The rest of it falls into place, and I stop hearing Lorenzo at all.
If Nico knew about this—knew the real will named me—then the men upstairs aren’t trying toopena vault. They’re putting on a show. A dozen guys sweating over a steel box in the study, loud and visible, so that when the families come asking what happened at the brownstone, there’s a story:we secured the don’s effects, we’re protecting the estate, this is what a son does.A performance for an audience that hasn’t arrived yet.
Or worse. Maybe Nico thinks the real document is in that box, and the whole point of the drill was to get to it and make it disappear before anyone with a notary’s seal could read it out loud.
Which means he’s known for a while.
I think about the meeting. Nico standing there white-knuckled. The old man might have broken it down for him right there. Right after I left. Might have looked his son in the eye and told him, finally, plainly, what the paperwork already said. Whom the chair was going to.
And a day later Nico had him shot in a basement and made it look like an act of war.
That’s the whole reason. He found out he wasn’t getting any of the pieces, so he knocked the board over. That’s all. Not a strategy, not a play. Except in our world the pieces are people, and one of them was his father.
Shit.
Yeah. He fucking dies. There was never going to be another answer, but it’s good to stop pretending there was.
I look at the page again.
Raffaele Adriano D’Amico, of Newark, New Jersey, my legal son in all the matters the heart can register, and inheritor in full of the operation, the holdings, and the responsibilities herein enumerated.
I close the folder.
I don’t let myself sit with it. If I sit with it, I’m no good for the rest of the day.
I tuck the folder inside my jacket. Close the vault. Put the rack back across the panel. I look at the basement once, like how you take in a place you won’t see again for a long time.
But the satisfaction I thought I’d feel isn’t there. It rumbles in shaky waters.
I remember how I left Bea.
“Let’s go,” I mumble.
“Where?”
“Home.”
I head for the stairs.
“I’ve got a war to win.”
29
BEA
The call comes at 1:27 PM.
“Miss Mendez, I’m calling from Featherwood Assisted Living. I’m so sorry to inform you…”
The person on the other end rambles on, but I only catch bits and pieces.Heart attack… Did everything we could… Quick and painless.
Abuela, the person who raised me, gone. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
When was the last time I even visited her? The guilt that joins the growing ache in my chest is devastating.
You were too busy with your new life. Getting consumed by Raffaele and his world.
I am the worst granddaughter in the world, abandoning her when she needed me most.
