🎀 THE MAFIA BOSS WORE PINK—THEN SHE SAW THE BAD MAN

Chapter 06 - A Little Girl's Drawing

The transfer had not gone into Dominic's personal checking account. That would have been simple, and Dominic's life had rarely rewarded the simple explanation. It had passed through a corporate account bearing his initials, an old holding company he had used to finance restaurant renovations years before.

Judith spread the available records across the mansion's breakfast table. The amounts moved in three installments in August 2020. The last transfer was dated eleven days before the fire. All three bore an internal approval code assigned to Dominic's office.

“I never approved these,” he said.

“That may be true,” Judith replied. “But we have to establish who had access. Saying your name was misused won't make these entries go away.”

Rosa listened from the window seat. She wore no jewelry but her wedding band. Once she had managed every dollar in her late husband's small grocery stores. Dominic wished she would interrupt with a solution. Instead she sat with her hands folded, as if waiting for a sentence she already knew.

Emma had gone upstairs to settle Sophie for a nap. For an hour they heard nothing but the tick of a clock and the scratch of Judith's pen. Then Sophie appeared in the doorway clutching a sheet of construction paper.

“I made him,” she announced.

“Made who?” Dominic asked.

“The bad man. Mommy says you have to draw things you don't want to keep in your head.”

Dominic crouched to see it. The picture showed a tall stick figure wearing a gray coat beside a blue car. A lopsided bird perched on one finger. Sophie had colored his shoes green.

“Those are unusual shoes,” Dominic said.

“They squeak in the rain.”

“Did he talk to you?”

Sophie nodded. “At the school gate. He said he knew Daddy.”

Emma came into the doorway, her face tight with concern. “Sweetheart, we've talked about telling Mommy when someone comes near you.”

“I did. I told Miss Jenny.”

“You did right,” Dominic said before Emma could blame herself. “What else did he say?”

The child considered. “He said my daddy was a liar. I said Daddy only tells jokes.”

A small silence followed. Sophie had never known Matteo. She knew him through Emma's stories: the man who put sugar in spaghetti sauce as a joke, who whistled badly, who wanted to teach her to skip stones. She could not distinguish memory from love, and Dominic suddenly felt the terrible care with which Emma had been preserving both.

“What did he smell like?” Judith asked gently.

Sophie gave her a puzzled look. “Like the oranges at Christmas. The little ones.”

Marco checked the photograph again. He remembered Bruno eating candied orange peel during long stakeouts. That detail proved nothing by itself, but it narrowed an uncomfortable possibility.

After Sophie had gone, Emma took her notebook out of her pocket. It contained a calendar of the visits and messages, each entry dated. She had done the ordinary, disciplined work of a frightened mother who knew she might someday need to be believed.

“I didn't know who to trust,” she said. “Vincent came to the funeral and told everyone Matteo had been stealing. I kept thinking that if I gave up the box, they'd leave us alone.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Because Matteo didn't ask me to keep it safe for money.”

She hesitated, then told them about the little wooden box. She had hidden it first in a closet. After a break-in, she moved the documents to the home of her former supervisor. The key and watch had remained with her. A month earlier her supervisor died, and the family cleared the apartment before Emma could recover the papers.

“What's the supervisor's name?” Judith asked.

“Evelyn Shaw. She was seventy-four. She used to run the Harbor House sewing room.”

Rosa sat up abruptly. “Evelyn wouldn't throw anything away. Her daughter lives in Evanston.”

Within an hour they reached Evelyn's daughter, Beth, a fifty-two-year-old nurse with a practical voice and no interest in the Russo family's reputation. She remembered a small box from her mother's apartment, though she thought she had donated it with other household items.

“Wait,” she said after checking a list. “Not the wooden one. I put it in storage because it had a brass latch and my mother loved it. I can bring it tomorrow.”

Emma leaned against the counter, eyes closed. Dominic watched her collect herself without asking to be comforted. He was learning that offering protection was not the same as offering dignity.

Before dinner, Emma found Sophie sitting on the back stairs with a folded paper crown. The little girl wanted to know whether the bad man would come to the house again. Emma sat beside her instead of offering a reassurance she could not guarantee.

“We've told people who can help us,” she said. “If you see him, you don't have to talk to him. You tell me, or Marco, or your teacher.”

“Will you be scared?”

“Maybe. Grown-ups get scared too.”

Sophie studied her mother's face. “But you can still do things?”

“Yes. Even when I'm scared.”

The child nodded as if she had received a satisfactory explanation of gravity. Then she climbed into Emma's lap and asked for the pink hair ribbon from her school bag. Emma tied it around the crown, and they sat a while watching the last sunlight move across the kitchen tiles. Sophie didn't need a description of the danger. She needed to know that fear would not take away the ordinary parts of being five.

When Emma carried her upstairs, she passed a mirror and saw how tired they both looked. She also saw the pink crown balanced on her own head. Sophie had insisted she wear it. Emma left it there until bedtime.

Later, as the others prepared to leave, Rosa asked Dominic to walk with her in the garden. The evening was cool. Someone had removed the white card from the rosebush, but a torn corner remained caught on a thorn.

“You need to know something about that holding company,” Rosa said. “I asked Vincent to use it.”

Dominic stopped.

“Your father left debts you never knew about. Vincent said transferring the Harbor House money temporarily would keep your name off an investigation. I was afraid the family would lose everything.”

“You knew those women were paying into that fund.”

“Yes.”

“And you agreed anyway?”

Rosa's eyes shone. “I told myself we'd put it back in three months. I let him convince me we'd be able to.”

From the kitchen came Sophie's laughter, followed by Marco protesting that purple polish didn't match his suit. Dominic stared at the lit windows of his own house and felt a shame far older than the evening.