CHAPTER FOUR
GABE
At eight that morning, twelve men sit around my conference table and wait for me to declare a war.
Victor sits at my right.
Felix stands by the door. He has placed a file at every seat: Paolo’s preliminary timeline, photographs of the parking structure, names of the Vassallo accounts we know, and nothing about the strip beneath the watch.
I let the men read.
The east windows overlook four hundred acres of cranes, rail spurs, warehouses, and stacked freight.
My grandfather started with one truck and a customs officer who enjoyed cards.
Three generations later, Corso Maritime employs eight hundred people who do not know which contracts are legitimate and prefer it that way.
Paolo knew every foreman’s name.
His chair is empty at the far end of the table.
“Salvatore sent the message,” Ruggiero says. He is sixty, broad through the shoulders, and careful only when someone has a weapon pointed at him. “We answer before people think grief made us soft.”
“People?” I ask.
He looks around the table as if one might volunteer.
“The Vassallo house is finished,” Victor says. “It has been finished for years. The daughter runs a respectable parlor. The father hides. There is no war to declare, only a debt to collect.”
“Which debt?” I ask.
Victor turns to me. “Your brother.”
“The account.”
“Also yours.”
“Where is the money?”
“If I knew, we would not be here.”
He speaks as if the answer is simple. It should be. Paolo and Sal were the only signatories on the contingency account. Paolo’s biometric access is dead with him. Sal’s access was used at nine forty-eight to trigger the default, but no transfer completed.
Thirty-two million dollars is sitting behind a lock designed by two missing men.
“We freeze Vassallo operations,” Ruggiero says. “Put men in the funeral home. Make the girl call her father.”
“Her name is Mina,” I say.
The room adjusts.
Victor’s gaze stays on me. “And what does Mina say?”
“She says the marriage is Saturday.”
For a moment, the cranes beyond the glass seem louder than the room.
Ruggiero laughs first. Nobody joins him, so he stops.
“A marriage,” Victor says.
“Public. Ninety days. The property stays open. Sal either returns or watches his name disappear into mine.”
“You reward him with a Corso alliance?”
“I turn his daughter into the one place he cannot reach without reaching me.”
“And if he does not care?”
I think of Mina’s signature. Bianca in the middle.
“Then I have ninety days of access to the building he used, the records his daughter controls, and any message he sends.”
Ruggiero closes the file. “You trust her?”
“Not yet.”
That answer is clean. I hold onto it.
Victor leans back. “Marriage makes a poor interrogation room.”
“You should know,” Felix says from the door.
Victor’s wife left him in 2009 and took a house, a vineyard, and the better of their two attorneys. The corner of his mouth lifts.
“Your cousin mistakes survival for wit,” he tells me.
“It’s kept him alive,” I say.
The captain beside Ruggiero taps Paolo’s photograph. “And the medal?”
Victor told them.
I do not look at him immediately. “Still missing.”
“A Vassallo message,” Ruggiero says.
“Or a theft.”
“Wallet left, Saint taken? That’s not theft.”
“Then find the person who took it.”
Victor’s fingers rest against his water glass. He wears his wedding ring although his divorce has outlived the marriage by almost two decades. He says it prevents women from expecting honesty.
“You are asking the men for patience,” he says.
“I’m telling them what happens next.”
No one speaks after that.
The meeting ends at nine twelve. Victor remains.
Felix closes the conference-room doors but stays inside.
Victor notices. “Do we need a chaperone?”
“The contract has strong feelings about enthusiastic cousins,” Felix says.
“What contract?”
“Nothing you need,” I tell Victor.
His attention sharpens. “Marriage agreements become family business when they create family.”
“This one does neither.”
“Then why do it?”
I pick up Paolo’s file. “You already heard why.”
Victor watches me longer than is polite and shorter than is a challenge.
“Your brother would have found this amusing,” he says.
“My brother found tax audits amusing.”
“He liked difficult women.”
“Mina is not for discussion.”
The sentence leaves the room quieter than I intended.
Victor looks at Felix, then back at me. “Of course.”
He walks out.
Felix waits until the elevator doors close. “Very operational.”
“Find out which scene man told Victor about the medal.”
“I’m on it.”
“And pull every container ending in R7-441C for five years.”
He raises an eyebrow. “She gave it to you?”
“After signature.”
“That was before signature.”
“Now it’s after.”
At eleven, I return to the funeral home with two security teams, a network specialist, and one suitcase.
Mina meets me at the service entrance wearing a black apron over a gray blouse. A dark strand of hair has escaped the knot at her neck. There is a faint line above her mask where the protective shield rests.
“No,” she says.
“I haven’t asked anything.”
“Six men, three equipment cases, one person holding a roll of cable. No.”
“The exterior cameras are analog.”
“They work.”
“They record the back of people’s heads after they enter.”
“The dead rarely complain.”
“Someone living may.”
She removes her mask. The skin around her mouth is pale from hours beneath it. “You can place cameras outside. Hallways with client access require Jo’s approval. Nothing in the preparation areas, arrangement rooms, or apartment.”
“The contract allows immediate security upgrades.”
“It also requires reasonable privacy.”
“Reasonable is not defined.”
“I will demonstrate unreasonable if that man drills into my walnut molding.”
The network specialist lowers the drill.
I look at the molding. Hand-carved, old, too soft to hold the mount securely.
“Exterior and entrances,” I say. “Wireless sensors on private doors. No interior video without written placement approval.”
Mina blinks.
“Was that difficult?” she asks.
“No.”
“I hate that for me.”
She turns toward the prep room. I follow until she stops at the taped line.
“You can stand there.”
Paolo lies beneath a white sheet. His face has changed since midnight.
Color is returning carefully, not the bright false pink I have seen at rushed services.
Mina has repaired the damage near his hairline and softened the bruising around his mouth.
His features look less like evidence and more like my brother after a bad week.
Her tools are arranged by use, not size. Cotton, brushes, wax, cosmetics, suture materials. She moves without wasted reach.
“His mother chose the navy suit,” I say.
“It arrives this afternoon.”
“She wants the medal on him.”
Mina’s hands pause above a tray. “If you find it.”
“When.”
“That word is yours. I can’t use it yet.”
She adjusts the light. A dark fragment sits in a specimen container beside her notes.
“What is that?”
“Something from his jacket.”
“Glass?”
“Laminated, possibly automotive. Anika will look at it.”
“He was found outside his car.”
“This fragment was driven into wet fabric. It did not fall there while he was standing beside a parked vehicle.”
I step closer to the line.
“You’re saying he was shot through glass.”
“I’m saying the story and the body have not met.”
“Who is Anika?”
“Dr. Shah. Deputy medical examiner.”
“The certification came from her office.”
“Not from her.”
“You contacted the county after agreeing to share evidence.”
“I contacted the county before you decided I was a fiancée. Professional habits are difficult to romance.”
My phone vibrates. Felix.
No match in current Corso inventory. Old database needs archive pull. Also: none of scene crew admits telling Victor.
I read the message again.
Mina watches my face. “Bad news?”
“A missing answer.”
“Those are usually worse.”
Her gaze returns to Paolo. She places two fingers lightly against the sleeve near his wrist, not touching skin.
“He hid the number because he expected somebody to search him,” she says. “Whoever killed him knew about the phone and medal. Not the watch.”
“Or left it for us.”
“Felix said that.”
“He’s right.”
“I didn’t tell him he was wrong.”
She reaches for a fine brush. Her hand is steady.
“You’re good at this,” I say.
The words sound out of place in my mouth.
Mina glances at me, suspicious of the compliment as if it might contain a listening device.
“Paolo deserves good work,” she says.
The service door opens before I answer. My mother enters with Rosa and a navy garment bag.
Mina removes her gloves before meeting them at the marked line.
“Elena,” she says. “You can come in if you want. You do not have to.”
My mother looks at Paolo’s covered form. “I want to choose his suit.”
“We can do that in the dressing room.”
“Here.”
Mina studies her, then nods. She closes the instrument cabinet, dims the examination light, and moves the most clinical trays out of view. The room changes from workplace to family space without pretending it is not both.
Elena unzips the garment bag. Navy wool, pale blue shirt, no tie.
“He hated ties,” she says.
“He wore one Thursday,” I answer.
“Because you asked him to attend the port dinner.”
“It was required.”
My mother looks at me. “Not anymore.”
Mina takes the shirt from the hanger and checks the collar, cuffs, and back opening. “This will work. Do you want his top button open?”
Elena opens it with her own fingers. “Like this.”
“Exactly.”
“And the blue pocket square.”
“No,” I say. “He lost it.”
“He did not lose it. He gave it to a woman crying at Anthony Bellone’s wedding.”
“That was a funeral.”
“Then why was there dancing?”
“Anthony had specific instructions,” Mina says. “His family honored them.”
My mother touches the shirt cuff. “Paolo danced.”
“Badly,” Rosa adds.
The three women smile.
I remember that service. Paolo pulling a widow’s eighty-year-old mother onto the floor while an accordion played in a visitation room. I spent the song telling him it was inappropriate. He spent it making sure the old woman laughed.
Mina sees the memory arrive.
“Tell me how he wore his hair,” she says to Elena.
“Back, but not flat. He used too much product.”
“He used none,” I say.
“You think soap is a styling product,” my mother replies.
Mina hands her a small comb. “Show me.”
Elena steps to Paolo. Her hand stops several inches above his hair.
“May I?” she asks.
“Yes. He is safe to touch.”
My mother combs the front once and cries without changing her expression.
I move toward her.
Mina does too, then stops. She lets Elena choose.
My mother reaches for me.
I stand beside her while she finishes.
“There,” she says. “He looks like himself.”
Mina looks at Paolo, then at Elena. “I’ll keep it exactly that way.”
Rosa takes my mother upstairs for coffee. At the door, Elena turns back.
“Mina.”
“Yes?”
“Whatever my son said to make you sign papers, I am sorry.”
Mina glances at me. “Which son?”
Elena almost laughs. “Both, probably.”
When they leave, I stay at the line.
“You told her he was safe to touch,” I say.
“People are afraid they will hurt the dead.”
“Can they?”
“Not in the way they mean.”
She folds the empty garment bag. “Sometimes what they are asking is whether they can survive the feel of someone who cannot respond.”
“You hear different questions.”
“It is most of the work.”
I think of every question Mina has asked me since Paolo arrived and the answer underneath the one I gave.
Who controls the deed?
Can you take my home?
Where is the audio?
Will you let me know the truth even when it changes what I choose?
I have answered the paperwork and missed the person.
“Will the bruising return?” I ask.
“Some may deepen by Sunday. I will correct it.”
“Will the lower wound show?”
“No.”
“Will my mother know?”
“She already knows he was hurt. What she needs is not proof I can erase it. She needs time with the face she recognizes.”
Mina puts on new gloves and adjusts the lamp.
“You can stay,” she says. “If you do not speak for five minutes.”
“Is that a request?”
“A professional condition.”
I stay.
For five minutes, I watch her work on my brother’s face and do not turn grief into a plan.
Not me. Not the contract. Paolo.
I look at my brother’s face and understand, with an irritation too clean to dismiss, why Sal might come back for her.