Chapter 2 - THE NAME ROSA WAS AFRAID TO SAY
“Cameron Moretti?”
The kitchen seemed to shrink around me.
The name belonged on financial pages.
Court filings.
Photographs of men stepping out of black SUVs outside federal buildings.
Not booth seven.
Not the man who knew I took my mother to pulmonary appointments every other Thursday.
Not the man who always left enough money beneath his coffee cup to cover half my grocery bill if I had been shameless enough to keep all of it.
Cameron stood slowly.
“Yes.”
One word.
No excuse.
That made me angrier.
“How long?”
He frowned.
“How long what?”
“How long have you been lying to me?”
Rosa closed her eyes.
“Avery—”
“No.”
I pointed at Cameron.
“He said his name was Dom.”
“It is.”
“My middle name is Dominic.”
I stared at him.
“That is somehow worse.”
“I know.”
“You own half the waterfront.”
“Not half.”
I laughed once.
“Thank God we cleared that up.”
Rosa came closer.
“Your arm.”
“I’m fine.”
Cameron’s expression changed.
“Don’t do that.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“Say you’re fine when you’re not.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to say.”
He nodded.
“You’re right.”
Again.
Too calm.
Too reasonable.
It was hard to fight a man who refused to defend himself.
So I asked the question that mattered.
“Why have you been coming here?”
Silence.
The coffee machine hissed behind us.
Outside the kitchen, forks had started moving again, but the whole diner still felt like it was listening.
Cameron looked at Rosa.
She shook her head once.
Whatever passed between them made my stomach tighten.
“You both know something.”
Rosa whispered:
“Your mother asked him to come.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
Cameron said nothing.
I turned on him.
“My mother knows you?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Long before you were born.”
My burned arm suddenly felt cold.
“My mother worked payroll at a medical supply company.”
“She did.”
“She also kept books for Moretti Produce.”
I stepped backward.
“No.”
“She never told you?”
“No.”
“That was her choice.”
“Stop protecting everybody with that sentence.”
His jaw tightened.
Good.
Finally.
“Why did she call you?”
“Eight months ago.”
My heart started beating faster.
That was when Mom’s breathing had worsened.
When I dropped two classes.
When I started working six mornings and four nights.
“What did she want?”
Cameron answered quietly.
“She wanted me to make sure no one from my world came near you.”
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“You are from your world.”
“Yes.”
“So her solution was sending the Mafia boss himself?”
Rosa whispered:
“Avery.”
I ignored her.
Cameron did not correct the word.
That told me more than a lawyer ever could.
“Why would anyone from your world care about me?”
Cameron’s eyes moved toward the kitchen door Bradley Hayes had walked through forty minutes earlier.
“Because Bradley wasn’t here by accident.”
I stopped.
“He had a flat tire.”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“My people have been watching him.”
Of course he had people.
“Why?”
“He’s been trying to buy two freight terminals on the South Side.”
“So?”
“They sit beside Moretti-controlled routes.”
“Still not seeing where my pancakes enter organized crime.”
A faint expression almost reached his face.
Not quite a smile.
Then:
“Bradley’s father was Samuel Hayes.”
I knew the name vaguely.
Corporate attorney.
Developer.
Dead five years.
“What about him?”
“He worked with my uncle twenty-four years ago.”
“Doing what?”
Cameron paused.
“Trying to take control of my father’s docks.”
“And my mother?”
“She discovered how they were moving money.”
I stared.
“Mom?”
“She found payments hidden inside produce invoices.”
“She brought them to my father.”
“Giuseppe Moretti.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“My father stopped the theft.”
“Your mother quit six months later.”
“Why?”
Cameron looked down.
“Because she was afraid.”
“Of Giuseppe?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“Me.”
That silenced me.
“You?”
“I was twenty.”
“What did you do?”
“My father had just survived an attack.”
“My older brother had died the year before.”
“Bella was one of the only people I trusted.”
“When she said she was leaving, I handled it badly.”
“How badly?”
“I had two men sit outside her apartment.”
My stomach dropped.
“You had my mother watched?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She came into my father’s office and told me if she saw them again, she’d call the police and make sure every newspaper in Brooklyn knew Giuseppe Moretti’s son was terrorizing a bookkeeper.”
Despite everything, I could hear my mother saying it.
I almost smiled.
“What did you do?”
“Pulled them.”
“Immediately?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she was right.”
The answer bothered me more than arrogance would have.
Then Cameron added:
“She left New York for six years.”
I knew that.
Milwaukee.
I had been three when my father died.
Mom moved us two months later.
She always said there was nothing left for us here.
“What does Bradley want?”
Cameron’s expression hardened.
“Something your father hid.”
My breath caught.
“My father?”
Daniel Russo existed in my memory as four photographs, one home video, and a smell I could no longer be sure was real.
Motor oil.
Peppermint gum.
He died in a workplace accident when I was three.
“What did Dad have?”
“I don’t know.”
“Convenient.”
“Avery—”
“You’ve been sitting ten feet from me for seven months.”
“Yes.”
“You ask about my mother every day.”
“Yes.”
“And you never thought maybe I deserved to know my dead father was part of this?”
His voice changed.
“I promised Bella I wouldn’t tell you.”
That stopped me.
“Mom made you promise?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she wanted you out of it.”
I laughed bitterly.
“I’m standing in a diner kitchen with a burn on my arm because a man tied to your ports walked in and called me fat.”
Cameron flinched at that more than I expected.
“So clearly her plan is working.”
His phone vibrated again.
He looked.
His face changed.
“What?”
Cameron did not answer.
“Cameron.”
He turned screen toward me.
A photograph.
Bradley Hayes entering St. Vincent Medical Center twenty minutes earlier.
My mother’s hospital.
My stomach dropped.
“What is he doing there?”
“We don’t know.”
I grabbed my coat.
Cameron moved once.
Instinct.
Blocking.
Then stopped himself.
Good.
“Move.”
He did.
Marco—one of the men I had seen outside the diner more than once—appeared at the kitchen door.
“Boss.”
There it was.
Boss.
Not Mr. Moretti.
Not Cameron.
Boss.
Cameron said:
“No cars around the hospital.”
Marco frowned.
“Boss—”
“No scene.”
He looked at me.
“Avery decides.”
That surprised both of us.
I headed for the door.
Then Rosa called my name.
I turned.
She had gone pale.
Not from Bradley.
From something else.
“What?”
Rosa looked at Cameron.
Then at me.
“Before you go…”
She disappeared into her tiny office.
Returned holding an old brown leather coat.
Men’s.
Worn at elbows.
I knew it instantly.
My father’s.
Mom had told me it was lost during the move from Milwaukee.
My knees nearly gave out.
“Where did you get that?”
Rosa’s eyes filled.
“Your mother gave it to me twenty-one years ago.”
“Why?”
“She said if anyone ever came asking about Daniel, I was supposed to burn it.”
My mouth went dry.
“Why didn’t you?”
Rosa looked at the coat.
“Because your father was my friend.”
Then she reached into the inside lining.
Her fingers found a seam.
One I had never noticed in old photographs.
She pulled.
A small silver pocket watch slipped into her palm.
Cracked glass.
Stopped hands.
10:17.
Cameron went completely still.
“What?”
I asked.
He stared at the watch.
“That belonged to my father.”
Silence.
“No.”
I looked at him.
“You mean Giuseppe?”
“Yes.”
“Why would my father have Giuseppe Moretti’s watch?”
Cameron took one step closer.
“Because Giuseppe was wearing it the night Daniel died.”
May you like
And just like that, the question was no longer whether Bradley Hayes knew something about my father.
It was why my father had died carrying something that belonged to Cameron’s.
