Chapter 6: The Room Where Matteo Waited
Sal drove without speaking.
He took a route I didn't know, doubling back twice through side streets, and I understood he was checking for someone behind us.
Nobody spoke until we pulled into the underground parking of a building on the north side that had no signage visible from the street.
We took a private elevator to the fourth floor.
The hallway was quiet and carpeted and completely empty.
Matteo was waiting in a room at the end of it.
No bodyguards inside.
No Luca.
Just Matteo De Luca, standing by the window with a glass of water he hadn't touched, still wearing the same suit from Bellavita.
He looked at the notebook in my hands, then at me.
"You found it," he said.
"My mother hid it well." I set the notebook on the table between us.
"But not well enough, apparently.
Someone already knows it exists."
"Luca."
"He was in that kitchen seventeen years ago, Matteo.
He was there both times.
The wine and the fork.
My mother saw him.
She wrote it down." I opened to the back and placed the envelope on the table.
"She photographed him."
Matteo didn't touch anything yet.
He looked at the photograph for a long time without speaking.
"Luca has been with me for fourteen years," he finally said.
"I know."
"He runs my security.
He knows every—" He stopped.
His hand came down flat on the table, not hard, just final.
"He knows every location.
Every contact.
Every protocol we use when there is a threat."
"Which means he knew exactly how to design tonight so that you wouldn't suspect him," I said.
"He ran the security sweep before service.
He had access to the kitchen.
And when the specialist found the t0xic substance, Luca was the one controlling who could leave the restaurant and who couldn't." I paused.
"He was also the one who told you to send me away.
Alone.
At night."
Matteo looked up from the photograph.
"He wanted me to go home," I said.
"He knew about the notebook.
He wanted me isolated, away from you, with the evidence in my hands and no protection."
"Who else knows you found what's inside it?"
"A cook named Marco saw Luca add something before service.
And Sal knows what I told him."
"Marco needs to be brought in tonight." Matteo straightened and turned toward the window.
"Luca will know by now that you didn't simply walk away.
He'll start adjusting."
"There's something else," I said.
"The note my mother wrote — she said Luca serves someone else before he serves you.
She didn't know who.
But she was certain."
Matteo was quiet for a moment.
When he turned back, his face had changed.
Not the measured expression he had worn all evening.
Something older, more tired.
"I have had that suspicion for three years," he said.
"I could never locate the source.
Every time I got close, the trail ended at someone who then disappeared or changed their story." He looked at the photograph again.
"I kept Luca close because I believed it was safer than cutting him loose before I knew who he was reporting to.
If I removed him, whoever was above him would simply send someone else.
Someone I wouldn't be able to identify."
"So you kept your enemy at your right hand."
"I kept the enemy I could see." He looked at me steadily.
"Elena, the person Luca reports to has been trying to end my family for twenty years.
Every incident — every attempt — has been managed and survived because I always had just enough warning.
Tonight was the first time the attempt came through my own kitchen, through a dish prepared by the daughter of the woman who protected me the first time." He paused.
"That is not coincidence.
Someone wanted me to see the connection.
Someone wanted me distracted by the past while the present was already in motion."
The room felt smaller.
"You think Luca didn't act alone tonight," I said.
"I think tonight was a message as much as an attempt." He moved to the door and opened it.
Sal was in the hallway.
"I need Carlo brought up.
And I need the Ferraro file, the complete one, on this table in twenty minutes."
Sal left without a word.
Matteo turned back to me.
"There is one person who can tell us who Luca answers to.
Someone who has known Luca longer than I have, and who I believe has been too frightened to speak until now."
"Who?"
May you like
He looked at me with the expression of a man who had just made a decision he couldn't take back.
"Chef Ricci," he said.
