Chapter 6: The Hamburg Port
Scarlett said yes to dinner six days later.
She told herself it was morbid curiosity. She told her mother it was a networking opportunity for a future corporate job. She told Danny Reeves nothing.
She told Deanna Marsh in Portland. Deanna possessed excellent, paranoid judgment.
“Please, for the love of God, tell me you are not doing what I think you are doing,” Deanna groaned over the phone.
“I’m just going to dinner, Deanna,” Scarlett promised, pacing her tiny apartment.
“Fine,” Deanna sighed. “But text me his full, legal name and the exact address. If I do not hear from you by midnight, I am calling the FBI.”
The restaurant, Sarto, occupied the twentieth floor of a glittering high-rise on Meridian Street downtown. It displayed no signage outside; places of this caliber simply didn’t need one.
Dominic stood up from the candlelit table the moment Scarlett walked into the dining room.
Scarlett wore a dark green dress she owned for three years. She bought it for forty-five dollars at a consignment shop and felt that forty-five dollars deserved more than two outings. She styled her own hair, letting it fall loose over her shoulders for the first time in months.
Dominic looked at her. He looked at her the way he looked at things he found genuinely, profoundly valuable. Not possessively, but with quiet, concentrated attention.
“You actually came,” Dominic said, pulling her chair out for her.
“I said I would think about it,” Scarlett replied, smoothing her green dress as she sat down. “I thought about it. Do not read too much into it.”
“I never read into anything,” Dominic said, taking his seat. “I take notes and I form logical conclusions.”
Scarlett raised an eyebrow. “Is that a warning?”
“It’s an introduction,” he smiled.
The dinner lasted three hours. Scarlett ate dishes she couldn’t pronounce. She drank exactly one glass of red wine, nursing it the entire time. She wanted to remember every detail with crystal clarity.
She told him about her mother.
It spilled out in the middle of a conversation about why she still lived in Ridgewood. Once she started talking about Norma, she couldn’t find a natural place to stop.
She detailed the crushing medication costs. She explained the horrific insurance coverage gaps. She outlined her modest plan to save enough money to escape to Portland, and how the rising cost of living kept delaying it.
Dominic listened without interrupting once. He offered no unsolicited advice.
Most powerful men started problem-solving around the second paragraph. Dominic just listened.
When she finished her story, Dominic took a sip of his water. “What is her specific condition?”
Scarlett told him the long, complicated medical name.
He nodded slowly. “My mother had something similar. A slightly different classification. She died when I was thirty-four.”
He looked down at the pristine white tablecloth. “I wasn’t there when it happened. I was in Frankfurt on a business trip. My older brother called to tell me.”
“I am so sorry, Dominic,” Scarlett said softly.
“I handled my grief the exact same way I handle most things I fail to fix,” Dominic said bitterly. “By doing something drastic in a different direction.”
He looked up, his dark eyes meeting hers. “I restructured a massive portion of the Hamburg port operations strictly in her memory. She would have found that baffling had she been alive to know about it.”
Scarlett laughed out loud before she could stop herself.
It was a genuine laugh—the sudden, startled kind. Something in Dominic’s hardened face rearranged itself in response to the sound. It wasn’t quite a full smile. It resembled the sweet memory of one.
She thought, This man is so incredibly lonely. And then she thought, This is not your problem to fix, Scarlett. And then, terrifyingly, she thought, But what if it could be something real?
At 11:48 PM, sitting in the back of the private town car Dominic arranged for her, Scarlett pulled out her phone.
She texted Deanna: Still alive. More later.
Deanna instantly replied: Is it that bad, or is it that good?!
Scarlett looked out the tinted window at the passing city lights. She typed back: I genuinely do not know.
