Chapter 5 - The Price of Being Protected
The warehouse fire was contained before it reached the old river wall. Two workers suffered minor burns; everyone else got out. Carmine went to the hospital himself and stayed until a doctor assured him the workers could recover at home. He instructed Benny to pay their wages during the time they were unable to work, and then he asked for a list of every person who had entered Warehouse Two since dawn.
Across from Nell, the wife of one injured worker rocked a sleeping toddler on her lap. She looked at Carmine's soot-marked coat, then at Nell's worn shoes, and asked whether the warehouse would close. Her husband had worked there eighteen years. The job had paid their rent through two hurricanes, a hospital stay, and the death of his father. He was frightened of losing it as much as he was frightened of the burns on his arm.
Nell could not promise what would happen to the business. Instead she told the woman the truth: the fire was being investigated; wages would continue during recovery; Carmine had instructed that the workers be offered assistance directly rather than sent through a dozen unanswered phone numbers. The woman thanked her, then asked whom to call if those promises were broken. Nell wrote Benny's number and her own on a clean page torn from a notebook. She realized how much safer a promise became when the person receiving it was permitted to check whether it had been kept. When Carmine returned, she told him what she'd done. He asked for a copy of the number, not the woman's gratitude.
Nell sat in the hospital corridor with a ledger balanced on her knees. The edges smelled of smoke, reminding her of a night she tried not to remember. Some pages were dry, others warped, but enough remained to show that Margot had not imagined the missing money.
There were payments from a community rebuilding fund to companies named on the warehouse invoices. The same addresses appeared again and again, attached to different company names. Several invoices carried the signature of Conrad Bellarose's restaurant accountant. Three had been approved by someone using the initials V.O.
“Your father,” Nell said when Carmine returned.
“Maybe.”
“It's always maybe when the initials belong to the Orsinis.”
Carmine sat beside her. “An initial isn't proof. Neither is a story I want to believe about my father. We'll follow the payments until we have names.”
“I know how evidence works.”
“I know.”
“Then don't protect him.”
Carmine looked at the ledger. “My father is dead. What I'm trying to protect is the truth from people who would destroy it before anyone can verify it.”
Nell wanted to be furious. Instead, she noticed his knuckles, scraped from carrying boxes through the warehouse door. The sleeves of his coat were stained with soot. He had not sent someone else to bring out the men or the books.
“Did you always make decisions like that?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Paying workers who can't work.”
“My father believed loyalty meant people owed him something. I learned that it also means we owe them.”
Nell remembered the warehouse watchman Carmine had quietly promised a job. She was beginning to understand why men feared him and trusted him, and why neither feeling guaranteed he was innocent.
A security camera had captured the forklift collision. The driver wore a hood, and the license plate on the departing car belonged to a stolen vehicle. Ada Mercer took custody of the footage and the chain-of-custody records for the ledgers. She warned Carmine that private guards could secure his property but must not try to interrogate suspects themselves.
“I'm not hiring you to tell me what I want to hear,” Carmine said.
“Good,” Ada replied. “You'd be paying me to be disappointed.”
The old ledger books went into evidence storage. Nell kept certified copies. That evening, Ada called with a more disturbing fact: someone had reported the warehouse inventory schedule to a phone registered to Conrad's campaign organization. She could not yet establish who placed the call.
At the estate, Palmira had ordered supper served in the small family dining room. There were no business guests, no silver trays, and no seventeen-piece setting for each person. She pointed to the empty chair beside her.
“Elena, sit.”
Nell stopped. “I should help in the kitchen.”
“You've helped in enough kitchens. Tonight you eat.”
Odette stood by the door. A muscle tightened near her mouth, but she said nothing. Carmine noticed. He asked the staff to leave the room and serve themselves dinner before the food cooled. Odette hesitated before obeying.
When Nell sat, she found the simple act harder than entering a burning warehouse. Palmira asked whether she liked okra. Carmine passed her bread. No one called her Miss Brisco. The absence of performance unsettled her.
Later, he walked her to the guest-room hallway. She had spent the day fighting him in small sentences, yet she was reluctant to let the conversation end.
“I don't want you to think I'm staying because you made room for me at a table,” she said.
“I don't.”
“And I won't owe you for security.”
“You don't.”
“Stop agreeing with me.”
A faint smile touched his face. “Would you prefer an argument?”
“I'd prefer to know what you're thinking.”
He considered her, the way he had considered the pie, without pretending a quick answer could settle a complicated thing.
“I think you spent so long getting through the day that you don't know what it feels like to be somewhere you don't have to earn your place.”
Nell looked away. “And what does that cost?”
“It shouldn't cost anything.”
For a moment the hallway fell quiet. He did not reach for her. She appreciated that more than she wanted to admit.
At the far end of the corridor, Odette emerged from the servants' staircase. She carried a small parcel against her apron and stopped when she saw them. Her eyes moved from Nell to Carmine, and fear flashed across her face.
“Is everything all right?” Carmine asked.
“Of course, sir. I was taking clean linens to the guest room.”
He glanced at the parcel. It was too small to contain linens. Odette saw his glance and hurried away.
Nell watched her go. “She knows something.”
“Maybe she does.”
The next morning Nell found Odette in the laundry, folding towels so precisely their edges aligned like pages in a book.
“Was it you who left the note about the fire report?” she asked.
Odette continued folding. “What note?”
“The one that led us to Vincenzo's signature.”
“I wouldn't know.”
“You looked afraid at dinner. You looked afraid last night. You've been in this house twenty-two years, and you never look afraid of anything.”
Odette finally raised her eyes. “Fear doesn't always look like fear, child.”
“Then tell me what yours looks like.”
The housekeeper put down a towel. “It looks like a brother who made one foolish choice twenty years ago and has spent every year since paying for it.”
Before Nell could ask what she meant, Odette's phone vibrated. She read the screen and went pale.
“It's not safe to discuss this here,” she whispered. “Be careful at the winter charity dinner. Bellarose is inviting people who remember your mother.”
“Then help me stop him.”
Odette gripped the edge of the laundry table until her fingers whitened. “I want to. God knows I want to.”
But she would say nothing else.
That afternoon, Conrad's invitation arrived on heavy cream paper, delivered to Carmine's office by hand. His foundation was hosting a winter benefit for neighborhood restaurants. Conrad requested Carmine as guest of honor, along with Palmira and 'the talented young woman responsible for the remarkable dessert.'
Under the printed invitation, in handwriting that Carmine recognized from Bellarose's business letters, appeared a private message.
We should settle our family business before dessert.
Carmine showed it to Nell rather than hiding it. She read the sentence twice. Her first instinct was to refuse. Her second was to ask herself how long she intended to let Conrad choose where she was allowed to stand.
“I'll go,” she said.
“It's a public room full of his friends.”
“Then it's time some of them heard a different story.”
Carmine nodded once. “We'll go together. But we leave when you say we leave.”
May you like
Nell folded the invitation and placed it beside her mother's letter. For years, the people who had tried to erase her had spoken openly while she remained silent. The winter benefit would be the first time she entered their room under her real name.
And somewhere else in New Orleans, a man with a scar along his jaw received a photograph of that invitation. On its reverse someone had written an order: Make sure she never reaches the microphone.
