Chapter 3 - THE WATCH ON RICO’S WRIST
Rico removed the watch immediately.
He placed it on the table as if it had become poisonous.
“No one touches it.”
Clara stared at the scratched gold case.
“That’s your father’s?”
“Yes.”
“He’s alive?”
Rico’s jaw tightened.
“Salvatore Moretti is very much alive.”
Clara had heard the name.
Everyone in New York had.
Salvatore Moretti was seventy-one and supposedly retired to a waterfront estate in Staten Island after turning control of the family over to Rico.
Supposedly.
Leo reached toward the watch.
Rico caught his little wrist gently.
“No, buddy.”
Leo frowned.
“Bad.”
Rico’s eyes snapped toward him.
“What did you say?”
Leo pointed.
“Bad watch.”
The room changed.
Rico knelt before his son.
“Who told you that?”
Leo pressed his lips together.
Clara noticed his shoulders tightening.
“Don’t push.”
Rico looked at her sharply.
“He knows something.”
“He’s three.”
“He just called my father’s watch bad.”
“And if you scare him, he’ll disappear inside himself again.”
Rico hated being corrected.
Clara could see it.
But he moved backward.
Clara lowered herself beside Leo.
“Did Mommy say something about the watch?”
Leo’s eyes filled.
“Mommy cry.”
Rico closed his eyes.
Clara waited.
Leo touched the gold watch with one finger.
“Grandpa mad.”
Rico went rigid.
“Grandpa?”
Leo nodded.
Then he curled himself against Clara’s shoulder.
Enough.
Clara did not ask another question.
Rico walked to the window.
Six months of assumptions were breaking apart.
Elena had died in a black SUV three blocks from their Brooklyn home. Rico had been told rival gunmen from the Caruso crew had fired twelve rounds into the vehicle after mistaking Elena’s departure time for his.
Three Caruso soldiers had later disappeared.
Rico had considered the matter finished.
Now his own son was telling him his grandfather had frightened Elena before her death.
Dante spoke quietly.
“There’s something else.”
Rico turned.
Dante looked miserable.
“The week before Elena died, she asked me to follow Salvatore.”
Rico’s eyes narrowed.
“You followed my father?”
“For two days.”
“And?”
“He visited a storage facility in Red Hook.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Elena begged me not to.”
Rico slammed his palm against the window frame.
“You keep saying that like it makes betrayal noble.”
Dante took the anger without moving.
“She believed telling you too early would get someone killed.”
“Someone did get killed!”
Leo flinched.
Rico immediately lowered his voice.
That small act did not escape Clara.
Despite everything people said about him, he was trying.
He simply did not know how.
Clara unfolded Elena’s note again.
“The key.”
Dante looked at it.
“I don’t know what it opens.”
Rico picked up the brass key.
Stamped into it were three numbers.
“We’re going to Red Hook.”
Clara shook her head.
“No.”
Rico looked at her.
“You’re coming.”
“That wasn’t a request I agreed to.”
“Elena addressed the letter to you.”
“And I have a shift.”
Marco, still hovering near the kitchen, looked horrified.
Rico actually stared at her.
“You’re worried about your shift?”
“I’m worried about rent.”
Something almost like disbelief crossed his face.
Rico pulled several bills from his pocket.
Clara’s expression hardened.
“Put that away.”
“I’m compensating you.”
“You’re trying to purchase cooperation.”
“I purchase cooperation every day.”
“Not mine.”
Dante coughed into his fist.
It might have been hiding a smile.
Rico glanced at him.
Dante’s face became stone.
Clara untied her apron.
“I’ll go because Elena wrote my name. Not because you ordered me.”
Rico nodded once.
“Fine.”
“And Leo stays somewhere safe.”
Leo immediately clutched her leg.
“No.”
Clara sighed.
Rico rubbed his forehead.
Twenty minutes later, all three of them were riding through Brooklyn in an armored Escalade with Dante in front.
Leo sat between Rico and Clara in a child seat.
He refused to release Clara’s bracelet.
Red Hook looked almost deserted by the time they arrived.
The storage facility stood near the water behind rusted fencing and security lights.
Rico’s men cleared the building before he allowed Clara or Leo inside.
Unit 214 was on the second floor.
The brass key fit.
Rico lifted the metal door.
Inside was not money.
Not guns.
Not evidence of some criminal empire.
There were boxes.
Dozens of them.
Children’s clothes.
School notebooks.
Photographs.
A wooden rocking horse.
A faded yellow coat.
Clara stepped inside.
She stopped at the coat.
Her fingers trembled.
“That was mine.”
Rico looked at her.
“You’re sure?”
“My mother made it.”
She lifted the sleeve.
Inside, sewn near the cuff, were tiny crooked initials.
C.V.
Clara sat hard on a storage box.
“This was lost when we moved after my mother died.”
Rico opened another carton.
Photographs.
Clara at five.
Seven.
Nine.
Margaret beside her.
And Elena.
Always somewhere nearby.
Sometimes in the background.
Sometimes holding Clara.
Clara stared at one photograph of Elena tying her shoelaces at what appeared to be a picnic.
“I don’t remember her.”
“You were little.”
“But why would my mother hide this?”
Rico found a framed photograph wrapped in newspaper.
Margaret and Elena stood beside a much younger Salvatore Moretti.
All three were smiling.
Clara’s stomach turned.
“Your father knew my mother.”
Rico flipped the frame.
Taped behind it was a folded hospital bracelet.
The printed name was faded but readable.
Baby Girl Vance.
Beneath it was another bracelet.
Baby Girl Moretti.
Same birth date.
Same hospital.
Clara stared.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Rico began searching faster.
Dante opened a metal cashbox.
Inside was an old rosary, two train tickets dated twenty-four years earlier, and a sealed envelope.
Not addressed to Clara.
Not addressed to Rico.
It simply read:
For whichever child survives us.
Clara felt cold.
Rico broke the seal.
Inside was a letter written in Margaret’s hand.
He read the first paragraph.
Then stopped.
“Read it.”
Clara’s voice shook.
Rico looked at Dante.
Then back at Clara.
“You won’t like it.”
“Read it.”
Rico obeyed.
“‘Elena and I have spent twelve years pretending we are cousins because Salvatore said the truth would destroy both families. The truth is simpler and uglier. We are sisters. Same father. Different mothers.’”
Clara’s mouth went dry.
“So the photograph…”
Rico continued.
“‘If anything happens to us, Clara must never be brought into the Moretti family unless she has no other choice. Salvatore believes blood creates ownership. Elena and I know better.’”
Clara whispered, “My mother was a Moretti?”
“Half Moretti,” Dante said.
Rico shot him a look.
Clara turned.
“You knew?”
“Not this.”
But Rico was still reading.
His eyes narrowed.
“There’s more.”
He turned the page.
“‘The secret Salvatore fears isn’t that Elena and I are his daughters.’”
Rico went silent.
Clara grabbed the letter.
The next line was underlined twice.
The secret is that one of us saw what he did to our mother, and Elena kept the proof.
Before Clara could read further, Leo slid from his seat beside the open unit.
He wandered toward the rocking horse.
“Leo,” Rico said.
The child crouched beneath it.
He reached under the wooden base.
His fingers pulled loose a strip of tape.
Attached beneath the horse was a small cassette recorder.
Old.
Black plastic.
Leo held it up.
“Mommy.”
Rico crossed the room.
“What?”
Leo pointed at the recorder.
“Mommy voice.”
Dante found batteries in the cashbox.
The machine clicked on.
Static filled the storage unit.
Then Elena’s voice came through the tiny speaker.
Rico’s entire body locked.
“Rico, if you’re hearing this, then either I failed… or your father finally decided I knew too much.”
Rico’s face became white.
The recording crackled.
Elena took a shaky breath.
May you like
Then she said the words that destroyed the last certainty Rico had left.
“The men who shot at me were not Carusos.”
