🥂 YOU'RE MINE NOW

Chapter 06 - The Box Her Mother Buried

Elena slept for nearly three hours after telling them about the car.

Trauma had made her memory unreliable in places, the neurologist explained. She could remember details from sixteen years ago yet forget what she ate for breakfast. Some days were almost normal. Others disappeared entirely.

Isabella understood the medicine.

Understanding did not make it less cruel.

She sat outside beneath a red maple tree with a paper cup of coffee cooling between her hands.

Alessandro joined her.

For once, he did not sit too close.

"Do you believe her?"

"Yes."

"Even though you don't remember calling my father?"

"Especially because I don't."

She looked over.

He rested his forearms on his knees.

"At twenty, I was trying to leave my father. I was moving between apartments. Drinking too much. Getting into fights I should have known better than to start."

"Rosa said you're not your father."

"Rosa loves me."

"That wasn't an answer."

"No."

He looked toward the building.

"My father believed fear was inheritance. If people feared him, they would eventually fear me. It never occurred to him that fear can die with the man who created it."

Isabella studied his profile.

"Are you saying you aren't feared?"

"No."

A faint smile touched his mouth.

"I'm saying I prefer people have a reason."

"You realize that's not the reassuring distinction you think it is."

"I am beginning to notice you find very little about me reassuring."

"Your self-awareness is improving."

This time he did smile.

It changed his face.

Not enough to make him harmless.

Enough to make her notice he was a man beneath everything else.

That felt more dangerous.

Before they left, Elena remembered one more thing.

A bank.

She wrote an address in shaky handwriting.

"Daniel said if anything happened, Thomas should take you there when you turned twenty-one."

Thomas looked stricken.

"He never told me."

"He didn't trust you with the key."

Thomas winced.

Elena looked almost pleased.

"He knew you."

The bank was in Yonkers.

The branch manager led them downstairs to a private vault after Elena's identity was confirmed.

Box 317 had been untouched for sixteen years.

Inside was no money.

There were photographs.

Old account ledgers.

A cassette tape.

And a small brass key taped to the back of a photograph of Isabella at eight years old.

Alessandro picked up another photograph.

He went still.

"What?"

Isabella asked.

He handed it to her.

It showed a younger Alessandro sitting at her parents' kitchen table.

His hair was longer. His left eye was swollen shut. Daniel Santos stood behind him with one hand on his shoulder.

At the edge of the frame was Isabella.

Eight years old.

Pajamas.

Holding a glass of orange juice.

She stared at the image.

"I remember this."

Alessandro looked at her.

"You do?"

"I remember there was a man in the kitchen."

She closed her eyes.

"You gave me twenty dollars because I brought you ice."

"I did?"

"My father made me give it back."

"That sounds like him."

"You remember my father?"

"Bits."

Something softened between them.

Then Thomas found an envelope.

DANIEL'S handwriting covered the front.

FOR ISABELLA, WHEN SHE IS OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT GOOD MEN CAN STILL MAKE TERRIBLE CHOICES.

Her throat tightened.

Inside was a letter.

Isabella read it silently first.

Then again aloud.

Daniel wrote that Salvatore Romano and Victor Petrov had built a smuggling partnership inside Romano Shipping. He had discovered the accounts by accident. Antonio Romano agreed to help him expose it, but Daniel did not trust Antonio enough to surrender the only copies.

There was one sentence Isabella read three times.

Alessandro is not involved. If anything happens to us, do not punish the son for the father's name.

Alessandro looked away.

The letter continued.

Daniel had hidden the original ledger somewhere no Romano and no Petrov could reach without Isabella.

"The key," Thomas said.

Isabella lifted the little brass key.

"But to what?"

A knock came at the vault-room door.

Marco entered.

"We have company."

"Petrov?" Alessandro asked.

"No."

Marco looked uncomfortable.

"Bianca Moretti."

Alessandro swore quietly.

Isabella noticed.

"Who's Bianca?"

Thomas suddenly found the floor interesting.

Marco answered.

"Alessandro's fiancée."

The word hit Isabella with an irritation she had no right to feel.

She looked at Alessandro.

"Your what?"

"Former."

Marco grimaced.

"Depending which newspaper you read."

"You have a fiancée?"

"No."

"Does she know that?"

"Usually."

Isabella folded Daniel's letter.

"Wonderful."

Bianca Moretti was waiting upstairs.

She was forty, perhaps a year or two older, elegant rather than delicate, with dark auburn hair and a cream wool coat. She looked at Isabella, then at Alessandro, then at the brass key in Isabella's hand.

Her composure vanished.

"Where did you get that?"

Isabella closed her fingers around it.

"My father."

Bianca walked closer.

"May I see it?"

"No."

To Isabella's surprise, Bianca nodded.

"Good answer."

Alessandro stepped between them.

"Why are you here?"

"Because Matteo called me last night."

Everyone went still.

"What did he want?" Alessandro asked.

"Help leaving the country."

"Did you give it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Bianca's eyes moved to Isabella.

"Because he told me why Petrov suddenly cares about a waitress from Queens."

Isabella's stomach tightened.

"I overheard the shipment."

"That made you inconvenient."

Bianca shook her head.

"It didn't make you valuable."

She pointed at the key.

"That did."

Alessandro's expression darkened.

"What does it open?"

Bianca looked at him.

"I don't know."

Then she looked at Isabella.

"But Salvatore spent fifteen years looking for it."

A pause.

"And if Matteo knows she has it now, Alessandro isn't the person Petrov is coming to kill."

Bianca's gaze settled on Isabella.

"You are."

Isabella looked once more at the key in her palm.

Until that morning, the worst thing her parents had left her was grief. Now they had left her evidence, enemies, and a decision she had never asked to make.

She slipped the key into her pocket.