A Dead Woman’s Handwriting

Chapter 02 - A Dead Woman’s Handwriting

Gabriel did not finish the stracotto.

He wrapped the recipe card in a clean paper napkin as carefully as another man might handle a photograph from a war. Then he told Leo to pay Benny ten thousand dollars for the interruption, the food, and the silence.

Benny protested exactly once.

Leo looked at him.

Benny stopped protesting.

Norah stood with her arms folded, watching Gabriel struggle to rise from the booth. The meal had put a trace of color back into his face but had not restored what eight days without food had taken from him.

He caught the edge of the table when the room tilted.

Without thinking, Norah stepped forward.

Gabriel’s hand closed around her wrist.

Every guard in the diner moved.

Norah froze.

His grip was strong despite the tremor in his fingers.

“Don’t,” he said.

“I was keeping you from falling.”

“I don’t fall.”

“You almost did.”

For half a second, something almost human touched his mouth.

Then it vanished.

He released her.

“Leo, bring her.”

Norah’s stomach dropped. “Bring me where?”

“My house.”

“No.”

The word came out before she could reconsider it.

A silence fell so cleanly that she heard rain tapping the glass.

Leo stared at her as though she had just volunteered to step in front of a train.

Gabriel studied her. “You don’t understand the situation.”

“I understand enough. You came into my workplace with armed men, frightened my boss half to death, ate my food, and now you think I’m getting into your car.”

Benny made a strangled sound from the kitchen doorway.

Norah continued because stopping would make fear catch up with her.

“I have an exam at eight in the morning.”

Gabriel looked almost offended by the existence of an exam.

Then, unexpectedly, he sat back down.

“What are you studying?”

“Nursing.”

“Why?”

“Because people get sick.”

Leo coughed into his fist. Norah could not tell if he was hiding a laugh.

Gabriel’s gaze returned to the recipe card. “Someone taught you my dead mother’s recipe four years after she died. I need to know who.”

“So do I.”

“Then come with me.”

“I said no.”

His eyes hardened.

Norah leaned closer. “And if you drag me out of here, whatever I know becomes whatever you force out of me. If you want me to remember things honestly, ask like a person.”

She had no idea why he listened.

Maybe because she had fed him.

Maybe because he had forgotten what refusal sounded like when it came without calculation.

Gabriel looked toward Leo. “Give her your number.”

Leo blinked.

“Now.”

He found a business card and wrote a second number on the back.

Gabriel slid it across the table. “Tomorrow. Noon. You call.”

Norah picked it up. “Maybe.”

“Not maybe.”

“Then you’re already ruining the asking-like-a-person part.”

This time, she definitely saw the faintest movement at one corner of his mouth.

He left five minutes later.

Norah stood behind the locked diner door and watched the SUVs disappear into rain.

Only then did her knees begin to shake.

Benny sat down hard on a stool.

“You told Gabriel Hayes no.”

“I noticed.”

“You corrected him twice.”

“I noticed that too.”

“You are either the bravest girl I ever hired or the dumbest.”

Norah took off her apron. “Can I be both?”

She slept for two hours.

At eight, she sat the nursing entrance exam with Gabriel’s face appearing between questions about renal function and medication dosage. At eleven forty-five, after walking three blocks twice because she could not decide what to do, she called Leo.

A black sedan arrived six minutes later.

The Hayes penthouse occupied the top floor of a building whose lobby smelled like marble and money. Norah felt underdressed in jeans, a sweater, and her one decent coat.

Leo met her at the elevator.

“You came.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I watched you tell him no.”

“What happens to people who do that?”

Leo pressed the elevator button.

“Usually? They don’t get invited back.”

The doors opened onto a quiet room of glass, dark wood, and city views. Gabriel stood near the windows in a charcoal shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. He looked marginally better. A tray beside him held toast, eggs, and coffee.

The toast was untouched.

Norah pointed at it. “You’re doing this again?”

“I ate half a banana.”

“That’s not breakfast.”

“I didn’t bring you here to discuss breakfast.”

“Clearly someone should.”

Gabriel stared at her for a long beat.

Then he motioned toward the dining table.

The recipe card lay beneath a sheet of clear plastic. Beside it were three photographs.

Norah’s breath caught.

Rosa.

Older than Norah remembered, but unmistakable. The same deep-set eyes, the same small, crooked smile.

The second photograph showed Rosa at perhaps thirty, holding a dark-haired boy of six or seven.

Gabriel.

The third was a newspaper clipping.

ROSA HAYES KILLED IN TENEMENT FIRE, the headline read.

Norah sat.

“Apartment 4B,” she said quietly.

Gabriel’s head lifted.

“What?”

“That’s where Rosa lived when I knew her. Building on Larkin Street. Fourth floor. Apartment 4B.”

Leo, standing behind her, became very still.

Gabriel’s voice went flat. “My mother died on Larkin Street.”

Norah looked at the clipping again.

“What number?”

“Building 117.”

A cold sensation moved down her arms.

“That was my building.”

Gabriel pulled out a chair and sat opposite her.

“Tell me everything.”

So Norah did.

She told him about her mother, Claire Bennett, who cleaned hotel rooms by day and worked laundry overnight. She told him how Rosa watched her between shifts, taught her to sew buttons, scolded her for putting ketchup on eggs, and kept a blue tin of anise cookies above the refrigerator.

She told him Rosa had a limp that worsened in winter.

Gabriel’s eyes sharpened.

“My mother injured her left hip when I was twelve.”

Norah continued.

Rosa never allowed photographs. Never talked about family. Once, after seeing a man in a black town car across the street, she had pulled Norah away from the window so fast that a glass shattered on the floor.

“She said some people think love means ownership,” Norah remembered. “I didn’t understand it then.”

Gabriel did not move.

Norah looked at him. “Who did she need to hide from?”

“My father.”

The answer came without hesitation.

Gabriel stood and walked toward the windows.

“My father, Dominic Hayes, ran the East Docks before me. He believed fear was the only reliable kind of loyalty. My mother tried to leave him twice.”

“And the fire?”

“He said it was an accident.”

“You believed him?”

“I was seventeen.” Gabriel’s voice hardened. “I believed what kept me alive.”

Leo shifted near the doorway.

Norah noticed.

Gabriel noticed her noticing.

“What?” he asked.

She looked from one man to the other. “He knows something.”

Leo’s face closed.

“Norah,” Gabriel said, “this isn’t—”

“No. He looked like Benny did when he was trying not to tell me you were mafia.”

Leo let out a slow breath.

Gabriel’s expression changed.

“Leo?”

The large man stared at the floor.

“I was sixteen when the fire happened,” he said. “My father worked for Dominic.”

Gabriel went completely still.

“What did your father tell you?”

“Nothing until he was dying.”

“When?”

“Eight years ago.”

Gabriel crossed the room so quickly that Norah stood without thinking.

Leo did not retreat.

“He told me the woman pulled from the apartment wasn’t Rosa.”

Gabriel stopped inches from him.

“And you kept that from me?”

“My father said Rosa begged him to. She had a second chance to disappear. Dominic was still alive. You were already working under him.”

“My father died eleven years ago.”

“I know.”

Gabriel’s jaw clenched. “So why didn’t you tell me then?”

Leo’s silence was answer enough to make the room dangerous.

Norah stepped between them before either man could decide what to do with his hands.

“Gabriel.”

He looked at her.

“Not now.”

Something in her tone reached him.

He stepped back.

Leo reached inside his jacket slowly and removed an old envelope.

“I kept this because my father made me promise to give it to you if Rosa ever contacted you herself.”

He placed it on the table.

The envelope was addressed to Gabriel.

The postmark was fifteen years old.

Gabriel’s fingers hovered over it.

Norah recognized the handwriting immediately.

It matched the recipe card.

Gabriel opened the envelope.

Inside was one sheet of paper and a photograph.

He read the first line, and every trace of anger left his face.

“What?” Norah asked.

Gabriel turned the page toward her.

Rosa had written only six sentences.

The last one said: Do not look for me. If Dominic learns I survived, he will kill the girl too.

Norah stared at the words.

“What girl?”

Gabriel slowly lifted the photograph that had been enclosed with the letter.

It showed Rosa standing beside a woman Norah recognized instantly.

Her own mother.

May you like

THE MAFIA BOSS WAS TOASTING CHAMPAGNE WITH HIS MISTRESS... UNTIL HE FOUN...

t

THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED HIS MAID STRUGGLE WITH A HEAVY MIRROR... UNTIL HI...

t

THE MAFIA BOSS WAS ABOUT TO BLAME AN INNOCENT MAN... UNTIL HIS MAID SPOK...

t

Claire Bennett was holding a newborn baby.

Norah.