Chapter 7 - Someone Broke Into My Apartment and Took Nothing
The apartment looked normal.
That was the frightening part.
Nothing overturned.
No drawers dumped.
No broken furniture.
My television remained.
Laptop remained.
The eighty-seven dollars in the kitchen jar remained.
Only one thing was gone.
My mother's recipe box.
I stood in the doorway.
Detective Keene stopped me from entering.
“Don't touch anything.”
“They stole recipes?”
Dante stood behind her.
“No.”
I looked at him.
“They stole what they thought was inside.”
My mother wrote recipes on index cards.
Sauces.
Bread.
Lemon chicken.
But sometimes she wrote other things on the backs.
Phone numbers.
Medication schedules.
Reminders.
I had never looked carefully.
Because why would I?
“Niccolo thinks she hid something there.”
Keene asked, “Did she?”
“I don't know.”
That phrase had infected my life.
Dante moved me into police-arranged housing.
This time I didn't argue.
Fear has a way of editing pride.
Vittorio came too.
Not because police suggested it.
Because he panicked when I left.
Dante hated that his father trusted me more.
He never said it.
I saw it.
One night I found him sitting alone in the hallway outside Vittorio’s room.
“You know you can go inside.”
“He sleeps better when I'm not there.”
“That won't always be true.”
“You don't know that.”
“No.”
I sat beside him.
For a while, nothing happened.
Then Dante said:
“When I was fourteen, my father took me fishing.”
I waited.
“I hated fishing.”
“Reasonable.”
“He said patience was the difference between hunger and dinner.”
“Very Italian.”
Dante smiled faintly.
“I dropped his favorite rod into the water.”
“Good.”
“He made me dive for it.”
“Less good.”
“I couldn't swim well.”
I looked at him.
“He jumped in after me.”
His smile disappeared.
“He always came after me.”
That sentence hurt.
“And you didn't go after him.”
Dante looked down.
“No.”
I understood why guilt had become armor.
“You were twenty-nine, not fourteen.”
“I had resources.”
“You were manipulated.”
“I still chose.”
Both could be true.
I said that.
He looked at me.
“You defend me too easily.”
“I’m not defending you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Refusing simple stories.”
That became important later.
Niccolo was not a cartoon villain.
Dante was not secretly innocent of every bad thing.
Vittorio was not a saint.
My mother was not perfect.
Even I was not “the good waitress” everyone online would someday turn me into.
People are messier.
Truth should be too.
The break-in produced one fingerprint.
Thomas Hale.
My mother's crash driver.
He admitted entering my apartment.
His lawyer negotiated.
He wanted protection.
From Niccolo.
Keene interviewed him.
I watched through glass.
Hale looked older than his photograph.
Scared.
“Did you kill June Brooks?”
His face collapsed.
“No.”
“Your truck hit her car.”
“Yes.”
“Were you paid?”
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
“To kill her?”
“No.”
“Then for what?”
“To scare her.”
I closed my eyes.
Hale continued.
“Nick said force her off the road.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“I clipped the car.”
Keene said, “She died.”
“I know.”
“Then you killed her.”
He started crying.
“I know.”
I hated him.
I believed his remorse.
Those things can coexist.
“Why break into Elena's apartment?”
“Nick thinks June had a tape.”
“We found the tape.”
“No.”
Hale looked toward the mirror.
“No, not that tape.”
Dante and I looked at each other.
“What tape?” Keene asked.
Hale swallowed.
“The one with Nick's confession.”
Silence.
My mother had recorded Niccolo.
Where?
“The recipe box?”
Hale nodded.
“June told Nick she had proof. He never found it.”
“What was on it?”
“Nick admitting he arranged Vittorio’s placement.”
“And June?”
Hale closed his eyes.
“He threatened her.”
My hands shook.
“If Niccolo never found the recording, where is it?”
“I don't know.”
We returned to the safe apartment.
I sat at the table for an hour.
Recipe box.
My mother loved hiding things in plain sight.
Then I remembered one recipe I never understood.
Sunday Sauce — 45 minutes.
Her sauce took six hours.
Always.
Why write forty-five?
Dante listened.
“Forty-five.”
“Could be an address.”
“Could be a locker.”
“Could be nothing.”
Vittorio, sitting nearby, looked up.
“Forty-five.”
We turned.
He touched his ear.
“Music.”
Music.
My mother had an old jukebox at Bellini’s.
Frank kept it because she loved it.
Song number 45.
We drove there.
The jukebox had not worked in years.
Behind record slot 45, taped to the metal frame, was a microcassette.
My hands shook.
We found a player.
Niccolo’s voice filled the empty restaurant.
“You keep him hidden, June, and you become part of this.”
My mother answered:
“He is sick.”
“He is dangerous.”
“No. He's inconvenient.”
Silence.
Then Niccolo:
“My brother signs what I need, or he disappears permanently.”
Dante went rigid.
June said:
“And if I tell Dante?”
Niccolo laughed.
“My nephew believes me more than he believes his own father.”
Dante closed his eyes.
The recording continued.
“That is the useful thing about frightened sons.”
Then my mother's voice:
“You're going to lose both of them.”
Niccolo answered:
“No.”
A pause.
“I already have.”
The tape ended.
Nobody spoke.
Then the restaurant’s front window exploded inward.
Not a gunshot.
A brick.
Wrapped around it:
LAST WARNING.
Dante stared at it.
I looked at him.
“Still think we should wait?”
His face became frighteningly calm.
“No.”
“What now?”
May you like
He picked up the cassette.
“Now we let Niccolo believe he won.”
