Chapter 2 - The Name He Wasn't Supposed to Know
I heard the refrigerator humming.
A bus groaned past outside.
Somewhere in the kitchen, a faucet dripped once every few seconds.
Those ordinary sounds made Marlene's words feel impossible.
“My father died in a warehouse fire,” I said.
Marlene didn't look away.
“That is what your mother told you.”
“She identified his body.”
“She identified what the police gave her.”
Anger came before grief.
It rose so fast I had to stand.
“You're telling me my mother lied to me for thirteen years?”
“She was trying to keep you alive.”
The sentence stopped me.
Marlene's eyes filled.
“Sit down, baby.”
“Don't call me that.”
“Norah—”
“Tell me everything.”
She took a breath.
“I didn't know Evan well at first. He started coming here late at night when you were a little girl. Coffee. Black. Turkey sandwich. Always the corner booth where he could see both doors.”
That sounded like my father.
Even in my earliest memories, he never sat with his back to an entrance.
“He worked security,” I said.
“He worked for the Vescari family.”
I laughed once because the alternative was screaming.
“No.”
“He wasn't a made man. He wasn't an enforcer. He had been in the Army, and he knew weapons and protective tactics. Dominic's father hired him after someone tried to kill Dominic when the boy was nineteen.”
I looked at the black business card.
“Dominic knew my father.”
“Your father saved his life.”
My throat tightened.
Marlene continued.
“Later, Evan found something he wasn't supposed to find. Records. Payments. Names. People inside the organization who were taking money from a rival crew and from corrupt cops. He told me that if those records surfaced at the wrong time, half the city would bleed.”
“What records?”
“He called it the red ledger.”
I stared at her.
“Where is it?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I know he hid it. I know he trusted two people with pieces of the truth. Your mother was one. I was the other.”
“What piece did he give you?”
Marlene swallowed.
“A promise.”
I almost laughed again.
Before I could speak, a memory came back so clearly it hurt.
I was twelve, maybe thirteen, standing in our apartment while my mother fed photographs into the kitchen sink one by one and burned them with a long match.
They were photographs of my father.
At the time, I thought grief had made her cruel.
I had screamed at her. Asked why she was erasing him. Asked whether loving him had suddenly become embarrassing because he was dead.
She had slapped the match into the water and pulled me into her arms while I fought her.
One day you'll understand, she had whispered.
I hated those words for years.
Now I understood enough to hate them for a different reason.
“She burned his pictures,” I said.
Marlene's eyes lowered.
“She had to.”
“Why?”
“Because men came to your building asking neighbors what Evan looked like. Your mother moved you twice in eighteen months. She stopped using the same grocery store. She changed your school route every week. You thought she became anxious after the fire.”
“She became afraid.”
“Yes.”
“And you let me think she was losing her mind.”
Marlene flinched.
“I let you think what she asked me to let you think.”
I looked at the black card on the table.
“Everyone protected me by making me ignorant.”
“No.”
“That is exactly what you did.”
Marlene's voice softened.
“Then be angry. You earned that. But be alive while you're angry.”
I hated that sentence because it sounded sensible.
“That's not a piece of anything.”
“He told me that if someone came asking about the ledger before your twenty-fifth birthday, I was to deny everything and get you out of Chicago. If a Vescari came and knew your father's name, I was to decide whether he came as a protector or a threat.”
“I turn twenty-five in six weeks.”
“I know.”
A hard knock hit the back door.
We both froze.
Another knock.
Three slow taps.
Marlene went pale.
I grabbed the heavy metal coffee pot.
She whispered, “What are you doing?”
“Improvising.”
The knock came again.
Then a voice.
“Norah?”
Young. Male. Ragged.
“Please. I need help.”
I recognized it.
The robber with the shotgun.
I moved toward the kitchen.
Marlene caught my sleeve.
“Don't.”
“If he wanted to kill us, he wouldn't knock.”
“That is not a rule.”
“It's a decent clue.”
I opened the door two inches with the chain still secured.
The boy outside wasn't wearing a mask anymore.
He couldn't have been more than twenty.
His left cheek was split open, one eye swelling shut. Blood had soaked through the shoulder of his sweatshirt.
“Please,” he said.
“What happened to you?”
“They think I talked.”
“Who?”
His eyes darted toward the alley.
“Caruso.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Marlene made a sound behind me.
It meant something to her.
The boy saw her reaction.
“Yeah,” he said bitterly. “You know.”
“Why did you rob us?” I asked.
“We weren't supposed to rob you.”
I tightened my grip on the coffee pot.
“Try again.”
“We were supposed to scare you. Tear the place apart. Find something under the register.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“I don't know. A key. A code. A book. Rourke said the old man hid it there years ago.”
“Which old man?”
He looked at me.
“Hayes.”
The alley seemed to narrow.
“Who told Rourke?”
“Vincent Caruso.”
The boy coughed and nearly folded.
I unhooked the chain.
Marlene protested, but I pulled him inside.
His name was Eli Mercer.
The older robber was Patrick Rourke, a low-level thief who owed money to the Caruso crew. Eli had joined him because his mother needed surgery and he thought an easy robbery could erase a debt.
It was the kind of story I would have called pathetic if he hadn't been bleeding on our kitchen tile.
“Where's the shotgun?” I asked.
“They took it.”
“Good.”
He almost smiled.
Then the lights went out.
Marlene screamed.
The diner dropped into darkness.
I heard the back door move.
A shadow filled the kitchen entrance.
I grabbed Eli and shoved him behind the prep table just as something shattered near my head.
A gunshot.
The sound inside a tiled kitchen was deafening.
I ducked.
Marlene crawled toward the pantry.
Another shot punched through a cabinet.
A man rushed the room.
I couldn't see his face, only the shape of a pistol and the glint of his watch.
He grabbed my hair.
Pain exploded across my scalp.
“Where is it?” he hissed.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
He dragged me backward.
Then a different voice came from the doorway.
“Take your hand off her.”
Every muscle in the room froze.
Dominic Vescari stepped into the dark.
He had taken off the charcoal coat.
Underneath, he wore a black suit and a white shirt with no tie.
He did not have a weapon in his hands.
He didn't need one.
Two men appeared behind him.
The attacker released my hair.
“Mr. Vescari, I—”
Dominic hit him once.
Not wildly.
Not dramatically.
One clean punch to the jaw.
The man dropped.
I stared.
Dominic looked at me.
“Are you hurt?”
“My electricity is offended.”
His jaw tightened.
“Norah.”
“No.”
“What?”
“You do not get to say my name like you know me when you knew my father and apparently everyone except me knew he was murdered.”
The men behind Dominic exchanged looks.
Dominic slowly turned toward Marlene.
“You told her.”
“She deserved the truth.”
“She deserved to survive long enough to hear it.”
“And I deserved thirteen years of lies?” I demanded.
Dominic looked back at me.
Something hard in his face softened.
“No.”
That quiet answer disarmed me more than an argument would have.
Eli groaned behind the table.
Dominic's eyes moved to him.
Eli went white.
“Please,” he said. “I didn't know who she was.”
Dominic took one step forward.
I moved between them.
“Don't.”
His gaze dropped to me.
“You're protecting the man who pointed a shotgun at you.”
“He's a terrified kid who made a stupid decision.”
“He could have killed you.”
“He didn't.”
“Because you talked him down.”
“And if you kill him now, what exactly does that prove?”
Silence.
Dominic's men stared at the floor.
Finally he said, “I'm not going to kill him.”
Eli exhaled.
Dominic added, “But he is going to tell me everything he knows about Vincent Caruso.”
I folded my arms.
“And then?”
“And then he walks away if he tells the truth.”
“You swear?”
One of Dominic's men looked shocked that I had asked.
Dominic didn't.
“I swear.”
I stepped aside.
An hour later, after the power returned and the police had been given a carefully edited version of the shooting, Dominic stood alone with me beside the register.
The metal drawer was open.
He ran his fingers along the underside.
“Caruso thinks something is hidden here,” he said.
“Is it?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
I hated that I did.
“Who is Vincent Caruso?”
“Someone my father should have killed twenty years ago.”
“That is not an answer normal people give.”
“I've never claimed to be normal.”
I looked at him.
“Did you kill my father?”
His face changed.
“No.”
“Did your family?”
A pause.
“Someone in it did.”
My eyes burned.
“And you don't know who?”
“I know who gave the order.”
“Who?”
“Vincent Caruso.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“Your father discovered Caruso had someone inside my family. A traitor. He was trying to identify that person when he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
I stepped closer.
“You said murdered.”
“I believe he was murdered.”
“You never saw a body.”
“No.”
I stopped breathing.
Dominic watched me understand.
“There is a possibility,” he said carefully, “that Evan Hayes did not die in that warehouse.”
For thirteen years, I had known my father was dead.
Now the most dangerous man in Chicago was standing in front of me telling me he might not be.
I gripped the counter.
“If he's alive,” I whispered, “why didn't he come back for me?”
May you like
Dominic's answer hurt more than anything else had.
“That's what I intend to find out.”
