CHAPTER 9
"The dead man who walks frightens you more than the living one who shoots."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I took the book to my room.
I locked the door and sat on the bed with my back against the velvet of the headboard. I opened it to the first page.
Memorie della Famiglia Moretti — 1887–1995.
Written by Luca's great-grandfather, Don Cesare Moretti, two years before he died. Cramped handwriting, old Italian, some passages in Neapolitan dialect I'd have to decipher later.
I skipped the text and went straight to the photos. There were sixty-three photos in the book. I counted them.
I started with the oldest ones. Sepia, weddings from the turn of the century, uncles with mustaches, wives in black dresses down to the ankle. I skipped ahead to the sixties—Don Vito Moretti, Luca's grandfather, young, in a casino in Sanremo. Skip. Seventies. Eighties.
And then...
The nineties.
The first photo that stopped me was from 1993.
A baptism—Battesimo di Raffaele Moretti, 12 maggio 1993, the handwritten caption said.
The family gathered in the garden of the villa in Posillipo.
I recognized everyone: Don Vito, Luca's father (Don Marco, who died in 2016), Luca's mother (young, beautiful, holding baby Raffaele), Luca as a boy of twelve in the corner of the photo, scowling at the camera.
And beside Luca's mother, in the center of the photo, smiling—my father.
Salvatore Rossi, thirty-five years old. In a light suit. Raffaele's godfather.
My father was Raffaele Moretti's godfather.
I swallowed hard and moved to the next photo.
Capodanno 1995, Capri. New Year's Eve at nonna Adelina's house, on Capri.
The photo was on the villa terrace, the sea behind them, everyone in tuxedos and long gowns.
Don Marco in the center, Luca's mother beside him.
Luca as a teenager, fourteen, in a tuxedo for the first time, with the annoyed air of a teenager who'd rather be anywhere else.
And behind him, a hand on his shoulder, smiling—my father. And beside my father—my mother.
My dead mother. A moss-green dress, emerald earrings I still have in my drawer today. Smiling. Beautiful. Alive.
My mother never told me she'd spent New Year's Eve at the Morettis' house on Capri. My father never told me he was Raffaele's godfather.
No one ever told me anything.
I kept going. Summer of '99. Summer of 2000. Summer of 2002. In almost every Moretti family photo from the nineties on, on Capri, my father was there. In half of them, my mother. In some, a black-haired boy who grew up photo by photo, skinny, with that open smile—Matteo.
My brother had grown up with them, my brother had grown up with Luca.
They were brothers of another kind. Weekend brothers, summer brothers, Sunday-dinner brothers, the kind Italian mafia families make when two capos decide their sons will be cousins without blood.
I reached the last photo in the sequence. Summer of 2015.
Estate 2015, Capri — gli ultimi giorni.
The last photo.
Matteo was in the center, twenty-eight, with the same smile from the photo in my room, only more tired. Beside him, Luca—thirty-four, six years older—not smiling, looking straight at the camera. A hand on my brother's shoulder, like someone holding on to something.
Behind the two of them, standing, not smiling either, arms crossed—my father.
The handwritten caption below the photo, which the great-grandfather had written while he was still alive, said:
The last days before the break.
And below it, in smaller letters, in a different pen—a newer pen, written much later, by Luca; I recognized it at once because it was the handwriting from the margin of the envelope:
Salvatore took Matteo out of Capri by force on August 19, 2015. That was the last time I saw Matteo alive.
I closed the book.
I sat on the bed with the book in my hands for a length of time I can't measure.
My father didn't break with the Morettis in 2019—he broke with them in 2015. He took my brother out of Capri by force. And four years later, my brother was dead.
I went to the window and opened it.
The bay was purple with late afternoon, the boats coming back to the marina, Vesuvius going gold on the other side of the water.
And somewhere in that city, Luca Moretti was sitting in some office, having known about that photo for years, having known about that date for years, and he'd waited for me to find it on my own—because he knew—he knew—that if he told me all at once, I wouldn't believe it.
He wasn't deceiving me. He was letting me find out.
And that was more violent than lying.
I sat back down on the bed.
I set the book on the nightstand and sat staring at the wall.
And then I heard the voices.
Distant—coming from the floor below, the opposite wing, through the plumbing or the old architecture of that house that carried sound through channels no one knew about.
I got up and left the room, out into the corridor.
The voices got louder near the service stairs.
I went down two flights and pressed myself against the wall of the corridor that led to Luca's office.
A meeting.
Luca's voice I recognized first—low, without warmth. Then Raffaele's, lighter. Then an older voice, rough—Acquaviva, I guessed, the bald consigliere with the glasses who'd had dinner with us. And a fourth voice I didn't know. A Sicilian accent. A younger man, maybe forty.
They were talking fast. I only caught pieces of the conversation.
"...prima del matrimonio..." "...non possiamo aspettare..." "...lui sa che noi sappiamo..."
I pressed my ear harder to the wall.
And then Luca said, clearly, in a louder voice:
"Salvatore's coming back Friday."
"Still before the wedding?" asked the fourth voice, the Sicilian one.
"Four weeks before. He's coming to get Valentina for a family lunch in Palermo."
I felt my blood run cold.
"And we let him?" Acquaviva.
"We let him." Luca. "We let him, because if he gets suspicious now, he takes her out of the house and we lose the hook."
"She's the hook now."
"Always was."
I backed away from the wall and went back up the service stairs with my hand shaking on the railing. I reached the room and locked it. I sat on the floor with my back against the door.
Hook.
I was the hook.