The Name on the Sign

Check the basement.

I stared at the crude, fresh scratches on the back of the gold watch.

Someone had carried this watch out of the burning dining room, climbed to the roof, dropped it here, and vanished before Clara and I emerged from the exhaust vent.

And they wanted me to go into the basement.

The building below us was a raging inferno, but the heavy fire doors and concrete foundation of the old structure were designed to isolate the lower levels. The basement might not be burning yet, but the smoke and water from the firehoses would soon destroy whatever was down there.

“Mom, what is it?” Clara asked, crawling to my side.

I handed her the watch. She read the scratched words, her eyes widening.

“We have to go down there,” I said, standing up and brushing the wet soot from my coat.

“Are you insane?” Leo shouted, scrambling to his feet. “The building is collapsing! The fire department is right down there. We need to go down the fire escape and turn ourselves in!”

“If we go to the police now, Leo, the Russians will kill Sarah before morning,” I said, my voice hardening into steel. “We need leverage. We need whatever is in that basement.”

“I’m coming with you,” Clara said immediately.

I shook my head. “No. You stay here with Leo. If I’m not back in ten minutes, go down the fire escape and tell the police everything.”

Before either of them could argue, I ran toward the heavy steel rooftop access door.

It was unlocked.

I pulled it open and plunged into the dark stairwell.

The heat inside the stairwell was oppressive, but the smoke was relatively thin, venting upward toward the roof. I hurried down the concrete steps, passing the second floor and the first floor, where the metal fire doors were blistering with heat from the dining room inferno.

I kept going, down into the basement.

The air down here was freezing, smelling of damp earth and old wine. Emergency battery-operated lights cast eerie, green glows along the concrete walls.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking down a long, narrow hallway lined with locked storage doors.

“Hello?” I called out, my voice echoing in the dark.

No answer.

I began walking down the hall, checking the handles of the heavy wooden doors. Locked. Locked. Locked.

At the very end of the hallway was a heavy steel door, unlike the others. It looked like a bank vault door, thick and imposing.

And it was slightly ajar.

Answer one. Matteo hadn’t just bought this building to hide his money in a fancy restaurant. He had bought it because it already had a fortified vault in the basement.

I pushed the heavy steel door open. It creaked loudly on its hinges.

Inside, the room was dimly lit by a single, swinging overhead bulb. The walls were lined with metal shelving units, but they were entirely empty.

In the center of the room sat a single, wooden table.

And on that table was an old, beat-up leather briefcase.

I walked slowly into the room, my heart pounding. I reached out and popped the brass latches of the briefcase.

I opened it.

I gasped, covering my mouth.

The briefcase was filled to the brim with neatly bound stacks of crisp, hundred-dollar bills. Millions of dollars.

But it wasn’t the money that made the room spin.

Resting on top of the cash was a stack of yellowed, handwritten recipe cards.

My mother’s recipes.

The ones I thought had burned in the 1993 fire.

Open two. If Matteo had stolen these, why put them in the vault with the money?

Suddenly, the heavy steel door slammed shut behind me with a deafening CLANG.

I spun around, terrified.

Standing in the shadows near the door, holding a heavy iron crowbar, was Sabrina.

Her blonde hair was matted with soot, her red dress torn and stained. She was breathing heavily, a wild, frantic look in her eyes.

“Sabrina?” I breathed. “You didn’t run?”

“I couldn’t,” she whispered, stepping into the dim light. “Matteo told me about this vault. He told me it held his exit strategy. Five million in cash.”

She looked at the briefcase on the table, her eyes filled with desperate greed.

“I gave him fourteen months of my life, Elena,” Sabrina said, raising the crowbar slightly. “He lied to me. He used me. I’m not walking away with nothing.”

“You scratched the watch,” I realized. “You wanted me to come down here. Why?”

“Because I don’t know the combination to the secondary safe,” Sabrina said, pointing to a small, digital keypad embedded in the concrete wall behind the table. “But Matteo said the code was the only date he ever truly regretted.”

She took a step toward me.

“You’re his wife. You know the date. Open the safe, Elena. I take whatever is inside, and I take the cash. You can keep the recipes.”

I stared at the young woman I had saved from Don Rossi just twenty minutes ago. The fear in her was gone, replaced by the exact same ruthless greed that had infected my husband.

“And if I don’t know the code?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.

Sabrina tightened her grip on the crowbar.

“Then I lock this steel door from the outside, and I let you burn when the fire breaches the basement.”

I looked at the digital keypad on the wall.

The only date he ever truly regretted.

I walked past Sabrina, turning my back to her weapon, and stepped up to the keypad.

I didn’t type our anniversary. I didn’t type the birthdays of our children.

I typed: 0-2-1-4.

The exact time my father died.

The keypad beeped green. The small concrete door popped open.

I reached inside the dark hole.

My fingers brushed against something hard and metallic.