Chapter 3 - THE PHOTOGRAPH BEHIND THE TOOL CABINET
Frankie did not put the watch back on.
She held it in her palm.
“My father never mentioned you.”
Gabriel’s answer came quietly.
“I know.”
“You were in his garage?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The night my father died.”
Her mind rejected the sentence.
Salvatore Moretti had told stories about almost everything.
The first engine he rebuilt.
The winter the shop heater failed.
The customer who paid an entire repair bill in rolled quarters.
He had never once said he dragged Gabriel Costa from a wrecked car.
“You’re lying.”
Gabriel’s face barely changed.
“Why?”
“To make me think my father owed your family something.”
“He owed us nothing.”
“Then why keep this secret?”
“That is what I would like to know.”
Frankie looked at the old watch again.
“What happened?”
Gabriel walked toward the windows.
“I was seventeen.”
That surprised her.
The man standing before her seemed as if he had been born thirty-nine years old in a dark suit.
“My father and I had dinner in the North End. We argued afterward.”
“About?”
Gabriel glanced back.
“Something embarrassingly ordinary.”
He paused.
“A college application.”
Frankie almost laughed.
He didn’t.
“I wanted New York. He wanted Boston. I accused him of planning my entire life.”
“And then?”
“He told the driver to go home. Said he would drive.”
Gabriel’s voice remained controlled.
“We were six blocks from your father’s shop when the brakes stopped responding.”
Frankie’s mechanic’s brain caught immediately.
“Stopped responding how?”
Gabriel looked at her.
“The pedal went down.”
“To the floor?”
“Yes.”
“Did it come back?”
“No.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything.”
She believed him.
“The car crossed two lanes and struck a concrete barrier. My father took most of the impact.”
Frankie tightened her fingers around the watch.
“Salvatore heard the crash?”
“No.”
Gabriel turned fully toward her.
“He was already there.”
That was stranger.
“Why?”
“I never knew.”
Gabriel’s father died before the ambulance reached the hospital.
Gabriel woke the following morning with stitches above his eye and three fractured ribs.
Salvatore Moretti had disappeared before anyone could properly thank him.
Two weeks later, Gabriel’s mother visited the garage.
She brought the watch.
Vittorio Costa’s watch.
“She gave it to my father?”
“Yes.”
Frankie looked at the initials again.
“Why not money?”
“My mother offered.”
“And?”
Gabriel’s mouth softened.
“Your father told her to get out of his garage.”
That sounded exactly like Salvatore.
Frankie almost smiled.
Almost.
“He said if she tried to pay him for pulling a kid from a car, he would charge her storage for taking up his parking space.”
This time Frankie did smile.
For one second.
Then she remembered Leo.
The debt.
The garage.
“Did whoever handles your debts know my father saved you?”
“Probably not.”
“Who did know?”
“My family.”
“That narrows it down beautifully.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“My uncle Marco knew.”
Something in his voice caught her.
“Marco Costa?”
“Yes.”
Frankie knew the name.
Everyone did.
Gabriel’s father’s younger brother.
He managed much of Costa Holdings before Gabriel was old enough to buy his first legal drink.
“He still works for you.”
“He advises me.”
“And he knew about the garage.”
“Yes.”
Frankie put the watch back on.
“Then we’re going there.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow.
“We?”
“You want answers about my father. I want answers about whoever is trying to steal his building.”
“I can send people.”
“No.”
“Francesca—”
“That garage is mine.”
“It is sixty percent yours.”
She pointed at him.
“Do not use my own argument against me.”
For the second time that night, Gabriel laughed.
Thirty minutes later, Frankie returned to Moretti Auto with Gabriel Costa sitting beside her in a black SUV.
She hated the sight of two additional vehicles stopping outside.
“I said no army.”
“You said no such thing.”
“I implied it.”
“I don’t conduct security based on implication.”
Only one guard entered with them.
Frankie switched on the lights.
Gabriel stopped beneath the buzzing fluorescent tubes.
The place looked almost insulting after his penthouse.
Oil-stained floor.
Red tool chests.
Old calendars.
A coffee machine that should have been retired during the Clinton administration.
But Gabriel wasn’t looking at any of that.
He was staring toward Bay Three.
“There used to be a wooden chair there.”
Frankie followed his gaze.
“My father threw it away years ago.”
“Green?”
She looked at him.
“Yes.”
Gabriel nodded.
“I sat in it while he cleaned blood off my face.”
The shop suddenly felt different.
Not less hers.
Larger.
As if her father had lived another life inside these walls without telling his children.
Frankie walked toward the office.
“Dad kept everything.”
“Everything?”
“Receipts from 1997. Broken spark plugs. Christmas cards from customers who died fifteen years ago.”
Gabriel glanced at her.
“He sounds Sicilian.”
“He was Sicilian.”
“So am I.”
“You own a penthouse.”
“My grandmother would still hit me with a spoon.”
Frankie unlocked the old steel cabinet behind the desk.
Boxes.
Parts catalogs.
A rusted license plate.
Her father’s winter coat.
She pulled it out.
Something fell from the pocket.
A photograph.
Frankie picked it up.
Four men stood outside Moretti Auto.
Her father was younger.
Maybe thirty-eight.
Beside him stood Vittorio Costa.
Gabriel resembled him around the eyes.
The third man was a much younger Marco Costa.
And the fourth—
Gabriel took the photograph.
“I don’t know him.”
Frankie turned it over.
Her father had written a date.
Twenty-two years earlier.
One day before Vittorio Costa died.
Beneath it were five words.
MARCO BROUGHT HIM BACK AGAIN.
Gabriel stared at the sentence.
“Brought who?”
Frankie studied the unknown man.
He wore mechanic’s coveralls.
She suddenly recognized the patch stitched over the chest.
“Rocco.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“You know him?”
“Dad used to complain about him.”
“Who was he?”
“An apprentice.”
Frankie searched her memory.
“Dad fired him.”
“When?”
She looked at the date.
“The week your father died.”
Gabriel’s expression hardened.
Behind them, Leo spoke.
“He’s not an apprentice anymore.”
Frankie spun around.
Her brother stood in the open service bay.
Swollen eye.
Hands in his jacket pockets.
Fear all over his face.
Gabriel turned.
“You know Rocco?”
Leo looked at him.
Then at Frankie.
“He runs the card room.”
The room went still.
Frankie stepped toward her brother.
“You told me Gabriel ran it.”
“He owns the club.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Leo swallowed.
“Rocco was the one who kept raising my limit.”
Gabriel’s eyes became cold.
“How high was your original credit?”
Leo stared at the floor.
“Twenty-five thousand.”
Frankie felt sick.
“Then how did you end up at three hundred?”
Leo looked toward the old photograph in Gabriel’s hand.
“Because after I lost the first twenty-five, Rocco told me I didn’t have to worry.”
Gabriel’s voice lowered.
“Why?”
Leo finally looked at him.
“He said somebody important wanted our garage.”
Frankie’s stomach dropped.
“Who?”
Leo’s eyes moved to the photograph.
His finger pointed at the younger Marco Costa.
May you like
“Your uncle.”
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