🥖 The Baker Who Threw Flour at the Mafia Boss and Found His Secret

Chapter 12 - The Dead Woman in the Alley

Matteo did not move for so long I wondered whether grief could freeze a person upright.

His mother—Francesca Vescari—stood in the security footage wearing a black scarf and carrying the canister that had started the fire in my bakery.

She looked older than the photograph I had seen in newspapers, but alive.

Very alive.

Alessia gripped the back of a chair.

“No.”

Valentina whispered, “Francesca died.”

Lucia closed her eyes.

“Not died,” she said.

Matteo turned slowly.

“You knew.”

“I suspected.”

“That is not an answer.”

Lucia’s face tightened with pain. “After Marco died, I found payments to a private clinic in Vermont under an old family account. Initials only. F.V.”

“My mother was buried.”

“Someone was buried,” Lucia said gently.

The words did what bullets had not.

They made Matteo flinch.

Alessia sat down suddenly.

Sofia moved to her side without being told. The child put one hand on her aunt’s shoulder, as if grief were a chore children in that family learned early.

“Why burn my bakery?” I asked.

Lucia looked at me.

“Because Francesca knows what the documents prove.”

“That her husband had a child with my grandmother?”

“That Carlo Vescari forced her to raise a son who was not hers as heir while sending her own son into a lesser position.”

“Marco,” Matteo said.

Lucia nodded.

The dead brother.

The real legitimate son.

The man who died before he could inherit what everyone believed had belonged to Matteo.

Alessia covered her mouth.

“She hated you for something you never did.”

Matteo laughed without sound.

“Efficient.”

I wanted to touch him.

I did not.

Not because I was afraid of him, but because there are moments when comfort feels like trespassing unless invited.

He stared at the footage.

“Find her.”

His security chief nodded.

“Already working on it.”

“No. Quietly. If Rossi knows she is alive, he is using her. If he does not, she is using him.”

A woman who had faked death, hidden for fourteen years, and returned to burn a bakery did not strike me as easily used.

Valentina looked at me.

“You need to leave the city.”

“I’m starting to dislike that suggestion.”

“Good. You understand it’s serious.”

I stood because sitting made me feel like paperwork.

“Do you know what happens if I leave?”

“Possibly survival,” she said.

“Rossi keeps Lucia’s documents. Francesca stays dead until she burns someone else’s life down. Matteo marries you to keep two families calm. Sofia learns that truth is something adults hide until it becomes convenient.”

Sofia looked up.

I regretted the last sentence immediately.

But not enough to take it back.

“The bakery is gone,” I continued. “Fine. Walls can burn. Ovens can be replaced. But my grandmother kept this secret for fifty years because she believed there would be a day when somebody could tell the truth and survive it.”

Matteo watched me.

“You think that day is now?”

“No. I think that day never arrives politely. You drag it in by the collar.”

Valentina smiled faintly.

“I like her.”

“I don’t,” Matteo said.

His eyes were still on me.

“She is reckless.”

“I threw flour at you, not myself into traffic.”

“You are considering both.”

Before I could answer, Sofia spoke.

“My mom has another copy.”