Chapter 3 - THE WATCH THAT STOPPED AT 10:17
I did not let Cameron touch the watch.
Not yet.
It lay in Rosa’s palm between us.
Silver.
Heavy.
The glass cracked from twelve to four.
The hands frozen at 10:17.
On the back was a tiny engraved M surrounded by laurel leaves.
Moretti.
Cameron looked at it as if someone had just brought his father into the kitchen.
“That was his everyday watch.”
“How sure?”
“I saw it on his wrist for thirty years.”
Rosa whispered:
“Not the last twenty-one.”
Cameron looked at her.
“You knew?”
“I knew Daniel had it.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t know it was Giuseppe’s.”
I wrapped my father’s coat around my good arm.
It smelled like dust now.
Nothing else.
I hated that.
“Hospital.”
I said.
“Now.”
My mother mattered more than dead men’s jewelry.
Bradley had already left St. Vincent by the time we arrived.
That should have relieved me.
It didn’t.
Mom sat upright in bed wearing oxygen beneath her nose and fury across her face.
Bella Russo had never been a delicate woman.
Pulmonary fibrosis had made her thinner.
Not softer.
“What happened to your arm?”
Those were her first words.
“Bradley Hayes.”
Her face changed.
Then she saw Cameron behind me.
“Dom.”
I turned.
“You call him Dom too?”
Mom closed her eyes.
“Apparently I’m the only person in New York who didn’t know.”
“Avery.”
“No.”
I placed Giuseppe’s watch on the tray table.
Her face lost color.
“Where did you get that?”
“Rosa.”
Mom looked toward Cameron.
He stayed silent.
Good.
“Tell me about Dad.”
“Avery, not here.”
“Here.”
Her fingers tightened around blanket.
“He worked nights at Pier Six.”
“No.”
“You told me construction.”
“I lied.”
The bluntness hurt.
“What did he do?”
“He dispatched trucks.”
“For Moretti?”
She looked at Cameron.
“Yes.”
My throat tightened.
“Why did he have Giuseppe’s watch?”
Mom stared at it for a long time.
Then:
“Because Giuseppe gave it to him.”
Cameron’s head lifted.
“What?”
“Two days before Daniel died.”
“Why?”
Mom swallowed.
“He told Daniel it was proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That Giuseppe trusted him.”
Cameron looked almost offended.
“My father never gave that watch to anyone.”
“He did once.”
Mom’s voice broke.
“To Daniel.”
I sat.
“What was Dad doing?”
“Trying to find who was leaking manifests.”
Cameron’s jaw tightened.
“Samuel Hayes.”
“Not only Hayes.”
There it was.
A larger secret.
Mom continued.
“Giuseppe thought someone inside the Moretti family was still feeding Samuel routes after your uncle Vittorio was pushed out.”
Cameron frowned.
“My father told me Vittorio left alone.”
“He lied.”
Mom looked at him.
“Someone stayed.”
“Who?”
“Daniel never told me.”
“Why not?”
“Because the fewer names I knew, the safer I was.”
My laugh was ugly.
“That worked beautifully.”
She flinched.
I regretted it immediately.
Not enough to apologize yet.
“What happened the night Dad died?”
Mom stared at watch.
“He called at 9:48.”
“You remember exact?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled.
“Some times never leave.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he had found the person.”
Cameron leaned closer.
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“He said Giuseppe was meeting him at Pier Six.”
“And?”
“He told me to keep you home.”
“I was three.”
“You had a fever.”
I almost smiled through grief.
Of course.
I had always heard story that Dad missed my birthday because he died working late.
Apparently even my fever lived inside Mafia history.
“What happened next?”
“Nothing.”
“Daniel didn’t come home.”
“At 1:20, police knocked.”
“What did they say?”
“Warehouse accident.”
“Fire.”
I froze.
“Not construction?”
“No.”
“Why tell me construction?”
“You were three.”
“Then four.”
“Then ten.”
“Then twenty-four.”
Mom cried.
“I know.”
“You had twenty-one years.”
“I know.”
The room went quiet.
Cameron did not rescue either of us from it.
Good.
Then Mom said:
“The police told me Daniel was found outside a warehouse near the river.”
“Alive?”
I asked.
She closed eyes.
“Yes.”
My chest seized.
“For how long?”
“Two hours.”
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I was with you when police came.”
“By the time Rosa stayed with you and I reached hospital…”
She stopped.
I looked at Cameron.
He was pale.
“Did Giuseppe know?”
Mom answered.
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
“He came to hospital.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“He stood in hallway.”
“He didn’t come into room.”
“He told me Daniel had been brave.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Very helpful.”
Mom looked at Cameron.
“Then he gave me money.”
Cameron’s face changed.
“What?”
“Cash.”
“Enough to leave New York.”
“I threw it at him.”
That sounded like Mom.
“What did Giuseppe say?”
“He said, ‘Bella, someone inside my house did this.’”
Cameron stopped breathing.
There.
His father had known.
“Did he say who?”
“No.”
“He said he would find out.”
“Did he?”
Mom looked at Cameron.
“If he did, he never told me.”
Silence.
Then I picked up watch.
Something shifted inside.
A faint metallic rattle.
Cameron heard too.
“May I?”
I hesitated.
Then handed it.
He turned crown.
Nothing.
Pressed side.
Back popped open.
Inside the case, beneath mechanism, someone had scratched:
P6 — B14
Cameron whispered:
“Pier Six.”
“What’s B14?”
His face tightened.
“Blue Fourteen.”
“What is that?”
“Old container bay.”
“Closed before I took control.”
“Why?”
He looked at my mother.
“After Daniel died, my father shut half of Pier Six for ‘structural repairs.’”
Mom stared.
“He never told me.”
Cameron kept looking at scratched letters.
“He didn’t tell me either.”
Then Mom reached for my wrist.
“Avery.”
“What?”
“There’s something else.”
Of course.
“There is always something else.”
She swallowed.
“The morning after Daniel died, a man came to our apartment.”
Cameron’s eyes sharpened.
“Who?”
“I didn’t know him then.”
“Then?”
“Years later I saw him in newspaper.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
Mom looked directly at Cameron.
“Your current consigliere.”
Silence.
Cameron’s face went still.
“Carlo?”
“Yes.”
Carlo Moretti.
His father’s younger brother.
The man newspapers described as Cameron’s closest adviser.
The uncle who sat beside him at every funeral, every port negotiation, every photograph where family wanted to look united.
“What did he want?”
Mom’s voice dropped.
“The watch.”
Cameron stared.
“Why?”
“He said Giuseppe needed it back.”
“Did you give it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Daniel died holding it.”
She pointed at cracked glass.
“And because Carlo wasn’t alone.”
“Who was with him?”
Mom’s eyes filled with the same old fear she had carried twenty-one years.
“Samuel Hayes.”
Bradley’s father.
Cameron stepped backward as if someone had struck him.
His uncle.
Bradley’s father.
Together.
The morning after Daniel Russo died.
Then the door opened.
A nurse entered, saw all our faces, and wisely decided blood pressure could wait one minute.
Before anyone spoke, Mom looked at me.
“Blue Fourteen.”
“What?”
“Daniel mentioned it once.”
“When?”
“The week before he died.”
“What did he say?”
Her voice broke.
“He said if anything happened, Blue Fourteen would prove whether Giuseppe was telling truth.”
Cameron looked down at his father’s watch.
May you like
And for the first time, I understood that solving my father’s death might not only destroy the man who caused it.
It might destroy the memory Cameron had spent his entire life protecting.
