“Good,” Tata says. “I can’t wait.”

The dinner is a disaster.

From the moment my father opens the door, I know that’s how it’s going to be.

He’s put on one of his best suits—the navy Brioni. This isn’t as a gesture of welcome or respect. He wants to appear as intimidating as possible.

He greets Dante coldly. My father can be horribly stern when he wants to be.

The problem is that Dante is equally stern in return. He’s wearing a button-up shirt and a pair of slacks. His hair is nicely combed, and his dress shoes are polished. But he doesn’t look refined like Tata. With the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, his meaty forearms are displayed, dusted with dark hair and thick with veins and muscle. His massive hand closes around my father’s, and it looks like a brutal hand, with its swollen knuckles and the gold family ring Dante wears on his pinky.

By contrast, my father’s hands are slim, refined, manicured. My father’s watch and cuff links look like the jewelry of a gentleman.

Dante looks like he hasn’t shaved, even though I know that he has. It’s just the darkness of his facial hair that marks his cheeks in a perpetual five o’clock shadow.

When he greets my mother and sister, I know he’s using his most gentle tone, but it comes out like a grunt. They’re not used to his voice. Mama actually jumps a little. They don’t know how to differentiate between his softer tone and his truly terrifying growl. To them, he sounds rude and uncouth in everything he says, even when he tries to compliment them.

“You have a beautiful home,” he tells Mama.

That sounds wrong, too, like he’s never been in a nice house before. When I know that the Gallo mansion is lovely and venerable in its own way. Much more than this rented place.

I’m already sick with dread and the dinner’s barely begun.

We all sit down around the formal dining table.

Tata is at the head. Mama’s at the foot. Serwa sits on one side, Dante and me on the other. At least we’re right next to each other.

One of the housemaids brings out the soup.

It’s gazpacho, with a sheen of olive oil glimmering on its surface. Dante eyes the chilled soup warily.

He picks up his spoon. It looks comically small in his huge hand. My father, mother, and sister are all staring at him like he’s an animal in a zoo. I’m so angry at them that I want to cry. I know they don’t mean it, but it hurts me to see their stiff expressions, the veneer of politeness with distaste underneath.

Dante can feel it, too. He’s trying to be calm. Trying to be warm to them. But it’s impossible under the bright lights, the tense scrutiny, the silence that blankets the table. Every clink of our spoons is magnified in the formal dining space.

Dante takes a few polite bites of the soup, before laying down his spoon. It’s too much to try to eat with so many people watching you.

“The soup doesn’t agree with you?” my father says with chilly politeness. “I can order something else from the kitchen. What do you like to eat?”

He says it like he thinks Dante lives on a diet of pizza and french fries. Like normal human food is beyond Dante’s appreciation.

“The soup is excellent,” Dante growls. He picks up his spoon again and takes five or six hasty bites. In his hurry, a little of the red soup splashes on the snow-white tablecloth. Dante flushes and tries to dab the spot with his napkin, making it worse.

“Oh, don’t bother about that,” Mama says.

She means it kindly, but it sounds condescending, like Dante is a Great Dane sitting at the table, from which nothing better could be expected.

I can’t eat a bite. The soup smells awful to me, like it has iron filings in it. I’m holding back tears.

“So, Dante,” my father says, as calm and deliberate as ever. “What do you do for a living?”

“My family owns several businesses,” Dante replies. To his credit, his voice is as calm as Tata’s, and he has no trouble meeting my father’s eyes.

“What sort of businesses?”

“Construction. Real estate. Fine-dining.”

“Indeed,” my father says. “Also several laundromats and a strip club, isn’t that right?”

I see a muscle jump in Dante’s jaw. My father is making it clear that he’s done his research on the Gallo family.

“Yes,” Dante says. “That’s right.”

“Your family has a long history in Chicago, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“That house on Meyer Avenue is simply . . . charming. Your family must have had it a hundred years.”

“Since 1902,” Dante says stiffly.

My father lays down his spoon and folds his slim, shapely hands on the table in front of him.

“What I’m wondering,” he says, “is why you think that I would ever allow my daughter to align herself with the Italian mafia?”

A frigid silence falls over the table. We all seem frozen in place, my mother stiff and wide-eyed in her chair, Serwa holding her spoon up to her mouth but not taking a sip of her soup, me digging my nails into my palm so hard I might be drawing blood. My father staring at Dante, and Dante staring right back at him.

“All families have their secrets,” Dante says, his harsh voice in direct opposition to my father’s cultured tones. “You, for instance, growing up in Accra . . . I doubt you’d have to look far to find a relative who had cut someone’s throat for a few Cedi.”

My father doesn’t flinch, but I see the outrage in his eyes. I don’t know if Dante is aware how accurate that statement was. My father had two uncles who worked for a local gangster. One day they offered his sisters positions as housemaids in the wealthy part of the city. The girls packed their bags, planning to come home on the weekends. But they never came back—my father never saw them again.

Tata’s hand twitches on the tabletop. I think he’s about to respond, but Dante isn’t finished yet.

“That’s normal in Africa, I guess,” Dante growls. “What about after you came to London? That’s where the real money is. Hedge funds, mergers and acquisitions, large-scale real estate transactions . . . the Outfit is good with money. Very good. But we’ve got nothing on international financiers . . . that’s crime on a whole other scale.”

My father makes a tsking sound, his top lip drawn up in a sneer.

“I’m sure you’d like that to be true,” he says. “My hands may be black, but yours are bloody. Those hands will never touch my daughter. Not after tonight.”

Dante’s eyes get so dark that they’re darker even than my father’s—no iris at all, only black pupil.

I’m afraid that’s he’s going to tell Tata that he’s already touched me. In every way possible. I’m not Daddy’s pure little princess anymore. Not even close.

But Dante would never betray me like that.

Instead, he says, “That’s not your decision.”

“Yes, it is,” Tata says. “I am Simone’s father. She will obey me.”

Dante looks over at me. It’s the first time our eyes have met since this awful dinner began. And it’s the first time I see a crack in Dante’s armor. He walked in here like a dark knight, stern and unyielding. And now in his eyes, I see the first hint of vulnerability. A question: is my father speaking the truth?