CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MINA
The message uses my father’s mistake.
Not his name. Not Bianca. A detail from the summer I was fourteen, when Sal backed the old removal van into Saint Mercy’s stone gate and made me promise never to tell Jo. The text includes the exact amount he paid the caretaker in cash.
Eight hundred and forty dollars.
I read the message in the locked prep room with my phone brightness turned low.
Saint Mercy maintenance chapel. Midnight. Come alone if you want Sal. Gate damage: $840.
No one outside our family should know the amount. The caretaker died two years ago. Jo knows the story but not the number; Sal made me hold the envelope while he counted it.
I draft three replies and delete them.
Prove he is alive. Too eager.
Who is this? Too useless.
No. A lie.
Gabe is downstairs in Jo’s office, exiled by my printed bathroom schedule.
I can walk ten steps, show him the message, and watch the building lock around me.
He will bring men, weapons, routes, and logic.
If Sal is truly there, he may vanish at the first Corso car. If it is a trap, men may keep me alive.
The correct decision is obvious.
I resent it enough to avoid it.
At ten, I prepare Mrs. Hanley’s hands for a morning viewing because her daughter remembers them folded, not open.
At ten thirty, I review a veteran’s discharge paper so the flag is placed correctly.
Ordinary work continues around the secret until the secret begins to feel like a private room I deserve.
That is how bad decisions become comfortable.
Anika calls about Paolo’s glass fragment. “Tint composition matches a limited run used in armored sedans from 2018 to 2021. Corso fleet had twelve. Ruggiero had eight. Victor’s mediation office had two.”
“Current locations?”
“One of Victor’s was destroyed in a warehouse fire five years ago. The other was sold.”
“To whom?”
“Leasing shell. I’m sending it.”
The shell name matches the abandoned Acura from yesterday.
Evidence says Victor. The message says Sal. My anger wants both in the same room.
I tell Anika I am going to Saint Mercy.
“Does Gabe know?”
“He will.”
“That was not my question.”
“I’m leaving a note.”
“A note is what people leave when they want the survivor to understand the decision after it can no longer be changed.”
“You spend too much time with me.”
“Send live location. Twenty-minute timer. If you miss it, I call Felix.”
“Not Gabe?”
“Felix listens before he moves.”
Hearing it hurts because it is true.
Before leaving, I stand outside Jo’s bedroom and almost knock. I hear her snore once, loudly enough to count as a warning.
I go without waking her.
Someone knows because Sal told them or because Sal sent the message himself.
I leave the note on Gabe’s desk.
That is not the same as telling him. I know this. I use the distinction anyway.
Saint Mercy Cemetery closes at dusk, but funeral directors have keys.
I enter through the north service gate at twelve twenty and park beside the maintenance chapel.
Fog lies low between headstones. My phone has signal.
I text Anika the location and tell her to call Felix if I do not respond in twenty minutes.
Better than going without a plan.
Worse than going with people.
The maintenance chapel is empty. A battery lantern rests on the floor beside an old cassette recorder.
I do not touch it.
“Sal?”
The recorder clicks.
My father’s voice fills the chapel.
“Mina, I need you to listen. Don’t call the Corsos. Don’t trust—”
The tape warps, dragging his voice low.
“—should have come back. Bianca found—”
A door closes behind me.
I turn.
A man in a black motorcycle jacket stands between me and the exit. Helmet off. I do not know his face. Mid-thirties, shaved head, scar under his chin. His weight stays off the left foot.
The shooter.
“Phone,” he says.
“You could have texted.”
He draws a pistol.
I place my phone on the floor and slide it toward him. The screen remains face down, Anika’s timer running.
“Where is my father?”
“Alive when this was recorded.”
“When?”
“Move.”
He gestures toward the rear door leading to the old transfer garage.
I count: six pews, two windows too narrow, one fire extinguisher, altar rail, lantern. The funeral director’s key ring in my coat pocket has seventeen keys and a four-inch brass handle.
“If you intend to kill me,” I say, “the chapel is easier to clean than the garage.”
“You’d know.”
“Yes.”
He does not like that answer. People expect fear to make experts less practical.
I move toward the back.
At the third pew, I stumble deliberately and catch the rail. He steps closer, weapon angled down.
I throw the battery lantern at his face.
It hits his shoulder. Enough.
I drive the brass key handle into his injured left knee. He curses and fires. The shot breaks plaster above me.
I run through the rear door.
The transfer garage smells of oil and wet concrete. Two old gurneys lean against the wall. A rolling mortuary cot sits open beside a van.
The man catches my coat and pulls me backward. The seam tears where Gabe’s tracker used to be.
I turn inside the coat, leave it in his hand, and shove the cot release.
Its spring-loaded frame snaps upward between us. Metal catches his gun arm. The pistol skids beneath the van.
He punches me across the cheek.
The floor arrives hard. Light bursts behind my left eye. I taste blood.
He limps for the gun.
I kick the van’s wheel chock free. The garage floor slopes toward the drain. The old vehicle moves only inches, but inches are enough to pin his sleeve against the wall.
He shouts, trapped by fabric, not bone.
I crawl to the side door and pull the alarm.
The cemetery siren starts.
Headlights flood the garage before I reach my phone.
Felix enters with two men, weapon raised. He takes in the attacker, the van, me on the floor.
“Enthusiastic cousin,” I say. My mouth does not shape the words correctly.
“Stay down.”
“Already excelling.”
He secures the man. One of his men retrieves the gun. I find my phone and stop Anika’s timer at twenty-three minutes.
Gabe arrives one minute later.
He comes through the chapel, sees the blood on my mouth, and stops so abruptly the man behind him nearly collides with his back.
“Where are you hurt?”
“Cheek. Head. Pride.”
He crouches but does not touch me.
“Can I?” he asks.
I nod.
His fingers move beneath my jaw, careful, checking alignment. His face is controlled. His hand is not. A slight tremor travels through his thumb.
“Hospital,” he says.
“The recording.”
“Felix has it.”
“Sal is alive.”
“Maybe.”
“Do not say maybe to me right now.”
He takes a breath. “We will find out.”
Not I. We.
He lifts me after asking with his eyes. I let him.
Over his shoulder, Felix pulls up the attacker’s sleeve. A small tattoo marks the wrist: a freight-handler local once controlled by Ruggiero.
The obvious answer arrives too neatly.
I press my face against Gabe’s coat because the room has begun tilting.
“I left a note,” I say.
“I found it.”
“Not the same as telling you.”
“No.”
“You were right about the threat.”
His arms tighten, then ease when he feels it.
“And you were right about the choice,” he says.
The concession does not fix either of us.
It keeps the damage honest.