Chapter 8 - THE BODY UNDER THE RESTAURANT
Police would have been unavoidable this time.
So Salvatore called someone.
Twenty minutes later, a private forensic specialist arrived.
I stared at Gabriel.
“That's not suspicious at all.”
“It is extremely suspicious.”
At least he admitted it.
The bone belonged to a skeleton buried beneath the old restaurant foundation.
Male.
Approximately thirty-five to forty-five at death.
Dead for around thirty years.
There was a ring beside the remains.
Initials:
M.C.
Salvatore whispered the name.
“Matteo Conti.”
Antonio's closest friend.
And one of the first witnesses against Vittorio.
Officially, Matteo fled to Argentina.
He hadn't.
Someone killed him.
The notebook contained coded references to Matteo.
One phrase repeated:
THE MAN WHO FED THE FIRE.
Salvatore looked shaken.
Vittorio?
Probably.
Then Alessandro arrived.
He saw the ring.
“No.”
His reaction was too strong.
“Who was Matteo to you?” Gabriel asked.
Alessandro looked at his brother.
“My father.”
Silence.
Salvatore closed his eyes.
I almost walked out.
There was apparently no bottom to this family's secrets.
Gabriel stared at Salvatore.
“You aren't his biological father?”
“No.”
Alessandro's mother had been married briefly before Salvatore.
Matteo Conti.
She believed Matteo died overseas.
Then married Salvatore.
Matteo later returned secretly to expose Vittorio.
Before he could meet his son, he vanished.
Alessandro had spent decades believing Salvatore might have ordered it.
“Did you?” Alessandro asked.
Salvatore looked genuinely horrified.
“No.”
“Then who?”
The forensic specialist found something in the soil.
A bullet fragment.
Old.
Rare caliber.
Gabriel recognized it.
“Carcano.”
Salvatore nodded slowly.
Vittorio favored that weapon decades ago.
Still circumstantial.
Then a second object emerged.
A gold cuff link.
R.R.
Gabriel went completely still.
“Richard Rossi.”
Salvatore's cousin.
My manager at Ilvento was named Richard.
Richard Bell.
Or so I thought.
I remembered how terrified he acted when Salvatore came to dinner.
How quickly he assigned me the table.
How he promised a paid weekend.
Gabriel looked at me.
“What is Richard's full legal name?”
I checked employee records through my scheduling app.
Richard Bell-Rossi.
My manager was family.
And he had intentionally put me in front of Salvatore.
I drove straight to Ilvento with Gabriel.
Richard was gone.
Locker empty.
Office cleared.
But he left one thing on my employee timecard.
A handwritten message:
I'M SORRY, TESSA. I ONLY NEEDED SALVATORE TO HEAR YOU SPEAK.
May you like
Below it:
VITTORIO KNOWS WHO GABRIEL'S MOTHER REALLY WAS.
