Page 64 of A Dangerous Bargain

She points me to the dining room.

A man wearing the insignia of the Medici bank sits at the table’s head, Mamma off to the side. Her face is huge with concern, moon-pale, almost frantic. When she sees me, she gasps, a beringed hand fluttering to her bodice. “I thought you couldn’t make it.”

“So did I.” I sit down in the chair heading the opposite end of the table. Spread my legs wide. Seeing him in my father’s chair stirs the dregs of my anger. This banker doesn’t get to intimidate my mother just because he’s a man. It’s not his house; it’s ours. “Where did you two leave off?”

Mamma gulps. The banker doesn’t notice—he’s busy rearranging his papers. “We were discussing your mother’s line of credit and the second mortgage on the house. If she cannot clear her account with us by the end of the month, I’m afraid this fine house will belong to the bank.”

The words jumble in my head. They don’t make sense, but the sickening lurch in my gut tells me what I already know.

My family is losing their home in weeks.

And I just lost my job.

Numbness trickles from the tips of my fingers to my toes. I try to speak—to make my mouth move and form words and thoughts—but I can’t.

We’re going to lose everything.

When the banker leaves, Mamma closes the doors to the dining room before turning to me, her face so pale, it glows in the darkness. She hasn’t even lit candles for this, as if the expense was too much. “I can explain.”

“Can you?” She flinches from the gravel in my voice, and I clear my throat, angry with her even as I’m angry with myself for frightening her. I won’t be my father. Mamma is an adult, much as the world pretends women are children. She must have her reasons for the debt. I’m going to listen to them.

“I know you’ve worked your culo off for this place. For us.” Her hands twist together. “But it wasn’t enough. Giovannia needs a dowry, and I didn’t want to ask for more money when I knew you couldn’t do it. Men don’t care about marriage the way women do. You don’t need it.”

Actually, I care a great deal about my little sister being married off to a toothless man five times her age. “I thought we agreed Giovannia wouldn’t marry this year?”

Mamma drags a hand down her face, smearing her cosmetics. She gestures to the unlit room, the moth-eaten drapes. “What other choice do we have? Do you want them homeless? No man worthy of Giovannia would look at her twice if he knew how far her family had fallen. A boy can forge his own future, but a girl can’t.”

The quiet despair in her voice ices under my ribs. Women aren’t allowed to apprentice in the trades the way men are. If they can’t marry, they’re forced to work as laborers. My sisters would be at the mercy of men who looked down on them, men who thought they were only there for their own entertainment. Men who might be worse than the brother who can’t protect them or an indifferent husband.

I didn’t want to agree with Mamma months ago. I still don’t. But I understand now that I simply didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

Ever since Niccolo disappeared, we’ve been slowly sliding off a cliff, scrambling for purchase on the way down, but now the abyss yawns deep and horrible beneath our feet, and there’s nothing we can do to stop the fall.

Mamma thrusts her hand under my nose. Pops the giant sapphire out of her ring. I catch it before it falls, only to gasp when I crush it. “Plaster and stone dust. I’ve been replacing all my gems one at a time. I’ll smelt the gold next, but ’tis harder to hide what I’m doing from the girls.” She gestures to the garden going rogue outside the windows. Not the roses she loves, but beans, fat, shiny pods hanging from their vines. “I tore out the flowers for food. Your sisters never come to this side of the house.”

I see them outside now, skirts butterfly bright against the late-spring green. Elisabetta whacks a book from Giovannia’s hand with a sword, screaming with glee. I plant my hands on the windowsill, knuckles white.

Mamma’s done everything she could to protect them—protect me—and it’s still not enough.

I take my mother’s hand, rubbing my finger over her ring’s empty setting. This whole time, I thought she was coldhearted and calculating for the wrong reasons. My ribs squeeze at how badly I’ve misjudged her.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve helped.” Taken on more commissions. Left Verrocchio’s workshop for another job, a better-paying one.

Mamma’s eyes fill with tears. There are more lines around them than I’ve ever seen. How long has the stress of all this hollowed her out? “I didn’t want you to blame yourself. It’s not your fault your father made a bad deal and your brother disappeared. You deserved to have a chance to live the life you wanted.”

Not your fault. Not your fault. The words ricochet in my empty chest. At some point, I knew this, but I forgot after Niccolo disappeared. The responsibility and blame became one, a burden too big to carry alone, but that didn’t stop me from trying.

I wrap my mother in a hug, a crushing one that says all the tender things I can’t put into words without weeping. Thank you for seeing me. Thank you for giving me a chance.

She lets out a shaky breath. She feels like a reed under her dress, too thin and brittle. Have I always been this much taller than her? “If Giovannia is engaged before the month is over… if I rent out some of the other rooms, I think we’ll be all right.”

I don’t correct her. She needs something to believe in, even if it’s wrong. The Medici bank will always have their gilded hands around our necks. They’ve been trying to take our house for years.

Niccolo can fix this. I’ll get him back. I cling to the hope, stubborn as dried glue. Getting fired was a good thing. I lock up the memory of a freckled face collapsed in despair in a place where it can’t haunt me anymore. I had to hurt him. He wouldn’t have let me go otherwise.

“The girls don’t know?” I say.

“Not Elisabetta, but Giovannia…” Mamma doesn’t need to finish the statement. My sister is too clever by half.