Chapter 2 - THE TASTE HE HAD BURIED
Vittorio Bellandi did not take a second bite.
For nearly ten seconds, he simply stared at the plate.
Elena’s stomach tightened.
She had ignored the evening menu.
Ignored the expensive ingredients already prepared.
Ignored the fact that five chefs before her had probably been dismissed for smaller offenses.
“If you don’t like it,” she said from the doorway, “I can make something else.”
Vittorio slowly lifted his eyes.
“Who taught you this?”
The question surprised her.
“My grandmother.”
“What was her name?”
“Rosa Marchetti.”
His fork touched the plate with a soft metallic sound.
Something changed in his face.
Not recognition exactly.
Something closer to fear.
“Say that again.”
“Rosa Marchetti.”
Vittorio pushed his chair back.
The bodyguard near the door straightened.
Vittorio barely noticed.
“Everyone out.”
The bodyguard hesitated.
“Boss?”
“I said out.”
Within seconds, the dining room was empty except for Vittorio and Elena.
He stood.
“Come with me.”
Elena did not move.
“Am I being fired?”
He looked almost offended by the question.
“No.”
“Then I’d prefer to know where I’m going.”
For the second time since meeting her, Vittorio nearly smiled.
Instead, he walked toward the kitchen.
Elena followed.
He went straight to the cabinet where she had found the photograph.
He reached behind the dusty jars without asking how she knew about it and pulled the old picture free.
“Did you see this?”
“Yes.”
Vittorio handed it to her.
“My mother.”
“I know.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Who told you?”
“Mrs. Conti.”
“The housekeeper talks too much.”
“She said six sentences.”
“For Mrs. Conti, that’s a speech.”
Despite herself, Elena smiled.
Vittorio did not.
He pointed toward the woman in the photograph.
“Her name was Lucia.”
Elena examined the picture again.
The small trattoria.
The hand-painted sign.
Lucia Bellandi laughing beneath it.
Flour across her apron.
An old wooden spoon in one hand.
“When I was a boy, she made something like what you cooked tonight.”
Elena looked toward the dining room.
“Baked pasta?”
“Not exactly.”
“What was different?”
“I don’t know.”
His frustration was immediate.
“I haven’t tasted it since I was nine.”
Elena studied him.
“Then maybe you don’t remember the ingredients.”
“I remember how it felt.”
That answer made her quiet.
Vittorio turned the photograph in his hands.
“My mother called it Sunday pasta.”
Elena’s eyebrows rose.
“My grandmother did too.”
Vittorio looked at her.
“What did she put in the sauce?”
“Tomato. Garlic. Basil.”
“Everyone puts that in sauce.”
“Not everyone crushes fennel seed into it.”
His expression changed.
Elena noticed.
“And toasted breadcrumbs,” she continued. “Pecorino. A little orange peel if she had one.”
Vittorio’s hand closed around the photograph.
“Orange peel.”
“Yes.”
“My mother did that.”
“Lots of Sicilian families—”
“No.”
He cut her off.
“She said someone taught her.”
Elena stopped.
Vittorio stepped closer.
“Did your grandmother ever live in Chicago?”
“For a few years when she was younger.”
“When?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“What did she do?”
“She cooked.”
“Where?”
Elena’s irritation rose.
“You’re asking questions like I’m being interrogated.”
For a man whose name frightened half the city, Vittorio did something unexpected.
He stepped back.
“You’re right.”
That unsettled her more than anger would have.
“My grandmother didn’t talk much about America,” Elena said. “She went back to Sicily before my mother was grown. She opened a little restaurant there.”
“What was it called?”
“Rosa’s Table.”
Vittorio stared at the photograph.
Elena followed his gaze.
Something about it had bothered her since the previous evening.
She took the photograph gently.
“May I?”
He nodded.
Elena brought it beneath the kitchen light.
Lucia stood in the center.
But at the far edge, almost cut from the frame, another arm was visible.
A woman’s arm.
Flour on the sleeve.
A bracelet around the wrist made of dark wooden beads.
Elena’s breath caught.
“What?”
Vittorio asked.
“My grandmother had that bracelet.”
“That bracelet?”
“She wore it until she died.”
Vittorio stared.
“You can identify someone from half an arm?”
“I can identify something I saw every day of my childhood.”
She turned the photograph over.
Nothing.
Only faded cardboard.
Then she noticed the edge lifting.
“There’s another photograph stuck behind it.”
Vittorio came closer.
The two prints had been pressed together by age.
Elena carefully separated them.
The second photograph had been hidden behind the first.
Two women stood outside the same trattoria.
Lucia Bellandi.
And beside her—
Elena stopped breathing.
Her grandmother was younger, perhaps twenty-five, with dark hair pinned carelessly behind her ears and flour covering the front of her apron.
Rosa Marchetti had one arm around Lucia.
Both women were laughing.
Above them, the restaurant sign was fully visible.
BELLANDI & MARCHETTI.
Vittorio sat down.
Actually sat.
As though his legs had stopped supporting him.
“That can’t be right.”
Elena stared at the sign.
“My grandmother never told us.”
Vittorio looked almost angry.
“My mother never told me.”
At the bottom of the photograph sat a large ceramic bowl painted blue around the rim.
Elena recognized that too.
“My grandmother kept that bowl.”
Vittorio looked at her sharply.
“You have it?”
“My brother does. We use it for bread because it’s cracked.”
Something almost painful moved across Vittorio’s face.
“My mother served Sunday pasta in that bowl.”
Neither spoke.
The kitchen suddenly felt much smaller.
Elena turned the photograph over.
This one had writing.
Faded blue ink.
Rosa—
If Vittorio ever comes looking, feed him first.
He listens better after he eats.
Lucia.
Elena almost smiled.
Vittorio did not.
His thumb moved over his mother’s handwriting.
Then he noticed another line written beneath it.
Smaller.
Added later.
And if anything happens to me, remind him that the kitchen was supposed to be his way out.
Vittorio’s face went completely still.
Elena read it twice.
“Way out of what?”
He did not answer.
His eyes remained on the photograph.
“My father told me my mother wanted me to inherit everything.”
Elena glanced around the mansion.
The guards.
The silent hallways.
The men who watched doors.
Everything.
Vittorio whispered:
“She wanted me to become him.”
He touched the handwriting again.
Then looked at Elena.
“But according to this…”
May you like
His voice became rough.
“…she wanted the exact opposite.”
