Chapter 9 - The Man Vincent Trusted
Dominic’s new office was on the third floor above a printing company and smelled permanently of toner.
Vincent hated it.
Dominic loved that Vincent hated it.
“Sit,” Dominic said one afternoon, pointing to a plastic chair.
“This chair is criminal.”
“You’ve sat in worse.”
“Not voluntarily.”
Dominic handed him a folder of shipping schedules.
Vincent set it aside.
“How are you?”
Dominic looked suspicious.
“You came across town to ask me that?”
“Yes.”
“Who are you and what did you do with Vincent?”
Vincent ignored him.
Dominic leaned back.
“I’m fine.”
“No.”
“That was the answer you were supposed to accept.”
“I’m trying a new thing.”
Dominic smiled faintly.
Then his face settled.
“I miss who I thought I was.”
Vincent understood immediately.
“That sounds unbearable.”
“It’s annoying.”
They sat in silence.
Then Dominic said, “Quinn told me she might let me come to her apartment for dinner next month.”
Vincent looked at him.
“That’s good.”
“I’m terrified.”
“Also good.”
Dominic laughed.
His smile faded.
“Do you trust me?”
Dominic had spent months learning the practical shape of remorse. It looked less like confession than he expected. It looked like not showing up at Quinn's workplace uninvited. It looked like asking before sending flowers on her birthday. It looked like hearing “not tonight” and not turning it into a referendum on whether she loved him.
Vincent had his own version. He stopped treating Dominic's mistakes as evidence that twenty years of loyalty were fake. Trust, he was learning, could survive without being blind. It could become specific. Conditional. Honest.
The question arrived quietly.
Vincent did not answer quickly.
A year earlier the delay would have been unthinkable.
Dominic saw it.
His face tightened but he did not look away.
“I trust you with my life,” Vincent said finally.
Dominic exhaled.
“But I don’t trust you automatically anymore.”
That hurt.
Vincent let it.
“There’s a difference.”
Dominic nodded slowly.
“I think automatic trust was part of how we both stayed stupid.”
“That is the least flattering wisdom you’ve ever produced.”
“Thank you.”
The conversation should have ended there.
Instead Vincent said, “You know Quinn changed how I run the house.”
Dominic raised an eyebrow.
“How?”
“I stopped having security brief staff about my mood.”
Dominic laughed. “They did that?”
“Yes.”
“What did the brief say?”
“Apparently ‘Mr. Moretti has had a difficult morning’ meant don’t ask me anything unnecessary.”
Dominic laughed harder.
Vincent stared.
“This is serious.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He was not sorry.
Vincent continued.
“We changed the grievance process. Staff can report problems to Alvarez without going through security.”
Dominic’s smile faded.
“Because of Quinn.”
“Because I finally noticed why somebody with her history would care how much the temperature of a house depends on one man.”
Dominic looked down.
“She noticed that as a kid too.”
“What?”
“Angelo’s keys.”
Vincent waited.
“When we heard his keys hit the bowl near the front door, we knew what kind of night it might be by the sound. Fast drop, bad mood. Careful set-down, drunk. No keys, worse, because it meant he’d already been home and we hadn’t heard him.”
Vincent’s chest tightened.
“Quinn used to turn the television down before he even came into the room.”
“That’s why she watches doors.”
Dominic nodded.
Vincent thought of the guest room.
The half-open walnut door.
Her face when she realized somebody was standing there.
He understood the hook of that moment differently now.
The scars had shocked him.
The door had frightened her.
“Did you ever ask what she wants from you now?” Vincent said.
Dominic stared at the shipping folder.
“She said she wants me to stop making every conversation about whether she forgives me.”
Vincent smiled slightly.
“She is consistent.”
“She said maybe she just wants a brother who can bring dessert without turning it into a redemption scene.”
“Can you do that?”
“I bought cannoli yesterday and almost wrote an apology letter to put in the box.”
Vincent groaned.
“I threw it away.”
“Progress.”
Dominic looked toward the window.
“You know what’s strange?”
“What?”
“She’s the reason I started working for you.”
Vincent frowned.
Dominic continued.
“I thought if I became strong enough, rich enough, connected enough, nobody like Angelo could ever scare me again. I told myself I was building power so I could protect people.”
He smiled bitterly.
“Then the first person I was supposed to protect had to grow up without me.”
Vincent sat with that.
All their lives, men around them had talked about loyalty as if it were proven through danger.
Take a bullet.
Hold a secret.
Never testify.
Never run.
But maybe loyalty had always been much less cinematic.
Stay.
Answer the phone.
Come back when you said you would.
Don’t make a child carry your fear.
Vincent stood.
Dominic looked up. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Why did you come?”
Vincent adjusted his coat.
“To ask how you are.”
Dominic smiled.
“You’re getting weird.”
“Careful.”
Vincent reached the door.
Dominic called after him.
“Vin.”
He turned.
“Thank you for not choosing me just because I’ve been beside you longer.”
Vincent looked at him for a long moment.
“Don’t make me choose at all.”
May you like
Then he left.
