She glances back toward the house. No sign of Max yet. Then turns nervously back to me.

"He really doesn't like us talking about the past." She looks at me entreatingly. "I don't see what good will come of stirring all that up again."

I put a hand on her arm. "Please. It's important."

"Well," she says, "it's all so long ago, and I never did know the details. There was a gathering, here at the house. It was more than 25 years ago."

"A gathering?"

"I - it wasn't really a party, more like a business meeting that Mr. Max's father was hosting. It looked like a party, but it wasn't. The people who flew in for it were dangerous people." She glances toward the house again. "I knew a little more about it than I should, because back in those days my Enzo was still one of the dangerous people."

"He wasn't always a gardener and, what did Max call it . . . a getaway driver?

She laughs. "For Mr. Max's grandfather, he was much more than a getaway driver. He was part driver, part bodyguard, and in general a man who solved problems. Who made problems go away."

A chill runs through me as I think about the way someone working closely with a criminal boss might make problems go away.

"So, like Gabe is to Max now," I say.

She pats my hand. "Exactly. You understand."

I'm thinking that I'm getting to understand more all the time, and kind of wishing I didn't.

"So what happened? At this gathering?"

Rina sighs. "They were such good friends. The two couples. Mr. Max's father and Nora, and your grandparents. For years. It wasn't just business. And then, after this meeting, everything changed."

"What do you mean?"

She leans closer. They were in the study. Mr. Max's father and two of the men who had flown in for the meeting. I was walking down the hall, and I heard shouting through the door. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I knew it was bad." She raises her hand, crosses herself.

"I didn't know what happened until later, when Enzo told me."

Now I lean closer as well.

"Can you tell me what happened? I need to know what happened between my grandfather and Max's father at that meeting."

Rina opens her mouth as if she's about to speak, but no sound comes out. I watch as her eyes widen, and turn my head slowly.

Max is standing right behind me.

"Rina," he says, his voice deadly calm. "Don't you have things to attend to for the meal?"

She jumps up, faster than I expect for a woman her age.

"Yes, yes," she says, dusting her hands on her on her clothes as if she can brush away the words she already told me. "I'm sorry, Mr. Max."

She hurries off toward the house.

Max gives me a cold stare. I can see the tightly reined fury in his eyes, and I swallow, hard.

"I was just-" I start, but he cuts me off.

"It's obvious exactly what you were doing. You were pumping my housekeeper for information."

My mouth goes dry, as I wonder how much he overheard.

We'll discuss this after dinner," he says. "Right now, I don't want to be distracted from the reason you are here today. What were you doing speaking with Special Agent Assante Williams?"

"I wasn't doing anything - you sound like you're accusing me of something."

"I'm not accusing you. I'm just asking why you were talking to the man responsible for my father spending the rest of his life in prison."

"Well it certainly wasn't my idea." I explain how the same black sedan pulled to the curb when I was walking back from the courthouse, and how Agent Collins stepped up behind me and asked me to get into the car. Max sits down in the chair Rina just vacated, with his arms resting on his knee, watching me intently while I explain.

"So, should I not have gotten into the car? I thought it was better than having them show up at my office again. Or standing there on the street. What if Vincenzo was back in town and saw me and got the wrong idea?"

"I don't want you to worry about Vincenzo. He doesn't act on his own, and Gino would reach out to me if he had any concerns before doing anything."

I'm not so sure. "You're willing to bet my life on that?"

"Hadley."

"I'm serious, Max. You do business with some really scary people."

"I told you I would protect you."

Max runs his hand through his hair. It's clear his instinct to reassure me is warring with the fact that he's really pissed off at me for my conversation with Rina.

"Tell me what Williams wanted," he finally says.

"He was asking a lot about the gallery, and about the artist, Benadicto Rojas Ortiz."

Max's mouth forms a hard line.

"What kind of questions?"

"How much he's getting paid from the paintings that the gallery sells. Questions about the commission agreement I drafted. That kind of thing."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him I had no idea. That I just prepared a contract that's kind of a template for the gallery to fill in for individual artists. I told him the percentage of commission and payment terms were something that would vary based on the artist, how well-known they were, and other factors."

Max nods. "Good. That was the right way to handle it."

"Why are they so focused on the gallery?"

He shrugs. "This Williams has been looking into all my business interests ever since he put my father away. It's almost like some sort of vendetta."

"Be careful, Max."

"I'm always careful."

He studies my face for a moment, then his eyes narrow.

"Did he threaten you in some way?"

The only thing I enjoy more is taking down dirty lawyers. And I'm going to be watching you.

As I remember his words, his tone, his look of pure distain, I shiver slightly.

"What did he say to you, Hadley?" Max presses.

I raise my gaze up to meet his angry stare, realizing at the moment he's not angry at me, but for me.

"He said he likes to take down dirty lawyers, and that he'd be watching me. Made some threats about obstruction of justice."

Max's eyes harden even further, and now I'm frightened less of Special Agent Williams, and more of what Max might do.

"I can handle it," I tell him. "I'm a criminal defense lawyer. I'm used to being threatened, sometimes by my own clients." I smile, trying to pass this off as no big deal. "He's just trying to intimidate me. Look, it's not fun having some big shot from the FBI organized crime unit breathing down my neck, but I'm entitled to give legal advice to you or anyone else I choose."

I sigh. "Do I like the fact that the FBI may be following me around, maybe even monitoring my phone calls? No, I hate it." The little tendrils of fear that had been working their way through my mind suddenly transform into anger. "I refuse to be intimidated."

"He's just using you to get to me," Max says. "He wants me to know that anything I touch is at risk. Hadley, I'm not going let any of this harm you."

Rina steps out onto the terrace. "Mr. Max? Dinner is ready."

I glance over at Rina and suddenly feel really guilty. Max's first thought is how to protect me. And meanwhile, I'm going behind his back trying to get Rina to reveal his secrets.

"Thank you," he says to Rina, then reaches for my hand. "Come on. Let's go in."

"Max, I'm sorry about-"

"I told you. We'll discuss that after dinner. I don't want to upset Rina any further."

Rina has set us up not in the cozy kitchen alcove but in the formal dining room. If feels weird, eating there with just Max at a table that could easily accommodate a dozen or more people.

She's made a beautiful plate of antipasto to start, followed by a rich pasta dish that would rival the food we ate at the authentic Italian restaurant in New York. Crispy fresh baked garlic bread, served with a caprise salad.

She fusses over us, refilling our water glasses, pouring wine, making sure there's nothing further we need. I get the impression Max doesn't often have people over for dinner, and Rina is enjoying this.

"It took years apparently," Max says, "to convince Rina that pasta could be main course."

"It's not how we do it in Italy," Rina says, and Max laughs.

"Rina, you've been here in America for what, for than 50 years?"

She gets a faraway look in her eyes. "Yes, but Italy will always be my home. Maybe I will go back one day."

"So you've been saying my whole life, Rina."

She smiles at him and I can see the affection between them.

"Who would take care of you if Enzo and I moved back to the old country?" she asks him, reaching out to pat his shoulder as she refills his water glass again.

I realize she must be so much more than a housekeeper to Max. After Nora died, she must have stepped into a kind of mother role for him.

I picture him as a boy, grieving his mother, while his father was busy running a criminal enterprise. Sitting in the kitchen after school while Rina gave him milk and cookies and asked him about his day. A sudden wave of guilt comes over me for trying to pump her for information.

I try to make up for it by complimenting the food lavishly, and she just smiles and says she hopes Max will bring me back for another meal because it's nice to be cooking like this again and using the dining room. She seems so pleased and so interested to meet me that I wonder if Max has ever brought a woman here before. Maybe he just has woman at his apartment over the club.

Even thinking about that gives me a sharp pang of jealousy.

Rina serves us homemade tiramisu with a flourish, after refusing to let us help clear the table. She brings coffee in on a silver tray, then retreats to her own apartment inside the house to have dinner with Enzo.

As soon as she leaves, Max gives me a look that says the lovely dinner we just enjoyed did nothing to quell his anger.

"How dare you," Max says, his voice cold. "I bring you to my home and you try to pry information out of Rina? I was very clear that you were to come to me with any questions, not snoop around behind my back."

The fact that I'm feeling bad about doing this - not for him but for Rina - makes me angry and the apology I was planning to say dies in my throat.

"Well, a lot of good that does me, since you refuse to tell me what happened. I wouldn't have to "snoop around" as you call it," I say, putting the term in air quotas, "if you would just answer a few simple questions."

I stare back at him defiantly.

"Rina told me there was a big party here, like 25 years ago, and something happened."

He shakes his head like he can't believe he's hearing what I'm saying.

"You just don't let up, do you?"

"No, I don't. Something happened years ago that's still affecting all of us. My grandfather, my father, you, your father, even Gino made some comment when we were in New York. About my grandfather. What did he say? Something like, he doesn't give a fuck what that asshole Andrew Reese finds out about."

I lean forward. "How does Gino even know my grandfather?

"Fine," Max says, his tone clipped. "I'll tell you what I know."

I almost can't breathe. Is he actually going to tell me?

Max's face is unreadable.

"But you might be sorry you asked."