Chapter 6 - The Debt Book
Matteo Greco sent an invitation the next morning.
Not a threat.
Not a ransom demand.
A dinner invitation.
Black card. Gold lettering. One address at Boston Harbor. One time.
Christopher Vitali and Emily Carter.
No one else.
Marco called it a trap.
Giulia called it tradition.
I called it insane.
Christopher burned the card.
An hour later, another appeared beneath the townhouse door.
That was the part that scared him.
Not the invitation.
The access.
His security had changed overnight, and somehow Greco still reached the threshold.
Detective Sullivan from the organized-crime task force arrived by noon.
He wanted to use the dinner.
“We wire both of you.”
Christopher laughed.
“No.”
Sullivan looked at me.
“Ms. Carter?”
“I’m not going.”
Christopher relaxed.
I added, “Unless I’m wired.”
His relief disappeared.
“Emily.”
“No secret plans. No deciding for me.”
“This is different.”
“It is exactly the same behavior in a nicer suit.”
Marco turned away, badly hiding a smile.
Christopher stared at me for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
“Fine.”
The dinner took place on a private yacht moored in the harbor.
Christopher wore black.
I wore the burgundy dress Nona bought for my college recital.
“You look beautiful,” he said before we left.
“This is a criminal negotiation.”
“I can notice both.”
Matteo Greco was not what I expected.
Fifty. Silver at the temples. Soft voice. No visible weapon.
That made him worse.
He greeted Christopher like family.
Then he kissed my hand.
I pulled it away.
“Don’t.”
He smiled.
“Lucia did the same.”
“You knew my grandmother?”
“As a boy.”
“Did she like you?”
“No.”
“Smart woman.”
Christopher almost smiled.
Dinner began.
Matteo spoke about Boston, Italian food, the old neighborhoods, and Maria as though they were discussing history at a museum.
Finally he looked at me.
“Sing.”
“No.”
“I want to hear Lucia’s version.”
“I am not entertainment for you.”
His expression sharpened.
Christopher’s voice went cold.
“She answered.”
Matteo looked at him.
“You protect her.”
“Yes.”
The answer came too fast.
I looked at Christopher.
So did Matteo.
“Interesting.”
Christopher did not flinch.
Matteo leaned back.
“The second book contains obligations from men whose sons now run banks, courts, construction firms, and political offices.”
“Then destroy it,” I said.
“You think truth is safer than power?”
“No. I think power makes frightened men feel taller.”
Marco would have loved that line.
Christopher did.
I could tell because the corner of his mouth moved.
Matteo slid a photograph across the table.
My parents.
Alive.
Standing beside Maria Vitali.
I stopped breathing.
The picture had been taken shortly before the car crash that killed them when I was seven.
“What is this?”
“Your parents were couriers for Lucia.”
“No.”
“They moved copies of the first ledger.”
Christopher leaned forward.
“Who killed them?”
Matteo smiled.
“Your father.”
Christopher went white.
I looked at the photograph.
Then Matteo placed down another.
The wrecked car.
A young man stood in the distance beside it.
Dominic.
Not Vincent.
I stared at Matteo.
“You contradicted yourself in less than thirty seconds.”
His smile widened.
“Good.”
“You’re trying to make us doubt everybody.”
“Doubt is more effective than bullets.”
I hated that he was right.
Then he offered the trade.
The black ledger for Maria’s red debt book.
“No,” Christopher said.
Matteo ignored him.
“Emily?”
“No.”
“You do not know what it contains.”
“I know you want it.”
He studied me.
Then he said, “Your grandmother taught you a final verse.”
My blood went cold.
Nona had called it the funeral verse.
I had never sung it in public.
Matteo recited the first line.
Christopher looked at me.
“How does he know that?”
“I don’t know.”
Matteo smiled.
“Because Lucia sang it the night she stole Maria’s book.”
And that was when I understood.
If Matteo already possessed the red ledger, he would not need the song.
He was still searching.
I leaned back.
“You don’t have it.”
For the first time, his expression changed.
Barely.
Enough.
Christopher saw it too.
We stood.
Matteo remained seated.
“You’re making a mistake.”
I looked at him.
“No. I think Nona spent forty years waiting for you to make yours.”
Outside, Christopher exhaled as though he had been holding his breath for the entire dinner.
“You saw it too?”
“Yes.”
“The funeral verse.”
I nodded.
He looked toward the harbor.
“Then we find the second book before he does.”
This time, I did not argue.
“Together.”
He met my eyes.
“Together.”
Before the Tuesday performance, I went to my apartment for the first time in days.
Christopher came with me but waited downstairs.
That mattered.
Inside, nothing had changed.
Unwashed coffee cup.
Stack of bills.
Nona’s old cardigan over a chair.
I sat on the edge of my bed and suddenly wanted the entire mystery to vanish.
No ledgers.
No Greco.
No mafia history.
No Christopher.
Just rent problems and translation jobs.
Ordinary fear seemed luxurious now.
Then I found an envelope beneath Nona’s recipe box.
I had seen it before.
Never opened it because it contained only old sheet music.
This time I noticed four pencil marks beside notes.
The same four wrong notes from the music box.
My pulse jumped.
Behind the sheet music was a sentence in Nona’s handwriting.
When fear tells you to run, first ask whether it is your fear or somebody else’s plan.
I laughed aloud.
Even dead, she was irritatingly direct.
I folded the note and put it in my purse.
Downstairs, Christopher leaned against the car.
“You were gone longer than I expected.”
“I had an argument with a dead woman.”
“Who won?”
“She did.”
He opened the door for me.
I stopped.
“You do not have to do that.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“My mother would haunt me if I didn’t.”
“Fine.”
I got in.
On the way to the cafe, I showed him Nona’s note.
He read it twice.
Then handed it back.
“My mother would have liked her.”
“She did.”
He looked out the window.
“Right.”
That still surprised him sometimes.
Our dead women had lives together before we existed.
It made our meeting feel both impossible and strangely inevitable.
I refused to call it fate.
Fate had terrible boundaries.
May you like
But I began to understand inheritance could be more than property.
Sometimes people left unfinished courage behind.
