Chapter 5: What Was Hidden Behind the Page
I made it back to my building through the alley again and checked the street before I went in.
The dark sedan was gone.
That did not make me feel safer.
I took the back stairs, unlocked my apartment, and went straight to the wooden box.
The blue notebook was still inside my coat, pressed against my ribs.
I laid it open on the kitchen table under the overhead light.
The sealed page was near the back, just as I had always known it.
I had peeled it open at the edge after finding the four words, but I had stopped there.
I had not separated the page from the one behind it.
I worked the tape loose now, slowly, trying not to tear anything.
The yellowed adhesive gave way after a moment, and the folded page fell open.
Behind it, tucked flat against the notebook's back inner lining, was a thin envelope.
Unsealed.
My mother's initials were written on the front in a hand I didn't recognize.
Inside the envelope were two things.
The first was a photograph.
Black and white, printed on thin paper, the kind that comes from an old document scanner.
It showed a kitchen — a large, professional one, nothing like ours in Cicero.
Three people were visible.
A woman with her back to the camera, standing at a stove.
A man in a suit, half-turned, one hand resting on the counter.
And a second man beside the first, younger, facing directly toward wherever the photo had been taken from.
The man in the suit was not Matteo De Luca.
He was older, broader, with gray at his temples.
But the younger man standing beside him — the one facing the camera — was unmistakable, even seventeen years younger.
Luca Ferraro.
The second item in the envelope was a single folded note, written in my mother's handwriting.
Eight sentences.
I read them three times before I let myself believe what they said.
*The fork was not the first attempt.
There was an earlier one, six weeks before, in the wine.
I did not report it because the man who asked me to report such things was standing in the kitchen when the bottle was opened.
His name is Luca Ferraro.
He serves Matteo De Luca, but he serves someone else first.
I do not know who that person is.
I only know that Luca was present both times, and that after the second incident he came to me privately and told me to forget what I had seen.
He gave me money.
I did not take it.
The next morning I packed our things.*
My mother had not refused to name names because she lacked proof.
She had refused because the person she would have named was also the person who would have decided what happened to her if she did.
I took a photo of each item with my phone.
Then I carefully folded the note, replaced everything in the envelope, and tucked it back into the notebook.
I was trying to decide whether to call Matteo when someone knocked on my door.
Three knocks.
Measured.
Not urgent.
I did not move.
"Elena." A man's voice, low, controlled.
"My name is Sal Greco.
I work for Matteo De Luca.
Not through Luca Ferraro.
Directly.
He sent me because he couldn't call without Luca knowing he was calling.
Please open the door."
I stayed where I was.
"How do I know that's true?"
A pause.
Then, through the door: "He said to tell you that your mother used a wooden spoon, never metal, because she said metal changed the taste of garlic.
He said he only knows that because she told his wife the same thing, and his wife repeated it to him the night Isabella left.
He said he is sorry he didn't remember that sooner."
My hand was on the lock before I finished thinking about it.
The man in the hallway was perhaps fifty, stocky, with the kind of stillness that came from years of careful living.
He held both hands slightly away from his body where I could see them.
"He needs the notebook," Sal said.
"Tonight.
Before Luca realizes what your mother left inside it."
"I know what she left," I said.
"I just found it."
Something shifted in Sal's expression.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
"Then you already know more than Luca thinks you do," he said carefully.
"That makes tonight more dangerous than Matteo planned for.
We need to move."
I picked up the notebook and my phone.
I left the wooden box where it was.
At the door I stopped.
"Sal.
Is Ricci involved?"
He didn't answer immediately, and that was its own answer.
"How deep?" I asked.
May you like
"Deep enough," he said.
"Come on."
