Chapter 5 - CARLO’S ROSARY
Vittorio called Carlo from the abandoned trattoria.
“Come here.”
Nothing more.
Carlo arrived forty minutes later.
Sixty-two.
Silver-haired.
Immaculate dark coat.
The kind of man who could make a room uneasy without raising his voice.
He saw Carmela.
Then Elena.
Then the photograph on the table.
His face changed.
“So.”
Vittorio stood.
“You knew.”
Carlo removed his gloves.
“I knew many things.”
“Did my mother intend to take me to Sicily?”
“Yes.”
The direct answer struck harder than denial.
“Did you stop her?”
“I brought you home.”
“You took me from her.”
“Your father ordered me to bring his nine-year-old son home.”
Elena watched both men carefully.
Carlo was not ashamed of that part.
Perhaps because, in his mind, he had been obeying a father.
“What happened next?” Vittorio asked.
“Lucia left the restaurant. There was an accident.”
“Was it an accident?”
Carlo’s eyes hardened.
“Yes.”
“No one followed her?”
“No.”
“No one forced her car off the road?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“I identified the car myself.”
Vittorio looked away.
Elena saw something complicated pass through him.
Relief.
Grief.
Maybe disappointment that there was no villain simple enough to carry everything.
Carlo looked toward Carmela.
“You should have told him years ago.”
The old woman’s eyebrows rose.
“So should you.”
Carlo accepted that.
Vittorio turned back.
“Why did Rosa leave?”
Carlo’s silence answered first.
“You.”
“Yes.”
Elena stepped forward.
“What did you do to my grandmother?”
Carlo looked at her.
“I offered her money.”
“She refused.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“I told her if she stayed, Domenico would fight her for every inch of Vittorio’s life.”
“You threatened her.”
“I warned her.”
“That depends which side of the door you were standing on.”
Carlo’s eyes lowered briefly.
“Fair.”
Vittorio stared.
“Did she come back?”
Carlo looked toward him.
“Three times.”
The room went silent.
“My father told me she disappeared.”
“Domenico was grieving.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
Carlo’s voice remained calm.
“He could not bear seeing Rosa because she carried Lucia’s last plan with her.”
“So you turned her away.”
“The first time.”
“And the other two?”
“Your father did.”
Vittorio’s face tightened.
Elena thought of Rosa cooking in Sicily.
Stopping whenever Chicago was mentioned.
“She came back for him,” Matteo had said.
It had been true.
“What did she want?” Elena asked.
“You.”
Carlo looked at Vittorio.
“She said Lucia had made her promise that if anything happened, you would always have another home.”
Vittorio sat down.
That sentence reached somewhere no one else could.
Another home.
He had spent thirty years believing his only inheritance was the Bellandi name.
Carlo reached inside his coat.
He removed a small wooden rosary.
Dark red beads.
Worn smooth by fingers.
A tiny silver cross hung at the end.
Vittorio recognized it immediately.
“My mother’s.”
“Yes.”
“Why do you have it?”
Carlo’s expression finally changed.
Guilt.
“Lucia gave it to me the morning I came to the restaurant.”
Vittorio stared.
“What did she say?”
Carlo looked at Elena.
Then Carmela.
As though he disliked witnesses to old weakness.
Finally:
“She said, ‘If he becomes too much like Domenico, remind him he once belonged in a kitchen.’”
Vittorio closed his eyes.
Elena felt the words settle over the abandoned room.
Carlo placed the rosary on the table.
“I never gave it to you.”
“Why?”
“Because your father died when you were seventeen.”
Vittorio looked up.
“And suddenly every man around you needed you to become hard enough to survive.”
Carlo did not excuse himself.
“I told myself grief was not the time to make you question who you were.”
“And after?”
Carlo looked around the ruined trattoria.
“After enough years, silence becomes easier to defend than truth.”
Vittorio picked up the rosary.
“Did you think I was happy?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Vittorio’s jaw tightened.
“Then what exactly were you protecting?”
Carlo had no immediate answer.
Finally:
“The organization.”
There it was.
Not hatred.
Not greed.
Loyalty taken too far.
The same loyalty that had made everyone in Vittorio’s life treat his happiness as expendable.
Elena thought of Matteo.
Hospital bills.
Double shifts.
The difference between loyalty and love suddenly seemed simple.
Love asked what the person needed.
Loyalty sometimes decided for them.
Vittorio looked at Carlo.
“My mother died trying to get me out.”
“Yes.”
“You helped my father erase Rosa.”
“Yes.”
“You kept this.”
He raised the rosary.
“Yes.”
“And for thirty years you sat beside me at dinner while six cooks tried to feed a man who couldn’t taste anything.”
Carlo’s eyes lowered.
“I did.”
Vittorio’s anger faded into something worse.
Disappointment.
Carlo reached into another pocket.
“There is one thing you still don’t know.”
He placed a small brass nameplate on the table.
Dusty.
Tarnished.
Two words remained readable.
BELLANDI & MARCHETTI.
Elena stopped breathing.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your grandmother gave it to me the third time she came back.”
“Why?”
“She said keeping the nameplate mattered less than keeping Vittorio safe.”
Elena’s eyes filled.
Carlo turned it over.
Something had been scratched into the metal.
Three initials.
L.B.
R.M.
D.B.
Lucia Bellandi.
Rosa Marchetti.
Domenico Bellandi.
Vittorio frowned.
“Why is my father’s name on it?”
Carlo looked toward the old kitchen.
“Because before power ruined everything…”
May you like
He paused.
“…the restaurant belonged to all three of them.”
