The Rabbit from St. Cecilia
Chapter 03 - The Rabbit from St. Cecilia
The rabbit had one blue glass eye.
The other had been replaced with a black button sometime before I bought it.
Its left ear leaned forward.
There was a pale line of old stitching across its stomach.
I had paid four dollars for it at St. Cecilia’s basement sale the winter Mia turned one.
She had refused every prettier toy on the table.
Reached directly for that rabbit.
Held it like she already knew it.
Lorenzo stared from the foyer.
“Elena made those.”
“Those?” Alessandro asked.
Lorenzo looked away.
Too late.
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said she made one exactly like it.”
Lorenzo took off his coat.
The movement gave him time.
“Your mother volunteered at St. Cecilia. She sewed toys for children.”
Alessandro frowned.
“I knew that.”
“Then there’s your answer.”
Maybe.
But the answer had changed Lorenzo’s face.
That mattered.
Mia reached for the rabbit.
I picked it up.
Alessandro came upstairs.
“May I see it?”
Mia shook her head.
“No.”
Lorenzo almost smiled.
Alessandro did not argue.
Good.
I examined the rabbit myself.
Under the right foot, nearly hidden beneath wear, were two embroidered letters.
E.C.
My stomach tightened.
Same initials as the key.
Lorenzo saw.
His face became blank.
Alessandro said:
“Dom.”
Dom stepped forward.
“Check St. Cecilia’s records.”
Lorenzo laughed softly.
“You’re investigating a stuffed animal now?”
Alessandro looked at him.
“I’m investigating your reaction.”
Silence.
Lorenzo’s smile disappeared.
Then he changed tactics.
“Nora.”
I hated hearing my name from him.
“You have a young child. You need stability.”
Alessandro’s eyes hardened.
Lorenzo continued.
“Whatever Greta dragged you into, it does not concern you.”
He spoke gently.
Almost kindly.
That made it worse.
“I agree.”
He seemed surprised.
I continued.
“But she framed me. That concerns me.”
He nodded.
“Understandable.”
“And she threatened my job because she thought being poor meant nobody would believe me.”
His expression remained smooth.
“Also unfortunate.”
“And somebody scared her badly enough to do it.”
A beat.
“That sounds like her problem.”
There.
People reveal themselves in small sentences.
Alessandro heard it.
Mia yawned against my shoulder.
I said:
“I’m putting my daughter to bed.”
No one stopped me.
At nine the next morning, Alessandro, Dom, Victor Hale, and two bank representatives opened box 417.
I was not there.
I went to work.
That surprised everyone.
Including me.
Greta had been suspended.
Mrs. Alvarez temporarily supervised housekeeping.
My dismissal papers had been destroyed.
I needed the paycheck.
Life does not stop requiring rent because family secrets become dramatic.
At eleven, Alessandro sent for me.
I nearly refused on principle.
Then curiosity won.
Box 417 contained no money.
No jewelry.
Three items.
A ledger.
A cassette recorder.
And a photograph album from St. Cecilia’s.
The album explained the rabbit.
Elena made one hundred stuffed animals over several years for the church charity sale.
Mia’s rabbit was likely one of them.
Coincidence.
A meaningful one.
Not magic.
I appreciated that.
Then Dom showed me one photograph.
Elena at a sewing table.
Beside her sat Greta.
And a younger woman I recognized.
My mother.
I stopped breathing.
“Impossible.”
My mother, Ruth.
Dead six years.
Hospital laundry worker.
Quiet.
Never mentioned the Contis.
In the photograph she was maybe thirty.
Elena beside her.
Both holding rabbits.
I sat.
“Where did this come from?”
“St. Cecilia archive,” Dom said.
“Why was it in Elena’s deposit box?”
Nobody knew.
The ledger was worse.
Elena had been tracking payments from a family-controlled workers’ relief fund.
Money intended for widows of dockworkers killed on the job.
Small monthly payments.
Medical bills.
School assistance.
Over fifteen years, nearly eighteen million dollars had been diverted.
Not by Alessandro.
The transfers began before he took control.
They continued after.
His signature appeared nowhere.
Lorenzo’s did.
So did Victor Hale’s.
The lawyer looked at the ledger and went gray.
“That is not what it looks like.”
Alessandro leaned back.
“Then improve the view.”
Victor claimed the accounts were internal bridge loans.
Temporary reallocations.
Approved.
Repaid.
Dom had already checked.
Many were never repaid.
Victor stopped talking.
The cassette contained Elena’s voice.
Weak.
Recorded near the end of her illness.
“Alessandro, if you are hearing this, I failed to confront your uncle while I was alive.”
Alessandro looked down.
His mother continued.
“I told myself I was protecting your father’s memory.”
She paused for breath.
“I was protecting peace.”
Then:
“Peace purchased with somebody else’s hunger is only quiet.”
I felt that sentence.
So did Greta, standing in the doorway under supervision.
Elena named Lorenzo.
Victor.
Two accountants now dead.
She said Alessandro’s father, Matteo Conti, discovered the theft shortly before his fatal car crash.
Everyone in the family believed a rival crew sabotaged his brakes.
Elena did too.
At first.
Years later, she found the mechanic’s original report.
The brakes failed because a maintenance recall had never been completed.
No sabotage.
No rival family.
An accident.
My stomach turned.
Why would that matter?
Alessandro’s face told me.
After his father died, he retaliated.
Not in court.
Not with lawyers.
He went to war.
Men were hurt.
Some disappeared.
A rival family lost businesses, homes, lives.
All because the Contis believed Matteo had been murdered.
Elena’s voice broke on the tape.
“Lorenzo knew about the mechanic’s report before you retaliated.”
Alessandro went completely still.
“He knew the death was likely accidental.”
Silence.
“He let you believe otherwise.”
Because war consolidated the family around him.
Eliminated competitors.
Expanded routes.
And buried questions about the missing relief money.
Lorenzo had used grief as strategy.
Alessandro stopped the recording.
Nobody moved.
Then he asked Victor:
“You knew?”
Victor said nothing.
That was enough.
Alessandro’s hand curled into a fist.
I saw the old man everyone feared rise behind his eyes.
The violent one.
The one who solved betrayal by making people vanish.
Greta stepped back.
Dom tensed.
I said:
“Don’t.”
Every man in the room looked at me.
Maybe I had lost my mind.
Alessandro’s eyes found mine.
“Excuse me?”
I heard my own heartbeat.
“If you hurt them now, you give them one more reason to make this about your violence instead of what they did.”
His face hardened.
I thought of my rent.
Mia.
The clock.
How close I had been to being thrown out because someone assumed I would stay quiet.
I continued.
“Your mother left evidence.”
I pointed at the ledger.
“Use it.”
Silence.
Then something unexpected happened.
Alessandro unclenched his hand.
Slowly.
Not because I controlled him.
Because he chose to.
He looked at Dom.
“Call Miriam Cole.”
Victor’s face changed.
Federal prosecutor.
A woman the Contis had spent years avoiding.
Greta began crying.
Lorenzo, however, was not in the house.
Dom checked.
His car was gone.
Phone off.
And according to the gate camera, he had left at 3:17 that morning carrying a small leather case from Elena’s old study.
Whatever was in box 417 had frightened him.
But whatever he stole before leaving frightened Alessandro more.
Because Elena’s ledger had one page torn out.
May you like
The page covering the final year before Matteo Conti died.
And Lorenzo had taken it.
