Chapter 4 - MY FATHER'S LAST REPAIR
I didn't put the watch down.
“You told me my father died in a robbery.”
“I told you what I believed then.”
“Don't.”
Alessandro stopped.
“Don't what?”
“Stand in my father's shop and give me half a truth because you've decided I can't survive the whole one.”
His eyes lowered.
That hurt him.
Good.
“I deserve that,” he said.
“No. You deserve worse.”
Maso quietly took Leah downstairs, giving us privacy.
Alessandro remained near the doorway.
He looked exhausted.
Not powerful.
Not untouchable.
Just tired.
“I brought Camila to your birthday dinner because Vittorio had people watching every entrance,” he said. “He believed she was coming to me to bargain.”
“Was she?”
“No. She came because she found something her mother had hidden.”
“The bracelet.”
His eyes flicked toward my workbench.
“You opened it.”
“Yes.”
“And locker 417?”
“Yes.”
He rubbed his jaw.
“What else?”
“My father's recording.”
That stopped him.
I watched him absorb it.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because three weeks ago someone broke into this shop.”
I frowned.
Nothing had appeared disturbed.
“I had it cleaned before you saw it.”
“You had my father's shop cleaned?”
“They weren't looking for jewelry, Adriana. They were looking through his records.”
My anger faltered.
“And you thought pretending to betray me would protect me?”
“No.”
The answer surprised me.
“I thought keeping you ignorant would protect you. Bringing Camila publicly was supposed to force Vittorio to move before he knew what she'd found.”
“You let me become collateral damage.”
“Yes.”
No excuses.
No charming explanation.
Just yes.
I looked away.
“That's the part you still don't understand, Alessandro. You decided my heart was an acceptable thing to break.”
He swallowed.
“I understand it now.”
“Too late.”
“I know.”
Silence settled between us.
Then I showed him the watch.
“My father wrote that this doesn't belong to Marco.”
“It doesn't.”
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
He turned the watch over.
“My father gave Vittorio a watch just like this when they were young. After Marco disappeared, investigators found a watch engraved to Marco near an abandoned car. It helped convince everyone Marco had betrayed the family and fled.”
“Someone switched the case back.”
“Yes.”
“Vittorio.”
“Most likely.”
I studied the movement.
Something about it was wrong.
The balance wheel sat slightly high.
My father would have noticed immediately.
I removed two screws.
Beneath the mechanism was a wafer-thin brass disc.
Numbers had been scratched into it.
Dates.
Amounts.
Initials.
Payments stretching back twenty years.
“It's an account record,” Alessandro said.
“Your uncle was stealing.”
“From everyone.”
One set of initials repeated beside the largest payments.
S.B.
Leah returned upstairs just as I read them aloud.
“S.B.”
She stopped walking.
“What?”
“You recognize it?”
“No.”
Too fast.
I stared at her.
“Leah.”
She looked at Alessandro, then me.
“My mother's maiden name was Bellini.”
“So?”
“My father used to work for Vittorio.”
I had known Leah since we were sixteen.
I knew her father had died when she was young.
I hadn't known this.
“What did he do?”
“Books. Shipping records. Whatever Vittorio needed.”
Alessandro stepped closer.
“Samuel Bellini.”
Leah's face tightened.
“You knew him?”
“I knew the name.”
I checked the dates.
The final S.B. payment had been made one week before my father died.
Leah sank into the chair.
“My father disappeared for three days that week.”
“What happened when he came back?” I asked.
“He burned his work clothes in our backyard.”
Her eyes filled.
“He told my mother we were moving.”
They never moved.
Two months later, Samuel Ferraro died in what Leah had always been told was a workplace accident.
Another story.
Another convenient death.
I suddenly understood why my father had hidden evidence inside objects instead of going to the police.
He hadn't known whom to trust.
Alessandro took out his phone.
“No calls,” I said.
He looked at me.
“If Vittorio knows we opened the watch, he'll start cleaning up whatever remains.”
“So we don't tell anyone.”
“He already tried to shoot me.”
“Then maybe stop making it easy.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
I hated that I still recognized it.
Leah was examining the child's red coat.
“Adriana.”
Something in her voice made us turn.
She had found a tear inside the lining.
Stitched into the hem was a narrow hospital identification bracelet.
The plastic had yellowed with age.
I read the faded writing.
CAMILA MARINO.
AGE 5.
The date was seventeen years earlier.
The coat had been Camila's.
Beneath the bracelet was a child's drawing.
Four figures stood outside my father's jewelry shop.
A little girl.
A dark-haired woman labeled MAMA.
A man labeled PAPA.
And another man wearing a black coat.
Above him, written in a child's uneven letters:
UNCLE V.
But his face had been scratched out.
On the back, my father had written:
SHE SAW HIM.
Alessandro whispered, “Camila witnessed something.”
I remembered her fear at dinner.
She hadn't returned to expose an old financial crime.
She was afraid of a memory.
A childhood memory.
Leah turned the drawing toward the light.
There was something else beneath the crayon.
A number.
Not 417.
A date.
Tomorrow's date.
Seventeen years ago.
The anniversary.
Maso rushed upstairs.
“We have a problem.”
Alessandro turned.
“What?”
“Vittorio has called a family meeting tonight.”
“About what?”
Maso looked at me.
“Marco Marino.”
“But Marco disappeared seventeen years ago.”
Maso shook his head.
“No.”
Then he held out a recent photograph.
An older man stood outside a bus station, silver-haired and thin.
Around his neck hung a rosary.
May you like
Maso's voice was barely audible.
“Marco Marino came home this morning.”
