CHAPTER TEN
GABE
The last mourner leaves at six twelve.
Mina locks the front doors, removes her shoes, and walks into the empty chapel carrying Paolo’s flower cards in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.
I follow.
“You’ve been standing for ten hours,” I say.
“Nine and a half. I sat while Mrs. Peretti explained her grandson’s podcast.”
“Is that rest?”
“It was unconsciousness with eye contact.”
She sits in the last row. The chapel looks different without people. Smaller. The polished wood reflects low amber lights. Paolo’s casket is gone to the cemetery receiving vault; burial is tomorrow morning, private.
Mina sorts the cards into piles: family, business, suspiciously expensive.
“Victor’s flowers?” I ask.
“White roses. No card needed. His cologne signed them.”
I sit one chair away.
“You shouldn’t be alone with him.”
“Then it’s convenient I was alone with forty-two other people.”
“Mina.”
“You say my name when you want the argument to end.”
“Does it work?”
“Has it?”
No.
She sets down the cards. “Tell me about the account.”
“Not tonight.”
“You promised relevant evidence within six hours.”
“You spent those hours running my brother’s funeral.”
“And now I’m available.”
“Now you’re tired.”
“You forced me to marry you and discovered concern afterward. The order is confusing.”
The words deserve anger. What they produce is recognition.
I have been deciding what is best for her since before I knew how she takes coffee.
“The account was created seven years ago,” I say. “Joint emergency fund. Cargo seizures, legal costs, payoffs if one family needed to keep a port disruption from reaching the other.”
“Thirty-two million dollars in emergency money.”
“It accumulated.”
“From what?”
“Fees on sensitive loads.”
“Including bodies.”
“Including repatriations.”
She lifts one bare foot onto the chair and presses her thumb into the arch. There is a red line where the shoe rubbed.
“Who had administrative access?”
“Paolo, Sal, and Victor. Victor could not authorize a transfer, but he could create and amend load records.”
“So he could prepare the lock. He just needed one of their keys.”
“That was the design.”
“Biometric?”
“Paolo’s. Sal used a physical token.”
“Missing?”
“Since the fire.”
She lowers her foot. “You believed Sal took it.”
“He disappeared with three million the same night.”
“Three million. Not thirty-two.”
“Enough to run.”
“Or enough to make it look as if he ran for money.”
I look at the restored arch. Five years ago it was blackened brick and falling plaster. Mina rebuilt it, but one scorch mark remains in the upper right corner, too high to sand without replacing the stone.
“I was here,” I say.
Her body becomes alert despite exhaustion.
“At the fire.”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“You haven’t heard why.”
“Then tell me.”
“Paolo asked me to come. Bianca called him about the account. She said she found duplicated numbers.”
“What time?”
“Eight twenty.”
“The alarm was eight forty-six.”
“We arrived at eight fifty.”
Her laugh has no humor. “Four minutes after my sister was trapped.”
“Yes.”
“And you expect me to believe you came to help.”
“I expect nothing from you.”
She stands. “That is a remarkable sentence from the man who owns my deed.”
“I don’t own—”
“You brought a contract into the room with your dead brother and told me to sign. Don’t become delicate about vocabulary now.”
I stand too.
“Paolo went through the side window,” I say. “I pulled him out after the ceiling came down. The blood on my shirt was his.”
“You never told the investigators.”
“The investigators did not ask why two Corso men were behind a Vassallo funeral home.”
“You could have told me.”
“Sal was gone. The account token was gone. Bianca was dead. Paolo believed your father set the meeting to kill her and frame us.”
“And what did you believe?”
I think of Sal in the warehouse office hours later, soot on his collar, saying the debt is closed before Felix found the transfer.
“I believed Paolo.”
Mina looks at the high scorch mark. “Did you see Bianca?”
“No.”
“Did you hear her?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know she was inside.”
“Her remains were recovered.”
“I prepared them.”
The sentence cuts the room open.
Mina’s mouth tightens. “There was enough to identify. Not enough to answer anything. I had to—” She stops and presses the heel of her hand beneath her sternum, where the ring rests. “You let me think your family killed her.”
“Your family let me think yours killed Paolo.”
“Do not make those equal.”
“I’m not.”
“Then what are you doing?”
I do not have the answer in a form that survives speaking.
She steps closer. “You measure everything. Routes. doors. minutes. Measure this: five years, and you said nothing.”
“Silence kept the truce.”
“Silence kept you comfortable.”
“Nothing about that night was comfortable.”
“What happened after you pulled Paolo out?”
The question changes the direction of my anger.
“Fire crews came through the east lot. Paolo fought the paramedics. He kept saying Bianca had a blue ledger.”
“Blue thread,” I say.
“What?”
“She repaired her ledgers with blue thread.”
Mina looks toward the black mark above the arch.
“Victor arrived before the police,” I say. “He took Paolo to a Corso vehicle because he said the ambulance would create questions. I argued with him. Then Sal called the contingency office.”
“From where?”
“A public line near North Shore ferry.”
The name matches the place hidden in the recent audio.
“Did Victor hear the call?”
“He was in the room.”
“Did Paolo?”
“He did.”
“What exactly did Sal say?”
I look at her. “The debt is closed. Do not look for me. Protect Mina.”
I watch the meaning reach her. Sal spoke her name five years ago into a room containing Paolo, Victor, and me.
“You left that out.”
“It made Sal sound guilty and afraid for you.”
“Which one mattered more?”
“At the time? Guilty.”
“And now?”
“Afraid.”
Mina sits again because standing has become unnecessary theater.
I sit in the chair beside hers this time, no empty seat between us.
“Victor knew Sal’s priority,” she says. “He knew threatening me could move him. The marriage did exactly the same thing.”
“Yes.”
“So perhaps Victor wanted it.”
“He argued against it.”
“Publicly.”
“He told the captains it was weakness.”
“Which made you more determined.”
I look at her, irritated by the possibility that my rebellion may have been scheduled by someone else.
“You think Victor manipulated me into marrying you.”
“I think he understands that telling you not to control something is an efficient way to make you put both hands on it.”
“That is insulting.”
“Is it inaccurate?”
He does not answer.
“Poor choice of word,” she says, but her voice breaks on word.
My hand lifts before I decide what to do with it. I stop short of touching her face.
She looks at the space between my palm and her cheek.
“Ask,” she says.
The command is quiet.
“Can I touch you?”
“No.”
I lower my hand.
Something changes in her eyes. Not disappointment. Information.
She takes the front of my shirt in her fist and kisses me.
There is no hesitation in it. Anger, yes. Exhaustion. A deliberate test of whatever restraint she thinks I have.
I have less than she expects and more than I want.
I keep my hands at my sides until she pulls back half an inch.
“That was touching,” I say.
“I asked myself.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“I want you to stop being reasonable at inconvenient times.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Her breathing is uneven. Mine is not, which proves nothing except practice.
“No,” she says. “I don’t want you to stop.”
I put one hand at the back of her neck and kiss her again.
She tastes like coffee and the water she forgot to drink. Her grip moves from my shirt to my shoulder. I feel the ring between us, a small hard shape beneath her blouse.
The chapel is empty, but Paolo’s flowers remain. Grief is not absent. It watches without permission.
Mina seems to remember at the same moment. She pulls away.
“This is a terrible place.”
“Yes.”
“And a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
She touches her lower lip, angry with it.
“I did that to destabilize you.”
“Did it work?”
Her gaze drops once, then returns. “Annoyingly.”
She walks toward the chapel doors.
At the threshold, she looks back.
“Tomorrow,” she says. “You show me everything from the fire.”
“Yes.”
“Including whatever you left out tonight.”
I think of the damaged audio file in my private archive. Sal’s voice. A second voice beneath it that no analyst has been able to isolate.
“Everything relevant,” I say.
Mina’s expression tells me she heard the qualifier.
The door closes behind her.
I remain in the chapel, tasting coffee and a promise I did not make cleanly enough.