In the bustling heart of London, Dante Sanseverino is a man torn between loyalty and his conscience. With the demands of The Outfit's London division squarely placed on his shoulders, he tries to keep complications in his personal life at a minimal...
He arrived ten minutes early with a knock on the door.
I had returned to my apartment after lunch, which Uncle Sal had greatly enjoyed, to finally take a shower and change my soiled shirt. When I exited my apartment my eye caught on a small, expensive-looking box left on the hallway table. I lifted it, unsure if it was for me and read the note beneath it:
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I opened the box and inside was a key that looked almost identical to Sal's spare key that I had fixed on my keychain. The man could be incredibly slow at times but this? This was quick work. I didn't know anyone who could find a new door and have it installed that quickly. I went to Sal's apartment to check his blood pressure (among other things) and was met with a new, identical-looking door. I tried the key gingerly, still sceptical and presto. The only thing more impressive than the fact that he'd replaced the door that quickly was the fact that Uncle Sal was still asleep when I went to check on him. The repairmen were quick and quiet.
I didn't know how he did it, but Sal had a door and I had one less thing to do. He knocked again, I checked through the peephole and saw only his chest in return. Opening the door, I found Dante and smiled when I was met with distance. He looked clean above my head extending a beautiful, costly, bottle of wine towards me in the same way he had my yoghurt weeks ago. I opened the door further, taking the wine and he walked right past me as if we were once again strangers. I was under no delusion that we were friends after this morning but so much had happened making me feel even more isolated, as if I alone was affected by it all. Perhaps I was, alone in it all, his career was fine, his relationships unchanged.
The air around him felt different and he was relatively silent during dinner. He wasn't rude and Uncle Sal didn't seem aware of the marked change in his nephews' behaviour. And it shouldn't have been weird - his silence- if anything it was typical but it felt loaded, different than the silence I'd experienced from him before. I didn't know what to do with it, its all-consuming nature, punctuating the evening - so I did nothing. I was exhausted but not delirious enough to chalk it up to my imagination, so most of the dinner ensued cloaked in the thickness of it; his silence and my mounting discomfort at being aware of it.
The food was great though and paired really well with the wine. Uncle Sal was happy... well, as happy as anyone who had almost fallen into a diabetic coma in the morning could be. Dante helped him wash after dinner and I perched myself on the couch, reading through my team's work, and adding suggestions on my iPad. I had worked the entire day in intervals and managed to avoid having to talk to anyone outside of my team on a Zoom call. Everything was electronic and I made it a point to behave as if it was all routine, business as usual. I didn't have the emotional stamina to begin to unpack the Slack chat or anything else that had happened in the last 24 hours. It's why I had missed a few of Mandi's calls, not intentionally, but I would struggle to explain what had happened - even to her. Scrolling through my emails I briefly saw the headline of an email from Anna and felt nauseous, so I closed my eyes for the first uninterrupted minute I'd had to myself all day. I'd only meant to close my eyes for a minute but I awoke to the gentle rustling of dishes and the sounds of water running in the distance. I rose and walked into the kitchen. Standing before the now dwarfed sink was Dante. His back was to me.
