Chapter 7 - THE DEBT THAT NEVER BELONGED TO ME
Richard had hired me personally.
I remembered the interview.
He barely looked at my résumé.
He asked strange questions instead.
Where did I live?
Was my mother alive?
Did I have relatives in New York?
At the time, I thought he was making conversation.
Now I knew better.
“He hired me because of my mother.”
Luca nodded.
“Probably.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Vittorio owns Ilvento through a holding company.”
Gabriel looked at his brother.
“And you knew?”
“I suspected.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Luca’s expression hardened.
“You weren’t exactly inviting me into strategy meetings.”
Salvatore struck his cane against the floor.
“Enough.”
Both sons fell silent.
Even poisoned and half-reclined in a hospital bed, the old man still knew how to control a room.
I was less impressed.
“Did you know my mother?” I asked him.
Salvatore looked at me.
“Yes.”
My stomach dropped.
Gabriel turned.
“You told us you recognized her only from Angelo’s records.”
“I said no such thing.”
“You let us believe it.”
Salvatore’s face tightened.
Twelve years earlier, my mother had worked as an accountant for one of the Rossi family’s legitimate shipping companies.
She discovered invoices that did not match the cargo records.
She brought them to Angelo.
Angelo believed Vittorio was laundering money and stealing from family pension accounts.
Salvatore did not.
Or refused to.
Then my mother was hit by the car.
“I paid for her care,” Salvatore said quietly.
I stared.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I created a trust.”
“Vittorio stole from it.”
Salvatore’s eyes closed.
“I know that now.”
I stood.
“All these years, I thought I was failing her because I couldn’t keep up with the bills.”
Gabriel touched my arm.
I pulled away.
Not because of him.
Because if anyone touched me, I might cry.
“My electricity was shut off twice.”
Nobody spoke.
“I worked Christmas. Thanksgiving. My twenty-first birthday.”
Salvatore looked at the floor.
“You should never have carried that.”
“But I did.”
His voice became quieter.
“That is on me.”
For a mafia boss, it was an unusually simple confession.
No excuses.
No threats.
Just guilt.
Gabriel’s attorneys moved quickly.
Northstar’s records proved that most of my mother’s care should have been paid by the trust.
The company had been billing me for services already paid through insurance and trust funds.
By the following afternoon, lawyers had frozen the remaining assets.
The debt collection stopped.
For the first time in years, I looked at my phone without fearing an unknown number.
Then Richard called.
“You’re fired.”
I laughed.
“What?”
“You abandoned your shifts and brought criminal activity into my restaurant.”
“Your restaurant?”
Silence.
I continued.
“Or Vittorio Rossi’s?”
The line went dead.
An hour later, Luca accessed archived security footage from Ilvento.
We watched Richard enter Gabriel’s regular Thursday booth before opening.
He crouched beneath the table.
Attached something.
Then left.
A listening device.
Gabriel stared at the screen.
“How long?”
Luca checked previous footage.
“Months.”
Richard had been recording every conversation Gabriel had at Ilvento.
Then I remembered something.
Three months earlier, Gabriel had met a man at that table.
The same night I saw blood on Gabriel’s cuff.
I had overheard only one sentence.
Move my father before Thursday.
May you like
Richard had heard it too.
Which meant Vittorio had known exactly where Salvatore would be when the attack happened.
