Chapter 3 - The Brass Key
By eleven that night, Tessa had discovered three things about Mateo Vitiello.
First, he owned a townhouse worth more money than every home on the block where she'd grown up combined.
Second, he kept almost no personal photographs anywhere in it.
Third, when angry enough, he became frighteningly quiet.
He had spoken perhaps twelve words during the drive from Leto.
Tessa sat in a library on the second floor wearing her waitress uniform beneath a borrowed wool coat.
Salvatore occupied an armchair near the fireplace as if he'd been born in it.
Mateo stood at the window.
Three security men had already been sent to Tessa's apartment.
Two more went to her mother's house.
Tessa hated every second.
"My mother is going to think I've joined a cult."
"Your mother currently thinks you're staying with a friend because there was a gas leak in your building," Mateo said.
Tessa stared.
"You lied to my mother?"
"I prevented panic."
"You lied."
"Efficiently."
Salvatore chuckled.
Mateo turned.
"Papà."
"I'm enjoying this."
"I'm thrilled."
Tessa ignored them and removed her phone.
Her mother had finally answered.
She was safe.
So was Tessa's younger brother, Ben.
The break-in at Rosalia's old house had been strange. Nothing expensive was missing.
Drawers had been emptied.
Floorboards pried up.
A wall in the pantry had been opened.
Someone had been searching for something.
Tessa knew what.
"Where's the key?" Mateo asked.
"In my apartment."
His jaw tightened.
"Where?"
"Why?"
"Because I'd rather my men find it before whoever photographed your door does."
Tessa hesitated.
Then told him.
"Jewelry box. Bottom drawer. There's a false cardboard base."
Mateo raised one eyebrow.
"You have a false compartment?"
"My grandmother taught me."
Salvatore looked delighted.
Mateo made a phone call.
Twenty minutes later, a guard returned carrying a transparent evidence bag.
Inside was a small brass key.
Ordinary.
Darkened with age.
A number was stamped into the neck.
Salvatore went still.
Mateo noticed.
"You recognize it."
"Yes."
"What does it open?"
Salvatore didn't answer immediately.
Tessa leaned forward.
"You brought me here because you wanted the key. You have it. Now tell me what this is."
The old man stared into the fire.
"In 1971, my brother Antonio began keeping records."
"Records of what?"
"Everything."
Mateo turned from the window.
"What kind of everything?"
"Payments. Judges. shipping routes. debts. men who betrayed us. men we betrayed."
Mateo's expression hardened.
"You told me Antonio died without leaving records."
"I lied."
"Obviously."
Salvatore's hand tightened around his cane.
"Antonio wanted out. He believed the organization had become something ugly."
Mateo laughed once without humor.
"And before that?"
"Before that, we called ugly things necessary."
Nobody spoke.
Salvatore looked older than he had in the restaurant.
"Antonio kept a ledger. Not for leverage. For confession. He planned to give it to federal authorities."
Mateo stepped closer.
"Then he was killed."
"Yes."
"By whom?"
Salvatore looked at him.
"That is the question the ledger answers."
Tessa stared at the key.
"And Rosalia had it?"
"Antonio trusted her because she wasn't family."
Salvatore looked at Tessa.
"Family was exactly who he feared."
The room seemed colder.
"So key 317 opens a box?"
"A bank deposit box."
"Which bank?"
"That was the protection. Rosalia knew the bank. I knew the box number. Neither of us knew both."
Tessa frowned.
"Then how does that help us?"
Salvatore's gaze dropped to the key.
"Because Rosalia believed blood should not inherit guilt."
"What does that mean?"
"She left the other half to you."
Tessa laughed softly.
"She left me recipes and a chipped statue of Saint Joseph."
Salvatore's eyes sharpened.
"What statue?"
Tessa stopped.
Mateo turned.
"The little wooden one?"
"Where is it?"
"At my mother's house."
Salvatore stood so fast the movement hurt him.
"The base."
Tessa remembered.
The statue had always rattled.
Rosalia used to slap children's hands away whenever they tried shaking it.
Tessa had assumed the carving was cracked.
Mateo was already calling security.
Thirty-five minutes later, the statue sat on the library desk.
Tessa's mother had surrendered it only after demanding to know why a man built like a refrigerator wanted her mother's saint at midnight.
Mateo's guard had apparently answered, "Estate paperwork."
Tessa would deal with that lie later.
She turned the statue upside down.
There was a seam across the base.
Mateo handed her a small knife.
She pried it open.
A folded piece of paper slid out.
Not a bank name.
An address.
Lower Manhattan.
Tessa recognized the building immediately.
"That's First Mercantile."
Salvatore whispered something in Sicilian.
Mateo looked at him.
"What's wrong?"
"It closed in 1999."
Tessa's hope dropped.
"But the boxes?"
"Transferred."
"Where?"
Nobody knew.
Mateo sat at the desk and began searching old financial records.
Tessa watched him work.
She had expected power to make him impatient.
Instead, he was methodical.
Twenty minutes passed.
Then forty.
Finally he found a digitized newspaper clipping.
First Mercantile Bank had been acquired by Hawthorne Trust.
The original private deposit accounts were transferred to a secure archive facility in Manhattan.
Mateo leaned back.
"We go in the morning."
Salvatore shook his head.
"You don't."
Mateo's gaze lifted.
"Why?"
"Because if Antonio's ledger says what I think it says, your presence inside that vault will trigger every alarm still controlled by the families."
Tessa frowned.
"Families?"
Mateo looked at her.
"Mine isn't the only one."
Wonderful.
Tessa stood.
"So I go?"
"Absolutely not," Mateo said.
Salvatore replied at the same time.
"Yes."
They stared at each other.
Tessa folded her arms.
"Good meeting."
Salvatore pointed his cane toward her.
"The box belongs to Rosalia's heir. Legally, that may be you."
"And illegally?"
"Everyone else."
Mateo shook his head.
"She doesn't walk into this."
"I'm already in it," Tessa said.
He looked at her.
The anger in his face wasn't directed at her.
That bothered her more.
"Someone photographed your apartment," he said. "Someone broke into your family's home. They already know who you are."
"Exactly."
"That's not an argument for taking risks."
"No. It's an argument for finding out why I'm being threatened."
He stepped closer.
"You think this is a nursing exam? You think getting the right answer protects you?"
"No."
"Then what do you think?"
Tessa held his gaze.
"I think being afraid and being helpless aren't the same thing."
The sentence hit him.
She saw it.
For a moment he said nothing.
Then Salvatore spoke quietly.
"Rosalia said something very similar once."
Mateo closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them, the argument was over.
"Fine."
Tessa blinked.
"Fine?"
"You go."
Salvatore smiled.
Mateo pointed at him.
"Don't."
Then he looked back at Tessa.
"But I'm going with you."
"You just said your presence triggers alarms."
"I won't enter the vault."
"Where will you be?"
"Close enough that if anything happens, the person responsible will have approximately thirty seconds to regret being born."
Tessa should have been frightened by the statement.
Instead, inexplicably, she felt safer.
That frightened her far more.
At 2:13 a.m., everyone finally left the library except Tessa and Mateo.
She reached the doorway.
"Tessa."
She turned.
He stood beside the desk, jacket removed, sleeves rolled to his forearms.
He looked younger without the suit armor.
More human.
"Why did you keep requesting my table?" she asked.
His expression didn't change.
"You want that answer tonight?"
"Yes."
"You won't like it."
"Try me."
Mateo walked slowly toward her.
"Because the first night you served me, you were the only person in the restaurant who wasn't trying to impress me, seduce me, fear me, or use me."
Tessa's breath caught.
"And?"
"And I wanted to know if it was real."
"Was it?"
He stopped a few feet away.
"Unfortunately."
"Unfortunately?"
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth, then returned to her eyes.
"Because indifference would've been much easier."
Neither moved.
Then a phone rang downstairs.
The moment broke.
Mateo answered his.
His face hardened.
"What?"
Silence.
Then he looked directly at Tessa.
"When?"
He ended the call.
"What happened?" she asked.
May you like
Mateo's voice went flat.
"Someone just tried to burn your great-grandmother's house down."
