Chapter 4 - The Shadow of the Past"You speak like an academic," Matteo said, leaning back and picking up his cigarette, though he didn't light it this time. He just rolled it between his fingers. "Not many girls with tape on their shoes can quote Dante in the original dialect."
"Not many men with expensive suits learned their Italian from a grandfather who ran numbers in a basement in South Philly," Tessa fired back instantly.
Luca stiffened, his hand dropping closer to his pocket. "Careful, sweetheart. You're walking a very thin line."
"No," Matteo said quietly, his eyes narrowing as a strange, nostalgic shadow crossed his face. "Let her speak. My grandfather did run numbers in a South Philly basement. And he taught me that a man who doesn't respect language doesn't respect anything at all."
He leaned closer across the table, the amber lights catching the sharp angles of his cheekbones.
"You had a fellowship in Florence," Matteo stated, not asking a question. "Why are you carrying plates in a second-rate restaurant?"
Tessa felt a familiar, bitter ache rise in her chest, but she swallowed it down, building a wall of ice around her heart.
"My mother got sick," Tessa said, her voice dropping an octave. "Stage four glioblastoma. The insurance companies approved experimental treatments until they didn't. By the time she passed away last winter, the hospital bills had eaten the house, my savings, and my future."
"And the university?"
"They don't hold fellowships for orphans with six-figure medical debts," Tessa said flatly. "So I came home. I got a job. And I pay my bills."
Matteo looked at her for a long, agonizingly silent moment. There was no pity in his eyes—pity was for weak men. What he felt was something much more dangerous: recognition. He saw a fellow survivor, someone who had been broken by the world and had rebuilt her bones out of iron and spite.
"You're wasting your mind here," Matteo said softly.
"I'm paying rent," Tessa replied. "Rent doesn't accept medieval poetry as currency."
Matteo picked up the thick stack of hundred-dollar bills, slid it across the table, and tapped it with his scarred knuckle.
"How much do you owe?" he asked.
May you like
Tessa looked down at the money, then up into his dark, unreadable eyes.
"More than you're willing to pay for a grammar lesson, Mr. Moretti."
