THE MAFIA BOSS I KISSED TO ESCAPE MY HUSBAND KNEW MY FATHER—THEN A SECRET FROM HIS MOTHER CHANGED EVERYTHING

The first thing I did was call my father's nurse.

She answered on the second ring, breathless.

“Ms. Hayes, I was just trying to reach you.”

My knees threatened to fold.

“Where is he?”

“A transport team came with a transfer order. They said he was going to a cardiac specialist. I stepped out to confirm it, and by the time I returned—”

“He was gone.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see the order?”

“No. I'm so sorry.”

I sat down hard on the edge of the couch. The apartment's bright lamps suddenly looked cruel. My father had spent his life making sure nobody went hungry. Now a stranger had carried him away because someone wanted a book.

Lorenzo heard my side of the conversation from the hallway. He returned, took one look at me, and called Matteo.

I heard the change in his voice.

“Every entrance. Every camera. Find the vehicle. And call Detective Porter before anyone does something stupid.”

The last sentence surprised me.

When he hung up, he crouched a few feet away.

“Rebecca, look at me.”

“I can't lose him.”

“We have a lead. They contacted us because they want something. That means they expect to make an exchange.”

“People say that in movies, and then somebody dies.”

“Then we don't make decisions like people in movies.”

I stared at him.

He held out his phone. “Call the detective. I'll tell her everything I know.”

***

Detective Porter arrived with a colleague and a technician who copied the recording without altering the original. She asked me to play the voicemail again, then again with headphones.

“Do you recognize the man?” she asked.

“No.”

Lorenzo shook his head. “Not from his voice.”

“Any background sound?”

I listened until I could practically hear the blood moving in my ears.

There was a low mechanical hum. A metallic clank. And, faintly, the sound of a bell.

“Third bell,” I said.

Porter looked at me. “Explain.”

I told her about the old oven, the church bells, my father's warning, and the blue register hidden in my attic.

She wrote down every word.

“Who else knows about the book?”

“Eric. Lorenzo. Maybe Caruso.”

“Then the book stays where it is until we can arrange a safe retrieval,” she said.

I wanted to protest, but I didn't. The last thing Dad needed was for me to carry the evidence into a trap.

By midnight, investigators had found the supposed medical transport van. It had been stolen from a supply depot two nights earlier and fitted with temporary plates.

Its last confirmed sighting was near the Chicago River.

I could feel Lorenzo turning inward beside me, his face hardening as each update arrived.

“You know these men,” I said when Porter stepped outside.

“I know the kinds of men who use a sick old man as leverage.”

“Have you ever been one of them?”

He didn't answer quickly enough.

My chest tightened.

“Lorenzo.”

“I did things when I was younger that I don't defend,” he said. “I inherited a business full of people who believe fear is the only reliable language. I've spent years trying to turn it into something else, and I've failed more than once.”

I swallowed. “Did you hurt people?”

“Yes.”

The truth landed between us.

“Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn't because of my name. You should decide from what I do next.”

“Then help me bring my father home without turning him into another casualty of your war.”

He looked at me, and something in his expression softened.

“That's what I'm trying to do.”

***

The next morning, Camille arranged for me to retrieve personal belongings from the house with a police civil standby. Eric had been notified through his attorney. He was forbidden to interfere with the officers, though the civil process didn't give me permission to seize anything that clearly belonged to him.

I hadn't been inside our house since escaping. The front door was still painted pale green. The welcome mat still said HOME SWEET HOME.

I nearly laughed at that.

One officer stood in the hall while I climbed to the attic with Camille. Dust floated in the light of a single bare bulb. Christmas ornaments crowded the shelves. A cracked wooden rocking horse sat beneath a sheet.

The cardboard box was where I'd left it.

I dropped to my knees and pulled out cookbooks, old tax folders, a bag of clothespins.

Then the blue book.

Its cloth cover was soft with age. On the first page, Dad had written:

A PLACE AT THE TABLE COSTS NOTHING.

My eyes filled. I remembered the people who'd come through our back door: a woman newly widowed, a boy without a coat, a man who said he hadn't eaten since Thursday.

Lorenzo's name wasn't there. Dad would never have made a hungry seventeen-year-old sign anything.

I flipped through the pages.

Most entries listed dates, meal counts, and donations. But in the middle, seven sheets had been sliced from the binding.

“Someone got here first,” I said.

Camille photographed the missing pages and the cut threads.

Then a small white card fell onto my lap.

It was an old receipt from October 2005, written in my father's hand.

THIRD BELL. 11:57 P.M. P. MERCER. SIX CRATES. NOT BREAD.

Below it were four digits, a dash, and three more.

A number I didn't recognize.

I showed Camille. “Why would Dad write a lawyer's name in his food ledger?”

“Maybe he didn't know Mercer was a lawyer then.”

A floorboard creaked behind us.

Eric stood at the top of the attic stairs.

For a second, my body remembered all its old lessons. Don't move too fast. Don't challenge him. Look down.

Then I saw the officer below him.

“Rebecca,” Eric said softly. “You look tired.”

I stood.

“Get out of my way.”

“You don't have to do this. Your father would want you to come home.”

“Don't use him.”

His eyes flicked to the book in my hands.

“You always were sentimental,” he said.

Camille stepped between us. “Our visit was arranged through counsel. Please move aside.”

Eric smiled at her. “Do you know who you're working for? She's sleeping under the roof of Lorenzo DeMarco. He's a criminal.”

“That's not relevant to whether you forged a deed,” I said.

His face changed.

“You have no proof.”

I held up the book. “Then you shouldn't mind me keeping Dad's recipes.”

For one instant, genuine panic flashed across his face.

Then he moved aside.

On the drive from the house, I opened the blue register at random. There were notes in the margins that had nothing to do with money: Mrs. Keene likes her soup hot. Ask Tom about his new job. Save two rolls for the kids next door.

I could almost hear Dad speaking the words.

That was what hurt most about Eric calling the bakery just a building. He'd never understood that its value was the people who had been welcomed through its doors. The morning Dad let Lorenzo wash dishes, he hadn't been making an investment. He'd been deciding that a hungry teenager mattered.

Camille glanced at me from the driver's seat. "We can have a professional preserve the binding," she said. "No more turning delicate pages than necessary."

I closed the cover gently. "I don't want the evidence to destroy the thing Dad loved."

"Then we'll protect both," she said.

I put the book in a clean sleeve and held it on my lap as if it were something living. I didn't know whether it would save Dad. But I knew its pages could tell a story Eric had spent months trying to erase.

***

Outside, Camille took me to a nearby diner. I barely touched my coffee. She spread copies of the old receipt and transfer documents on the table.

“The numbers might identify a storage unit, an account, or a shipping record,” she said. “We shouldn't assume.”

My phone rang. Porter.

“We found the cane,” she said without preamble.

I gripped the table.

“Where?”

“Near a warehouse entrance along the river. Our teams are checking the building.”

“Is he there?”

“We don't know yet.”

I shut my eyes.

“He can't walk far without it.”