Chapter 6 - THE THIRD PARTNER
Domenico Bellandi had not always hated the restaurant.
That was the reversal Vittorio struggled with most.
Carlo led them to an old photograph hanging crookedly in the rear hallway.
Three young people stood beneath the original sign.
Lucia.
Rosa.
Domenico.
All laughing.
Domenico wore an apron.
Vittorio stared.
“My father cooked?”
Carmela snorted.
“Badly.”
Carlo almost smiled.
“Terribly.”
Elena looked closer.
Domenico held a burned loaf of bread.
Rosa was pointing at it.
Lucia was laughing so hard she had one hand against the wall.
This was not the feared man Vittorio remembered.
This was someone before power calcified him.
“What changed?” Vittorio asked.
Carlo answered.
“Success.”
One word.
Then:
“The organization grew. Your father began spending more nights away. Lucia wanted him here. He wanted her at home.”
“And Rosa?”
“She refused to take sides.”
Elena understood.
“So both sides blamed her.”
“Yes.”
Carlo touched the tarnished nameplate.
“Domenico put money into the trattoria when they were young. Rosa and Lucia did most of the work. None of them cared who owned what then.”
“Until they did,” Elena said.
Carlo nodded.
“After Lucia died, your father closed the restaurant and told everyone it belonged to the Bellandis.”
Vittorio looked at Elena.
“Your grandmother lost half her life because of my family.”
Elena did not soften it.
“Yes.”
He accepted that.
Back at the mansion, Vittorio told Elena she did not have to return to work.
“I’ll pay the remainder of your contract.”
“I don’t want the remainder of anything.”
“You’ve earned it.”
“I earned wages for cooking.”
“You inherited a wrong my family caused.”
Elena’s eyes sharpened.
“I inherited my grandmother’s recipes. Do not turn that into charity.”
Vittorio stopped.
She continued.
“If you feel guilty, do something useful with it.”
“What?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That is inconvenient.”
“It’s your guilt.”
A faint smile touched his face.
“Fair.”
Elena returned to the kitchen.
Not because he ordered her.
Because dinner still needed to be cooked.
That evening she made soup.
Simple.
Beans.
Greens.
Bread.
Vittorio ate in the kitchen instead of the dining room.
The guards did not know what to do.
Neither did Mrs. Conti.
Elena set down a bowl.
“You have a dining room.”
“I know.”
“It seats twenty.”
“I know.”
“You are sitting beside the trash drawer.”
“I noticed.”
She gave him a spoon.
“You’re making everyone nervous.”
“Good.”
Elena shook her head.
Matteo arrived twenty minutes later.
She had invited him because he had another hospital appointment nearby.
Vittorio stood when he entered.
Matteo glanced at the table.
“This is less terrifying than I expected.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“A little.”
They ate.
At first the conversation was awkward.
Then Matteo complained about hospital coffee.
Elena insulted his taste.
Mrs. Conti laughed from the sink.
One of the guards accepted bread after pretending for five minutes he wasn’t hungry.
Vittorio watched all of it.
Noise.
People interrupting.
Someone dropping a spoon.
Elena scolding her brother for taking too much cheese.
For the first time, the mansion sounded like a home.
After Matteo left, Vittorio stayed behind.
“My mother wanted this.”
Elena dried a plate.
“What?”
“The kitchen full.”
She looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t.”
His voice softened.
“I just know.”
Elena set the plate down.
“Memory isn’t always a picture.”
Vittorio studied her.
“No.”
“Sometimes it’s a feeling you recognize before you know why.”
He looked at the empty bowls.
“That pasta did that.”
“Yes.”
He touched the rosary in his pocket.
“What would your grandmother have wanted?”
Elena answered immediately.
“To have her name remembered correctly.”
“That’s all?”
“No.”
She looked toward Matteo’s empty chair.
“She would want people fed.”
Vittorio nodded slowly.
Elena continued.
“She hated restaurants where the staff ate standing up while customers wasted half their meals.”
“That sounds specific.”
“She was specific.”
They both smiled.
Then Mrs. Conti entered carrying an old folded apron.
White linen.
Yellowed at the edges.
Vittorio stopped smiling.
“Where did you get that?”
The housekeeper looked uncomfortable.
“Your mother’s room.”
“You told me her clothes were gone.”
“Most were.”
“Why keep this?”
Mrs. Conti’s eyes moved toward Elena.
“Because Rosa asked me to.”
Elena frowned.
“You knew my grandmother?”
Mrs. Conti looked guilty.
“Yes.”
Another silence.
Vittorio gave a tired laugh.
“Apparently everyone in this house knew Rosa except me.”
Mrs. Conti placed the apron on the counter.
“There is something sewn into the hem.”
Elena turned it over.
A line of hand stitching had been added along the bottom.
She carefully opened three threads.
A small folded piece of fabric slipped out.
Not paper.
A child’s drawing on linen.
Faded crayon.
A little boy at a stove.
Two women beside him.
Above them, Lucia had written:
VITTORIO’S RESTAURANT SOMEDAY.
Vittorio stared.
Mrs. Conti wiped her eyes.
“Your mother did not want you to inherit your father’s empire.”
May you like
She touched the apron.
“She wanted you to inherit her kitchen.”
