Capo and Cello

Ayo Bankole teaches cello on Tuesdays in the North End and plays second chair for the Boston Symphony, and she has a strict rule about knowing where her students' money comes from. Then a check arrives for four times a lesson's worth and she returns it in person, and meets Edoardo Moretti in the back room of a club he does not call a club. She does not take his money. She offers his daughter Saturdays, for free, in her own studio, and he says yes and never tells her why. Eight months later, Ayo knows the shape of a marriage from the outside. She knows the dates a bruise appears and disappears. She knows that the woman who brings her daughter to lessons is keeping a file. And she knows that the safest thing for everyone in this room is for her to walk out and not come back. She stays anyway. A BWWM interracial mafia romance.