoughts.
Clara remained on the ladder, her body rigid, unsure whether to climb down or pretend to be invisible once more.
Raphael stood slowly, his tall frame uncoiling from the deep leather chair. He walked to the desk, his hand coming to rest on the neck of the ancient Barolo bottle. He didn't pick it up; he merely rested his long fingers against the glass, feeling the coldness of the cellar that still clung to it.
"My father bought this in Alba," Raphael said, his voice quiet, almost reflective, as if speaking to the dark corners of the room rather than to her. "He took me to the vineyard when I was eight years old. He told me that wine is like an oath. If you press the grapes before they are ready, it turns to vinegar. If you wait too long, it dies in the wood. You have to know the precise moment when the sugar becomes strength."
He looked up at Clara on the ladder. The firelight caught the sharp edge of his cheekbone, casting the scar on his jaw into deep, black relief.
"He said we would drink it together when I brought a woman into this house who would bear the Duca name."
Clara swallowed dryly. "It... it must be a very good wine, sir."
Raphael gave a short, humorless smile—a barely perceptible twitch of his lips that vanished before it reached his eyes.
"It will taste like ash," he murmured.
Clara climbed down from the ladder, her movements slow, careful, keeping her back to the wall. She should have picked up her bucket and left the room. Every instinct she possessed told her that being near Raphael Duca when he was in this dark, reflective mood was dangerous. He was a man who lived behind high walls; those who saw the cracks inside were rarely allowed to walk away with what they had seen.
Yet something kept her rooted to the floorboards.
"Miss Vance is a very beautiful lady," Clara whispered, the words feeling foreign, unnatural in her throat.
Raphael looked at her, his gray eyes narrowing slightly. "Do you think so?"
"Everyone says so, sir. The newspapers... the staff."
"Victoria Vance is the daughter of a man who owes six million dollars to the First National Bank and three million to people who do not use banks," Raphael said, his tone entirely matter-of-fact, as if reading a shipping manifest. "She knows how to enter a ballroom without tripping over her train. She knows which judges to smile at during the annual charity ball. In this city, Clara, that is what passes for beauty."
He stepped away from the desk, walking slowly toward the tall windows where Clara had been hanging the drapes. He looked out through the glass, down into the courtyard where three armed men in heavy coats were patrolling the perimeter of the white reception tents.
"A man builds walls because he thinks they will keep the cold out," Raphael said softly, his breath fogging the lower pane. "Then he discovers that the cold was already inside the stones before he laid the mortar."
Clara watched his back. For the first time since she had entered this house five years ago, she did not see the crime boss whose name made union delegates tremble. She saw a man trapped in an immense, gilded cage of his own construction, carrying a debt that had not been incurred by him, but by the name he had been given at birth.
"My mother told me once," Clara found herself saying, her voice clear and steady in the quiet room, "that if you build a house with stones that were taken from another man’s foundation, the roof will always leak when the storm comes."
Raphael turned slowly. His eyes locked onto hers with a sudden, intense sharpness that made the breath catch in her throat.
"Where did she hear that?" he asked.
Clara’s heart hammered against her ribs. She had spoken without thinking, the old proverb slipping from her childhood into the air between them like an accusation.
"She... she was from the south of Italy, sir," Clara whispered, stepping back toward her ladder. "From the hills behind Salerno. They have many sayings about stone."
Raphael stared at her. The silence stretched between them for five seconds, ten seconds, until the scrape of the string quartet downstairs ended in a final, dissonant chord that resonated through the floorboards.
"Tomorrow is the rehearsal," Raphael said, his voice returning to its normal, cool detachment. "The house will be full of people who talk too much and see too little. Tell Dora that you are not to serve the dinner. You will stay on the third floor until they leave."
"Yes, Mr. Duca."
"And Clara."
She paused at the door, her hands clutched around the wooden handle of her zinc bucket.
"Take the brioche from the kitchen when you leave tonight," he said, turning back toward the dying fire. "Mrs. Dora tells me the baker made too much again."
Clara looked at his broad back, silhouetted against the red embers of the hearth.
"Thank you, sir," she said softly.
As she closed the heavy mahogany door behind her, she knew with absolute, terrifying certainty that Mrs. Dora had not mentioned the bread to Raphael Duca. Mrs. Dora never mentioned the bread to anyone.
May you like
He had known all along.
---
