Chapter 1 - The Girl With Flour On Her Hands
The wind in Cedar Hollow did not care for a man’s pedigree,
it bit through the thin fabric of his coat,
reminding Rocco Castellano that he was no longer a king,
but a ghost haunting a sidewalk.
For four hours,
nobody looked at his face,
only at the rusted,
squeaky wheels of the chair he had bought for twenty dollars at a yard sale.
Women laughed as they passed,
their voices carrying the sharp edge of judgment,
tossing words about the town’s decay like they were throwing away trash.
A coin rolled into the gutter,
splashing into the muddy water,
and he leaned over slowly,
his joints aching from the unaccustomed stillness.
He picked it up with two fingers,
feeling the cold metal against his skin,
and said nothing.
Four days earlier,
that same man had owned the docks,
the loan books,
and a last name that made grown men straighten their backs in fear.
He had walked away from all of it,
no bodyguards,
no driver,
no phone,
all because of a letter a dead man had left behind.
The fortune he had built could buy a city,
but it could never buy the answer to the question Ray Kesler had posed in ink.
Then,
on that cracked stretch of sidewalk,
the rhythm of the afternoon shifted.
The smell of burnt sugar and fresh yeast drifted from the shop behind him,
and the heavy wooden door creaked open.
A woman stepped out,
wiping her hands on a white apron stained with flour,
and she didn't walk past him.
She lowered herself to her knees,
ignoring the grit of the pavement on her skin,
until her eyes were level with his.
Her eyes were the color of the West Virginia woods after a storm,
deep,
dark,
and terrifyingly honest.
She didn't look at the chair,
she didn't look at the paper cup,
she looked at the man.
"You've been sitting here since noon,"
she said,
her voice like a low chord on a cello.
Rocco felt a phantom weight in his pocket where his gun used to be,
but his hands remained empty and cold.
"The sidewalk is public property,"
he replied,
his voice raspy from hours of silence.
She didn't flinch at the hardness in his tone,
instead,
she reached out and touched the edge of his sleeve.
"I'm not asking you to move,"
she whispered,
"I'm asking if you're hungry."
He looked at her,
really looked at her,
and saw the exhaustion behind her kindness.
"I don't need charity,"
he said,
the lie tasting like copper in his mouth.
She smiled,
and it was the first beautiful thing he had seen since leaving Boston.
"It isn't charity if I'm asking for a favor in return,"
she said.
"What kind of favor?"
"Tell me your name,"
she said,
"I hate talking to a man without knowing what to call him."
Rocco hesitated,
the name Castellano felt like a mountain he had just finished climbing.
"Rocco,"
he finally said,
leaving the shadow of his surname in the gutter.
"I'm Elara,"
she replied,
standing up and extending a hand that was warm,
dusted with flour,
and stronger than it looked.
What she gave him next would cost her everything she had,
May you like
and neither of them knew it yet,
as the gray light of the mountain afternoon began to fade.
