Chapter 3 - THE ACCIDENT THAT WASN'T AN ACCIDENT
My mother’s hit-and-run had never been solved.
For twelve years, I had blamed a faceless stranger.
A drunk driver.
Someone texting.
Someone who panicked and fled.
Now a dead—or supposedly dead—old man had written my mother’s name beside Vittorio Rossi’s.
I turned toward Gabriel.
“What did your uncle do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You recognized his name.”
“He’s my father’s younger brother.”
“And?”
Gabriel looked toward the ledger.
“And he controls a large part of the Rossi businesses.”
There was something careful in the way he said businesses.
I laughed once.
“Right. Businesses.”
His gaze hardened.
“You already know what people say about my family.”
“I serve politicians and hedge-fund managers for a living. Trust me, your family isn’t the only one doing things they don’t print on tax returns.”
That almost earned another smile.
Almost.
I pointed at the ledger.
“Translate this part.”
“You’re the one who reads it.”
“I want to know whether you recognize the names.”
Gabriel stepped closer.
The next page documented payments to police officers, attorneys, shipping companies, and something called Project Lucia.
Then we found a notation beside my mother.
A.T. copied the manifests. V.R. ordered silence. Angelo objected.
My throat tightened.
“Ordered silence?”
Gabriel looked grim.
“Maybe intimidation.”
“She was hit by a car three days later.”
“I know.”
My anger exploded.
“You don’t know anything about it.”
He took the hit without defending himself.
“You’re right.”
I turned away.
I remembered being fifteen.
Sitting beside my mother’s hospital bed.
Waiting for her to wake up.
She eventually did, but the brain injury had taken pieces of her speech, her memory, her independence.
She could smile.
She could sometimes squeeze my hand.
But she had never explained why she was walking alone near the West Side docks at two in the morning.
Now I knew.
She had been carrying something.
“Where is Vittorio?” I asked.
Gabriel’s expression changed.
“No.”
“No what?”
“You are not confronting him.”
“You don’t get to tell me what I’m doing.”
“If he ordered your mother killed—”
“He failed.”
“Tessa.”
“So did twelve years of investigators.”
Gabriel moved closer.
“He won’t fail twice.”
That stopped me.
Not because I liked being threatened.
Because Gabriel sounded afraid.
Not for himself.
For me.
We continued through the ledger.
Near the back, Angelo had written coded passages that I could barely understand.
Old sayings.
Village slang.
Family references.
Then I found one I recognized.
Mr. Cosenza had taught me the phrase while complaining about crooked landlords.
The wolf does not own the sheep merely because he built the fence.
Below it was a bank name.
A routing number.
And a note.
Anna’s protection fund. Never let Vittorio touch it.
I stared.
“My mother had money?”
Gabriel checked the numbers.
“This could be a trust.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
We photographed the page.
Then something struck the window.
Glass exploded across the kitchen.
Gabriel threw me to the floor.
A second shot buried itself in the wall.
He dragged me behind the counter and pulled out his phone.
“Stay down.”
I heard him calling his security team.
Then he looked at the broken window.
His face became ice.
Nobody outside Ilvento knew we were here.
Nobody except my manager.
Gabriel turned toward me.
“Who told Richard where you lived?”
I stared at him.
“My employment file.”
Gabriel’s eyes darkened.
Someone at the restaurant had already passed my address to the Rossi family.
May you like
The question was whether they had passed it to Gabriel.
Or to Vittorio first.
