Chapter 3 - The Man Who Knew My Brother's Name
The next morning, I woke to find Evan eating pancakes in a hotel robe that probably cost more than our monthly grocery budget.
"You look comfortable," I signed.
He grinned.
"I am processing trauma with maple syrup."
I sat across from him.
For a few minutes, we pretended everything was normal.
Then he asked, "Are we in danger?"
The question erased the joke from my face.
I did not lie to him.
"Maybe."
"Because of your job?"
"Because someone wanted access to Salvatore, and they used me to get it."
Evan's expression tightened.
"Then we leave."
"Leave Chicago?"
"If we have to."
I hated how quickly he said it.
He was twenty-one. He had a part-time job repairing computers, a community college program he loved, friends, routines. He had spent most of his childhood adapting to a world that rarely adapted to him.
I would not let another man make him rearrange his life.
"No," I signed. "We don't run yet."
The door opened after I checked the camera monitor.
Salvatore stood outside with two coffees.
He handed one to me.
Black with one sugar.
Exactly how I drank it.
I stared.
"Did you investigate my coffee order too?"
He signed, "You drank three cups during your shift last night."
"You noticed?"
"I notice things."
Evan appeared behind me.
"That sounded romantic," he signed.
I turned around.
"Go eat your pancakes."
Salvatore looked confused.
Evan repeated what he had signed.
Salvatore's eyebrows rose.
I wanted the floor to swallow me.
Instead, Salvatore signed, "Your brother is observant."
"My brother is unemployed if he keeps talking."
"I have a job," Evan protested.
"Not for long."
For the first time, the tension inside me loosened.
Then Antonio arrived.
His expression put it back immediately.
"Kendra is gone."
"Gone where?" I asked.
"Apartment empty. Phone disconnected. Car found near O'Hare."
Salvatore signed, "Airport cameras?"
"Checking."
Antonio handed him a folder.
Salvatore opened it.
I caught a photograph inside.
Dominic Rinaldi.
Silver hair. Expensive coat. The kind of face that looked ordinary until you noticed the eyes.
Cold.
Patient.
"He knows my name," Evan signed.
Salvatore looked at him.
"Yes."
"How?"
"Kendra probably gave it to him."
"And now what?"
Salvatore considered his answer before signing.
"Now we make it expensive for him to come near you."
I shook my head.
"No."
He looked at me.
"No what?"
"No mysterious mafia language. No threats I don't understand. If we're involved, I want facts."
Antonio almost smiled.
Salvatore did not.
But he did not get angry either.
He sat at the table across from us.
Then he told us everything he believed we needed to know.
Dominic Rinaldi and the Marquetti family had been enemies long before Salvatore became the head of anything. Their fathers competed over legitimate freight contracts, union influence, real estate, and businesses that existed in grayer areas Salvatore did not describe.
When Salvatore was eighteen, his mother had driven him home from a fundraiser.
A bomb exploded beneath their car.
She died at the scene.
Salvatore survived with burns, a fractured shoulder, and permanent profound hearing loss.
No one was convicted.
But Salvatore had spent fifteen years believing Dominic ordered it.
"Why now?" I asked. "Why use me now?"
Salvatore signed, "Because there is a vote next month."
"What vote?"
"Marquetti Holdings is selling a freight division. Dominic wants the contracts. I have blocked him three times."
"So he wants business information?"
"Possibly."
Antonio said, "Or leverage."
I looked at Salvatore.
"Leverage over you?"
His gaze stayed on me.
"That is what he is trying to create."
I understood what he meant.
Me.
Evan.
I hated it.
"Then stop caring," I signed.
Salvatore went still.
"What?"
"If he thinks we matter to you, don't let us matter."
The words hurt more than they should have.
He studied my face.
Then he signed, "That is not how caring works."
My breath caught.
Evan looked suddenly fascinated by his pancakes.
I turned away.
"I need to go home."
"Tessa."
"I need clothes. My medication. Evan has class. We cannot live in a hotel because some criminal knows my name."
Salvatore rose.
"I will not force you to stay."
"Good."
"But I am asking for forty-eight hours."
"Why?"
Antonio answered.
"Because we think whoever planted the camera had help from inside Mr. Marquetti's organization."
I looked at him.
"What?"
Antonio placed another photograph on the table.
The hotel loading dock.
Kendra standing beside a man I recognized from the restaurant the previous week.
He had eaten in Salvatore's private room with two other men.
"Who is that?"
Salvatore's jaw tightened.
"My cousin Luca."
The room fell silent.
Even Evan stopped joking.
"You think your own cousin is helping Rinaldi?"
Salvatore signed, "I think someone wants me to think that."
Antonio nodded. "The picture is too convenient."
I stared at Luca's face.
"Then why show me?"
Salvatore answered.
"Because you asked for facts."
That was the moment I realized why people followed him.
Not because he was frightening.
Because when I challenged him, he did not punish me for it.
He adjusted.
He gave me information.
He treated me like an adult standing in danger, not a fragile object to be moved out of the way.
I agreed to forty-eight hours.
By noon, Salvatore had arranged for Evan to attend class remotely and for our cat to be brought to the hotel in a carrier so expensive I refused to ask where it came from.
Before we left the hotel that afternoon, Evan pulled me aside.
"You like him," he signed.
I pretended not to understand.
"Who?"
"The terrifying deaf crime lord currently arguing with a florist in the lobby."
I looked through the glass. Salvatore was indeed signing sharply at a man holding a vase of lilies.
"He is probably discussing security."
Evan watched for three seconds.
"He is telling the florist the lilies smell too strong for the front desk."
I stared at him.
"How do you know?"
"I can see his hands, genius."
I laughed.
Then Evan's expression became serious.
"I am not telling you not to like him."
"Good, because I do not."
He ignored that.
"I am telling you not to confuse being protected with being loved."
The sentence hit me harder than I expected.
After our mother died, I became the person who handled everything. Bills. Appointments. Evan's school meetings. Insurance calls. Repairs. I learned to measure affection in usefulness because usefulness was what kept us afloat.
Evan knew that better than anyone.
"I am not," I signed.
"Okay. Just remember you do not owe him because he helped us."
I touched his shoulder.
"I know."
Across the lobby, Salvatore finished with the florist and looked toward us.
Evan immediately signed, "Also, if you marry rich, I want better Wi-Fi."
I shoved him.
Salvatore saw only the last part and raised an eyebrow.
I signed, "Nothing."
Evan signed behind my back, "She is lying."
Salvatore smiled.
I decided my brother had become a security risk.
At three, I insisted on going to the restaurant to collect my paycheck and locker belongings.
Salvatore did not like it.
He came anyway.
The dining room was closed between lunch and dinner.
The owner, Arthur Lang, met us near the bar.
He looked exhausted.
"Tessa, I am so sorry. Brett has been suspended. Police have been informed about the camera. We are cooperating."
I blinked.
"Police?"
Salvatore looked at me and signed, "You wanted facts. Evidence is safer with more than one person."
I stared at him.
I had expected a mafia boss to bury evidence.
He had turned it over.
Arthur continued. "Kendra is terminated. We had no idea she was involved."
I went to my locker.
Someone had already emptied it.
My shoes, cardigan, spare apron, and ASL textbook were arranged in a box.
On top sat an envelope.
My name was written across it.
TESSA.
I opened it.
Inside was a photograph of Evan and me standing under the awning two weeks earlier, signing in the rain.
On the back were four words.
THANK YOU FOR THE INTRODUCTION.
I stopped breathing.
Salvatore read it over my shoulder.
His expression became stone.
Then I noticed something else in the photograph.
Reflected in the restaurant window behind us was the person who had taken it.
Not Kendra.
A woman.
Older.
Elegant.
Wearing pearls.
Salvatore saw her too.
His face changed in a way I had not seen before.
Not anger.
Shock.
"Who is she?" I signed.
For several seconds, he did not answer.
May you like
Then his hands moved.
"My aunt."
