Chapter 6 - The Son His Father Feared
Dante did not defend himself.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Most men react to accusation with explanation.
Dante reacted with silence.
We sat inside Bellini’s after closing.
Vittorio was sleeping upstairs in my boss’s office because he refused to leave.
Detective Keene had two officers outside.
Dante stared at the empty table.
“You were twenty-nine,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Eight years ago.”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing?”
“Running enforcement.”
I waited.
He looked at me.
“You know what that means.”
“I want you to say it.”
His jaw tightened.
“I collected debts. Controlled territory. Solved problems.”
“Violently?”
“Sometimes.”
I hated the answer.
I appreciated that it was honest.
“Your father feared you.”
“I don't know.”
“He just said he disappeared to save you from you.”
“I heard him.”
“What did your uncle have you doing?”
Dante leaned back.
“Everything my father refused to.”
I understood.
Niccolo had shaped Dante while Vittorio’s mind was weakening.
The son became useful.
The brother became powerful.
The father became inconvenient.
“Did you ever hurt Vittorio?”
Dante’s eyes snapped toward me.
“No.”
I believed him.
Immediately.
That scared me too.
“What did he mean then?”
Dante closed his eyes.
“When my father started forgetting things, he became paranoid.”
“Was it paranoia if someone was drugging him?”
“No.”
“He warned you?”
“Constantly.”
“About Niccolo?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I thought the disease was talking.”
His voice cracked slightly.
“I told him he needed rest.”
I stared.
“I told my uncle to handle the doctors.”
There it was.
Guilt.
Not that Dante had harmed Vittorio.
That he had dismissed him.
Handed control to the man Vittorio feared.
Dante stood.
“My father tried to save me from becoming Niccolo.”
I said nothing.
“And I became useful to Niccolo anyway.”
The next morning, Vittorio remembered more.
Fragments.
He had discovered Niccolo moving money from legitimate shipping accounts into criminal operations that Vittorio wanted shut down.
Vittorio intended to remove him.
But cognitive decline made his authority easier to challenge.
Niccolo convinced Dante his father was unstable.
Dante sided with his uncle.
Not maliciously.
Effectively.
Vittorio fled after June warned him that his medication had been altered.
For six months, my mother hid him in apartments belonging to elderly clients who were temporarily hospitalized.
Then Niccolo found them.
Vittorio escaped again.
June died.
He disappeared completely.
For years.
“What happened after Mom died?” I asked.
Vittorio touched his head.
“White house.”
“Saint Agnes?”
He nodded.
“How did you get there?”
“Nick.”
“Then two years ago?”
He frowned.
“Man helped.”
“What man?”
No answer.
Later, Marco found something inside Vittorio’s old coat.
A library card.
Providence, Rhode Island.
Issued eighteen months earlier.
That meant after leaving Saint Agnes, Vittorio had spent time in Rhode Island.
We traced shelters.
One remembered him.
A volunteer named Samuel Price had helped him obtain identification and bus fare to Boston.
Why Boston?
“He kept saying Elena,” the shelter director told us.
My name.
Or someone else’s?
Then she found an old intake form.
Emergency contact field contained one word:
Bellini.
The restaurant.
My restaurant.
How did Vittorio know where I worked?
I had started there three years ago.
He had been missing eight.
My mother was dead before I took the job.
Someone had told him.
Samuel Price.
We found him.
Seventy-one.
Retired postal worker.
He opened the door and looked at Vittorio’s photograph.
His eyes filled.
“Victor.”
“Vittorio,” Keene corrected.
Samuel shook his head.
“He told me Victor.”
“Why did you send him to Bellini’s?”
“His nurse.”
My blood went cold.
“What nurse?”
“June.”
“She died six years ago.”
Samuel looked confused.
“No.”
He disappeared inside.
Returned with a letter.
My mother’s handwriting.
Dated five years after her death.
Impossible.
I took it.
The handwriting looked right.
But the date did not.
Inside:
Sam, if Victor ever reaches you, put him on the Boston bus. Tell him to go to Bellini’s and wait for Elena. She’ll be ready by then.
I stared.
Dante said:
“Forgery.”
Maybe.
Then Samuel handed us the envelope.
Postmark.
Six years old.
The letter had been written before my mother died.
The date written inside referred not to when she wrote it—
but when Samuel should use it.
She had planned years ahead.
She knew Vittorio might survive.
She knew I would eventually work at Bellini’s.
Except I hadn't even applied there yet.
Unless—
I remembered my first day.
The owner, Frank Bellini, had hired me without an interview.
He had known my mother.
Always claimed they were “old friends.”
I left Samuel’s house and called Frank.
He answered on the third ring.
“Elena?”
“Did my mother tell you to hire me?”
Silence.
That was enough.
“Frank.”
“Yes.”
My knees nearly gave out.
“Why?”
“She asked.”
“When?”
“Before she died.”
“What exactly did she say?”
Another silence.
“She said one day an old man might come looking for you.”
I closed my eyes.
“And?”
“She said if he did…”
Frank swallowed.
“…it meant the wrong Marchetti brother was still alive.”
Dante stood beside me.
He heard.
His face hardened.
May you like
Because Niccolo was alive.
And my mother had known, six years earlier, that someday he might still be hunting Vittorio.
