Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
“Celeste Marquetti is standing inside my husband's hiding place.”
Adriana stared at the photograph on her phone.
Her hands were shaking so badly that Sofia had to take the device before it slipped from her fingers.
“Sit down, sweetheart.”
“I can't.”
“Adriana—”
“Eli left something for me there. Something important enough to get him killed.”
Sofia's expression tightened.
For years, she had known Adriana as the kind young woman who baked birthday cakes for children whose parents couldn't afford them.
She remembered Eli coming into her first bakery with flowers hidden behind his back.
She remembered their wedding.
And she remembered Adriana standing beside his grave, looking as though someone had taken the sky away.
Sofia refused to lose her too.
“You are not going anywhere until Damon gets here.”
Adriana turned toward her.
“I spent six months running from that man.”
“And now?”
Adriana looked at Eli's watch.
“Now I don't know who else can help me.”
Across the city, Damon was staring at the same photograph.
Margaret Shaw had forwarded Adriana's message.
The location was the original Reyes Bakery, a boarded-up storefront near the waterfront that Sofia had closed before moving her business to the North End.
Damon remembered it.
Eli had spent countless evenings there, repairing ovens and pretending he wasn't visiting just to see Adriana.
Now Celeste Marquetti stood inside with a box Eli had apparently hidden years earlier.
Damon called Nico.
“Find out who's with Celeste.”
“Already checking.”
“And put someone outside Sofia's apartment. Nobody approaches Adriana without her permission.”
Nico hesitated.
“Damon, should we move her somewhere more secure?”
“No. She's been moved around enough.”
He looked at the photograph again.
“We protect where she chooses to stay.”
Twenty minutes later, Damon arrived at the old bakery.
The front windows were covered in plywood.
A single security light glowed above the back entrance.
Two of his men waited across the street.
Nico had gone around the building to check the alley.
Damon entered alone.
The smell of old flour and cold brick greeted him.
Celeste stood near the second oven, clutching a small metal box.
Her silk dress had been replaced by jeans and a dark coat.
Her perfect makeup was gone.
A bruise marked her wrist.
“Damon.”
“Put down the box.”
She shook her head.
“I can't.”
“Celeste.”
“My father will kill me.”
Damon stopped.
Celeste swallowed.
“I know what you're thinking. After what happened at St. Cordova, you think I deserve everything coming to me.”
“I'm thinking about the woman you slapped.”
Her eyes dropped.
“I know.”
“She's eight months pregnant.”
“I know.”
“She nearly lost her baby tonight.”
Celeste covered her mouth.
For a moment, she appeared genuinely horrified.
Then Damon stepped closer.
“Why are you here?”
“My father sent me.”
“For the box?”
She nodded.
“He said Eli stole documents from the family. He told me the old bakery was the last place Eli visited before he died.”
“How did he know where to look?”
“Victor Sloane found a recording of Eli talking in the hospital.”
Damon's jaw tightened.
“Why didn't Sloane collect it himself?”
Celeste gave a bitter laugh.
“Because he wanted Adriana to come here.”
Damon went still.
“He wanted her here?”
“He said the box might be locked. That Eli would have given Adriana the only way to open it.”
Damon thought of the watch.
Celeste continued.
“I didn't understand at first. Then I saw what they'd written on the wall.”
She gestured toward the message about Adriana's baby.
Her eyes filled.
“My father knew she was pregnant. He knew she'd been working in your restaurant. He knew everything.”
Damon stared.
“Did you know who she was when you struck her?”
Celeste shook her head.
“No. I swear.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I didn't know her name. I thought she was another waitress who ruined my dress.”
Her face twisted with shame.
“I was angry because my father had told me you were going to refuse our financing. I had spent the afternoon begging bankers not to destroy everything my family owned.”
“And you took that anger out on someone who couldn't fight back.”
Celeste nodded.
“Yes.”
It was the first honest answer Damon had heard from her.
But honesty did not erase what she had done.
“You'll apologize to her yourself,” he said. “And you'll accept whatever consequences follow.”
Celeste looked at the box.
“If I survive tonight.”
Damon held out his hand.
“Give it to me.”
She hesitated.
Then placed it in his palm.
The box was heavy.
An old brass lock held the lid shut.
A small symbol had been scratched into the metal.
A circle with two short lines crossing through it.
Damon recognized the mark.
Eli used to draw it on everything when they were children.
It represented a compass.
East.
The direction of the harbor where they had grown up.
Damon took out his phone and photographed the box.
Then a voice spoke from the darkness behind them.
“Touch that lock, Kalas, and your brother's widow dies.”
Victor Sloane stepped through the rear doorway.
Two armed men followed.
His silver ring caught the light.
Celeste backed away.
“You said nobody would get hurt.”
Sloane smiled.
“That's what your father told you to believe.”
Damon didn't move.
“Where's Lorenzo?”
“Busy saving what's left of his hotels.”
“By murdering people?”
“By doing what businessmen have always done. Protecting investments.”
Damon looked at Celeste.
She was trembling.
For a moment, something shifted in his understanding.
Celeste had entered St. Cordova desperate to save her family.
She had humiliated Adriana because she believed power meant the right to hurt someone weaker.
Now she was standing before a man who treated her exactly the same way.
Damon turned back toward Sloane.
“You want the box. Take it.”
Sloane shook his head.
“We need what's inside.”
“Then open it.”
“Eli changed the lock.”
Damon examined the brass mechanism.
An unusual narrow opening ran beneath the keyhole.
The width of a watch strap pin.
Suddenly, he understood.
Eli had hidden the key inside the very object Sloane had spent months trying to recover.
Sloane watched his expression.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“That look. You finally understand your brother.”
Damon deliberately placed the box on the counter.
“Tell me what you want.”
“The watch.”
“It's not here.”
“Then call Adriana.”
Damon's face hardened.
“No.”
Sloane shrugged.
“Then I suppose we'll have to visit her ourselves.”
From somewhere outside, a vehicle engine started.
Damon glanced toward the boarded window.
Sloane smiled.
“Your men are occupied.”
A gunshot sounded in the alley.
Then another.
Celeste screamed.
Damon lunged for the light switch.
Darkness swallowed the bakery.
He grabbed Celeste and pulled her behind the old oven as bullets struck the counter.
The building erupted into shouts.
Someone kicked open the rear door.
Nico's voice echoed from outside.
“Damon! Get down!”
Another gunshot.
Then silence.
When emergency lights flickered on, the two armed men were on the floor, disarmed by Damon's security team.
Sloane had escaped through the loading passage.
Celeste was crying against the oven.
Damon picked up the box.
Then he noticed something beneath the wooden counter.
A narrow drawer.
Inside lay a folded paper covered in Eli's handwriting.
Damon opened it.
If they find the box, they will come for Adriana.
Don't mistake their interest in the money for the whole truth.
The contracts prove theft.
The recording proves murder.
And the witness can prove who ordered both.
Below the message was a name.
RUTH ELLISON.
Damon photographed the letter and called Margaret.
“Find her.”
Margaret's answer came several minutes later.
“Damon, Ruth Ellison was the financial controller at the Marquetti Grand Hotel.”
“Was?”
“She disappeared seven months ago.”
“Find out where she went.”
“There was an investigation. The official report says she left Boston voluntarily.”
Damon looked at Sloane's abandoned position by the rear door.
“Victor wrote that report, didn't he?”
Margaret was silent.
Then she said, “Yes.”
A terrible certainty settled over him.
Eli had discovered financial crimes serious enough to threaten powerful people.
Ruth Ellison had witnessed something.
And the widow of the man who uncovered it was now being used as bait.
Damon called Adriana.
She answered immediately.
“Did you find it?”
“Yes.”
“What's inside?”
“I haven't opened it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think Eli left you the key.”
Adriana looked down at the watch in her hand.
“The watch?”
“Samuel Finch said Eli modified it. There's something we missed.”
Adriana was quiet for a moment.
Then she spoke softly.
“I know what it is.”
Damon stopped.
“Adriana?”
“On our first anniversary, Eli showed me how to remove one of the pins from the strap. He said he wanted me to know how to fix it myself.”
She swallowed.
“He made me practice until I could do it without looking.”
Damon closed his eyes.
Even while frightened for his life, Eli had prepared his wife to survive without him.
“Don't touch it yet,” Damon said. “I'm coming to you.”
But Adriana was staring at something else.
A small piece of paper tucked beneath the watch strap.
She had never noticed it before.
The paper was almost transparent from wear.
Three words were written on it.
TRUST THE BAKER.
Adriana looked toward the kitchen.
“Sofia?”
No answer.
She stood.
“Sofia?”
The kitchen door was open.
A saucepan lay on the floor.
And Sofia's coat was gone.
Adriana's heart began racing.
Then the back door creaked.
A voice came from the dark hallway.
“Adriana, sweetheart?”
It sounded like Sofia.
But something was wrong.
The voice was trembling.
Adriana stepped toward the doorway.
Sofia appeared, her face pale.
A man stood behind her, holding a gun close to her back.
“I'm sorry,” Sofia whispered.
The stranger smiled.
“Mrs. Voss, your husband left something that belongs to us.”
May you like
He glanced at her swollen stomach.
“And my employer would prefer not to wait until the baby is born.”
