Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS BURIED WITH THE ROSARY
“Then someone opened her grave,” Dante said.
Salvatore shook his head.
“No.”
Nora stood beside the hospital bed, looking at the wooden beads around her wrist.
She had touched that rosary thousands of times.
Pietro had placed it in her hands when she was twelve, after she came home crying because a classmate called her grandfather a foreigner.
“Carry this when the world makes you feel small,” he'd told her.
She had never asked where it came from.
Now a dying family's history seemed to hang from her wrist.
“Whose grave?” Nora asked.
Salvatore's eyes moved toward Dante.
“Your aunt, Lucia.”
Dante stared.
“Aunt Lucia died before the fire.”
“Yes.”
“You told me she was buried in Palermo.”
“She was.”
Nora held the rosary carefully.
“Then how did my grandfather get it?”
Salvatore's breathing quickened.
Dante reached for the call button.
“Papa, enough.”
“No. She deserves to know something.”
The old man looked at Nora.
“Lucia entrusted those beads to Pietro before she died.”
“Why?”
“Because she was afraid of her husband.”
Dante stiffened.
“Vittorio?”
Salvatore nodded.
“Your uncle was charming in public. Generous, even. But he had begun doing business with men who didn't care whether innocent people suffered.”
Nora remembered her grandfather's strict rules.
Never accept gifts without knowing their price.
Never sign papers you haven't read.
Never confuse a powerful man with a good one.
Perhaps those lessons had been paid for in someone else's suffering.
“What business?” she asked.
Salvatore glanced at Dante.
“Shipping.”
Dante's face darkened.
“Our family's business.”
“Not all of it.”
The old man reached for water.
His trembling hand couldn't manage the glass.
Nora helped him.
For a moment, he looked painfully ordinary.
An old father.
A sick man.
Someone who had carried guilt long enough for it to become part of his bones.
“Lucia discovered Vittorio was moving stolen medical supplies through our warehouses,” Salvatore continued. “Hospitals paid for equipment they never received. Sick people suffered while men made fortunes.”
Dante's voice was tight.
“You never told me that.”
“I spent my life hoping you would never need to know.”
“That's not the same as protecting me.”
Salvatore looked away.
Nora examined the rosary.
“Why give it to Pietro?”
“Because she trusted him to keep something safe.”
“What?”
Salvatore closed his eyes.
“Something that could prove who ordered the shipments.”
Nora looked at the dark bead.
Before she could speak, the hospital door opened.
A tall man in a navy suit entered carrying a paper bag from a bakery.
He was handsome, with silver beginning at his temples and a practiced smile.
“Uncle Salvatore.”
Dante turned.
“Enzo.”
Enzo Gallo's smile faded when he saw Nora.
For a heartbeat, his composure disappeared.
Then he extended his hand.
“You must be Miss Rossi.”
Nora didn't take it.
“How do you know my name?”
“My cousin mentioned you.”
Dante's eyes narrowed.
“I haven't spoken to you about her.”
Silence settled over the room.
Enzo lowered his hand.
“I heard there was an incident at the restaurant.”
“From whom?” Dante asked.
“People talk.”
“They do.”
Salvatore watched his nephew.
“What brings you here?”
“Concern.”
Enzo placed the bakery bag on the bedside table.
“Your doctor told me you were recovering. I thought I'd bring your favorite almond cookies.”
Salvatore didn't touch them.
Enzo's gaze moved to the rosary.
His expression changed so quickly Nora might have imagined it.
“You shouldn't be wearing that.”
Nora closed her hand around the beads.
“Why?”
“It looks old. Fragile.”
“It's mine.”
“Of course.”
He smiled again.
But Nora noticed he never stopped watching her wrist.
Outside the hospital, Dante walked beside Nora without speaking.
His bodyguard followed at a discreet distance.
At the entrance, Nora stopped.
“Your cousin knew who I was.”
“I noticed.”
“He recognized the rosary.”
“I noticed that too.”
She looked at him.
“Are you going to do anything besides notice?”
Dante almost smiled.
“I've already ordered a review of our oldest shipping records.”
“Your father says your family stole medical supplies.”
“My father says my uncle did.”
“And you believe him?”
Dante took a moment.
“I believe that people can love their families and still lie to them.”
Nora thought of Pietro.
The man who taught her to make soup, balance her checkbook, and stand straight when someone tried to humiliate her.
Had he lied because he feared the past?
Or because he had something to hide?
“My grandfather was the only family I had,” she said.
Dante's expression softened.
“What happened to your parents?”
“My mother died when I was little. I never knew my father.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Pietro never made me feel unwanted.”
She looked down at the rosary.
“Except when I asked about Sicily.”
Dante said nothing.
“Then he'd go quiet.”
After a moment, Dante handed her a business card.
“My direct number. If anything happens, call.”
Nora accepted it.
“I'm not asking you to save me.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you helping?”
Dante looked toward the hospital windows.
“Because I think my father has spent forty years waiting for someone brave enough to ask the questions I never asked.”
That evening, Nora visited the storage room in her apartment building.
Pietro had kept an old wooden trunk there.
She hadn't opened it since his funeral.
Inside were winter blankets, Christmas decorations, and a small tin box of family photographs.
At the bottom was a folded newspaper.
It was written in Italian.
She recognized only some of the words.
A warehouse fire.
Two dead.
One missing.
The article included a grainy photograph of Vittorio Gallo.
Nora stared at his face.
He looked nothing like the scratched-out man.
She placed the newspaper beside the farmhouse photograph.
Then she noticed something strange.
The little boy beside Dante was wearing a narrow bracelet.
A dark leather band with a silver clasp.
Nora remembered seeing something similar.
At the hospital.
On Enzo Gallo's wrist.
She enlarged the photograph with her phone.
The bracelet held two tiny initials.
E.G.
Enzo Gallo.
But Dante had identified the little boy as himself.
Nora looked again.
There were two children in the photograph.
One stood partly behind Pietro's shoulder.
Only a hand and the edge of a sleeve were visible.
A hand holding the exact same bracelet.
Nora's stomach tightened.
Somebody had altered the photograph to hide one child.
She turned it toward the light.
Beneath the damaged surface, another detail appeared.
A woman's hand rested on Pietro's shoulder.
And around that hand was the rosary Nora had worn all her life.
On the back of the newspaper, Pietro had written a message.
Lucia did not die before the fire. She was there that night.
Nora read the sentence twice.
May you like
Then she noticed the final line.
And Enzo was not Vittorio's only son.
