Chapter 3 - The Name Elena Never Explained
Rico cleared the restaurant in four minutes.
Customers were given their checks for free and escorted outside by men who did not accept questions. The staff was ordered into the kitchen. Marco locked the front doors with trembling fingers. The chandeliers still burned, but Il Destino no longer felt like a restaurant.
It felt like an interrogation room with linen tablecloths.
Clara sat in a private dining room with Leo asleep against her chest.
She had tried twice to hand him to Rico.
Twice, the boy woke and panicked.
So Rico stopped asking.
That frightened Clara more than if he had shouted.
He stood near the window, the Valenti button turning between his fingers.
Dante entered carrying a tablet.
“I found Anna Vance.”
Clara’s head snapped up.
Rico looked at her. “You can leave if you want.”
“Can I?”
His mouth tightened.
“No.”
“At least you’re honest.”
Dante placed the tablet on the table.
“Anna Vance. Born Anna Vale. Queens. Worked as a surgical nurse at St. Agnes. Died eleven years ago. Car accident.”
Clara stared.
“You had no right.”
Dante continued because Rico did not stop him.
“She had one daughter. Clara. Father not listed on the birth certificate.”
Rico pointed at the screen. “Vale?”
“Yeah.”
Something old and ugly moved through his face.
Clara saw it.
“What?”
Rico looked at Dante.
Dante understood the question before it was asked.
“There was a Michael Vale.”
Clara’s pulse jumped.
“Who?”
Dante hesitated.
Rico answered.
“Elena’s father.”
The room became very quiet.
Clara laughed once.
It was sharp and humorless.
“No.”
Dante slid the tablet toward her.
There was a photograph.
Black and white. Old enough to have been scanned from paper.
A younger Michael Vale stood outside a church with two girls.
One was Elena.
Clara knew her face from newspapers, from television, from the framed family photograph she had seen near the entrance of Il Destino.
The other girl was Anna.
Clara’s mother.
They looked nothing alike at first glance.
Then Clara saw the eyes.
The same heavy lids. The same sharp cheekbones.
Her stomach turned.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Rico’s voice was quieter now. “Elena never told me she had an aunt.”
“Maybe they weren’t related.”
Dante tapped the screen.
“Baptism records say they were sisters.”
Clara looked down at Leo.
His hand was still curled around her apron.
Rico took a chair across from her.
For once, he did not sit like a king.
He sat like a man trying to understand why his dead wife had hidden a branch of her family tree.
“Anna would have been Elena’s older sister by nine years,” Dante said. “She changed her name from Vale to Vance two years before Clara was born.”
“Why?” Rico asked.
“Still digging.”
Clara’s throat felt dry. “So what does that make me?”
Rico looked at her.
“Elena’s niece.”
“And Leo?”
“Your cousin.”
Leo stirred at the sound of his name.
His eyes opened.
He looked at Rico.
Then at Clara.
His fingers tightened around her sleeve.
“Mama sister,” he whispered.
Rico’s face went blank.
Clara felt cold.
“He knows?”
Rico leaned forward. “Leo. Who told you that?”
The boy looked away.
“Leo.”
Clara shot Rico a warning look.
He controlled his voice.
“Buddy. Who said Mama had a sister?”
Leo’s lip trembled.
“Blue room.”
Rico frowned.
Dante said, “What blue room?”
Leo pointed weakly toward the west wall.
Rico stood.
“There is no blue room here.”
Clara brushed hair from Leo’s forehead.
“Maybe not here.”
“Home,” Leo whispered.
Rico went still.
The Moretti estate had thirty-two rooms.
One was blue.
Elena’s private sitting room.
It had been locked since her death.
Rico had ordered it sealed because he could not bear the smell of her perfume.
“Who took you into the blue room?” he asked.
Leo did not answer.
Clara tried a different question.
“What did Mama show you?”
Leo stared at her scar.
Then touched it again.
“Picture.”
Rico stood so abruptly the chair tipped backward.
“We’re going home.”
Clara stared at him. “We?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Clara.”
“You found out my mother had a sister twenty seconds ago. You do not get to put me in a car and take me to your house.”
Rico’s expression hardened.
Then Leo spoke.
“Clara come.”
She closed her eyes.
Dante looked away.
Rico almost smiled.
Almost.
Twenty minutes later, Clara sat in the back of a black armored SUV with Leo asleep beside her and Rico across from them.
The city moved past tinted windows in wet streaks of neon.
No one spoke for several blocks.
Finally Clara said, “You really are the Butcher of Brooklyn?”
Dante coughed from the front seat.
Rico stared at her. “People enjoy titles.”
“Do you kill people?”
“Do you always ask men with guns whether they kill people?”
“Only when I’m trapped in their car.”
Rico looked out the window.
“Yes.”
Clara hated that the answer was honest.
She hated more that she had expected it.
“Did Elena know?”
“Yes.”
“Did she approve?”
“No.”
“Then why did she marry you?”
Rico’s eyes shifted back to her.
“Because people are more complicated than the worst thing they have done.”
Clara said nothing.
The estate gates opened.
Rico’s home rose beyond them like a stone fortress disguised as a mansion. Lights burned behind tall windows. Security cameras tracked the SUV. Men with rifles stood where gardeners should have been.
Clara stepped out carrying Leo.
A woman in her fifties came rushing from the entrance.
“Mr. Moretti, I heard—”
She stopped when she saw Clara.
Her face emptied of blood.
The overnight bag fell from her hand.
Rico noticed.
“Teresa?”
The woman stared at Clara as if she had seen a ghost.
“Anna,” she whispered.
Clara’s breath stopped.
“My name is Clara.”
Teresa crossed herself.
Rico’s voice became dangerous.
“You knew Anna Vance.”
Teresa looked at him.
Fear flooded her face.
“I knew Anna Vale.”
Rico stepped closer.
“And you never told me Elena had a sister.”
Teresa’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because Elena begged me not to.”
Clara felt Leo shift in her arms.
Rico’s jaw flexed.
“Why?”
Teresa looked toward the house.
“Not here.”
They entered through a marble foyer and climbed the east staircase.
The blue room was at the end of a private corridor.
Rico stopped outside it.
The key was still on his ring.
His hand shook once before he steadied it.
The lock turned.
The room smelled faintly of lavender and dust.
Blue silk walls. A white sofa. Books. A piano no one had touched.
Elena existed everywhere without being anywhere.
Rico stood in the doorway like a man struck in the chest.
Clara moved carefully inside.
Leo woke.
The moment he saw the room, he pointed.
“Desk.”
There was a writing desk near the window.
Rico crossed to it and opened the drawers.
Stationery. Pens. Receipts. A prayer card.
Nothing.
Leo squirmed down from Clara’s arms.
He walked to the desk and crawled underneath.
“Leo?”
He reached behind the right leg.
A soft click.
A hidden panel opened in the underside.
Inside was a red leather envelope.
Rico pulled it free.
On the front, written in Elena’s handwriting, were five words.
FOR RICO. IF I DIE.
No one breathed.
Rico broke the seal.
A photograph slid out first.
Anna and Elena stood together on a beach, both younger, both smiling.
On the back Elena had written:
MY SISTER. MY FIRST SECRET.
Then came a folded letter.
Rico opened it.
His eyes moved across the first line.
He stopped.
Clara saw the color drain from his face.
“What does it say?”
Rico did not answer.
She stepped closer.
May you like
He finally looked at her.
“Elena believed someone inside my family was going to kill her.”
