Chapter 2 - The Woman the Mafia Boss Never Forgot
Dante read the letter three times.
Each reading left him colder.
Rosa stood opposite him, her cheek swelling beneath the restaurant's warm chandelier light, wondering whether she had made the greatest mistake of her adult life by showing it to him.
The message was short.
It informed her that their relationship had been a temporary distraction. It stated that Dante had no intention of building a future with someone from her background. It instructed her never to contact him, his businesses, or his family again.
At the bottom was his signature.
Almost perfect.
Almost.
Dante recognized the forgery immediately.
There was something wrong with the capital M.
He had written his surname the same way since childhood, dragging the final stroke backward in a habit inherited from his grandfather.
Whoever had produced the letter had missed that detail.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
Rosa laughed bitterly.
"That's what you want to know?"
"Who delivered it?"
"One of your men."
"Which one?"
"I don't remember."
"Think."
Her expression hardened.
"Don't give me orders."
Dante immediately stopped.
A look of regret crossed his face.
"You're right. I'm sorry."
He folded the letter carefully.
"Someone wanted you to believe I abandoned you."
Rosa shook her head.
"Don't."
"Rosa—"
"Don't turn this into another story about enemies and business and things I supposedly wouldn't understand."
He watched her for a long moment.
Then he said something that made her heart ache.
"I looked for you."
She stared at him.
"What?"
"For almost two years."
Rosa's fingers tightened around the napkin.
"That's impossible."
"You disappeared. Your apartment was empty. Your telephone number stopped working. When I went to the diner where you worked, the manager told me you'd moved out of state."
"I never left Chicago."
Dante's jaw tightened.
"Then somebody lied to both of us."
Before she could answer, two uniformed officers entered the restaurant.
The manager hurried toward them.
Victor straightened his jacket and immediately began talking.
"Officers, thank God. This employee has been harassing me, and now Mr. Moretti is making threats."
Dante turned.
"There's security footage."
The manager looked uncomfortable.
"The cameras above the dining room have been malfunctioning, Mr. Moretti."
A small, dangerous silence followed.
"Since when?"
"Well, I'm not exactly—"
"Since when?"
"Yesterday morning."
Rosa felt something unpleasant settle in her stomach.
The cameras had worked perfectly during her shift the previous evening. She remembered because a supervisor had used them to check whether a customer had accidentally left a diamond bracelet beneath a booth.
Victor folded his arms.
"Conveniently, there's no evidence."
"There are witnesses," Dante answered.
Victor smiled.
"Then let them speak."
Nobody volunteered.
The officers exchanged glances.
Rosa had expected humiliation.
She had not expected the room to pretend it had seen nothing.
Then a young woman stood near the windows.
She wore a simple green dress and held her phone with both hands.
"I recorded it."
Every head turned.
Victor's expression transformed.
"What did you say?"
"My name is Natalie Brooks. I was filming my anniversary dinner when you started shouting."
She approached the officers.
"And my camera caught everything."
Victor took a step toward her.
Dante moved slightly into his path.
"Stay where you are."
Natalie handed the recording to the nearest officer.
On the screen, Victor's voice rang clearly through the restaurant.
On your knees.
Then came the slap.
Rosa could not watch.
She lowered her eyes.
Dante noticed.
"You don't have to look," he whispered.
The police took statements.
Victor's lawyer was summoned.
Restaurant guests gradually recovered their voices, many suddenly eager to explain that they had been horrified all along.
Rosa found their delayed courage more exhausting than their earlier silence.
When an officer asked whether she wanted to make a formal complaint, she hesitated only long enough to take one steadying breath.
"Yes."
Victor stared at her.
"You'll regret this."
She looked directly back.
"Maybe. But I'm still doing it."
Dante did not interfere.
He only asked whether she wanted a lawyer to explain her options.
She declined.
For once, she wanted her own words to be enough.
Forty minutes later, Rosa sat inside the restaurant's empty employee lounge with a cold compress against her cheek.
Dante stood near the doorway.
He had dismissed his bodyguards to the hallway.
Without the watchful crowd, he appeared different.
Less like the feared businessman whose name made conversations stop.
More like the man she remembered.
The man who used to bring her terrible coffee because he could never remember she took two sugars.
The man who had once driven across Chicago at two in the morning because she mentioned wanting blueberry pancakes.
The man who had kissed her forehead in a hospital corridor and promised he would come back.
She hated how much she remembered.
"Can I sit?" he asked.
She nodded.
He chose the chair opposite her, deliberately leaving space between them.
"How is your cheek?"
"I've had better evenings."
A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth.
"You're still doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Making jokes when something hurts."
Rosa looked away.
For several moments, neither spoke.
Then Dante asked, "Why are you working here?"
"Because restaurants generally employ waitresses."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant."
She removed the compress.
"My mother has been sick. Her insurance doesn't cover everything. My apartment doesn't pay for itself. And contrary to what some people believe, being connected to a wealthy man seven years ago doesn't provide lifelong financial security."
Dante accepted the criticism without defending himself.
"Your mother. Margaret?"
Rosa looked up, surprised he remembered.
"Yes."
"Is she all right?"
"No."
The single word was harder to say than she expected.
"She had another surgery last spring. Then complications. She's in rehabilitation now."
Dante leaned forward.
"I can help."
"No."
"Rosa—"
"I said no."
He sat back.
She looked at his hands.
There was a tiny white scar across the knuckle of his right thumb.
She remembered that scar.
It had happened when he accidentally broke a glass while trying to prepare dinner for her.
Seven years, and some memories had survived untouched.
"What happened that morning?" he asked.
Rosa closed her eyes.
She knew exactly which morning he meant.
April 17.
Seven years earlier.
She had been twenty years old, working two jobs, and struggling through her second year at community college.
Dante had been thirty-three.
They had met at Saint Agnes Hospital, where Rosa volunteered several evenings each week.
His mother, Elena Moretti, was undergoing treatment.
Dante had spent almost every night beside her.
The first time Rosa saw him, he was sitting alone in a corridor, staring at a vending machine that had swallowed his last five-dollar bill.
She had bought him a sandwich.
He offered her fifty dollars in return.
She told him to stop being ridiculous.
Three weeks later, Elena had introduced Rosa to her son as "the only woman in Chicago who isn't impressed by your expensive shoes."
Their friendship developed slowly.
After Elena's condition improved, Dante began finding reasons to appear wherever Rosa happened to be.
Coffee became dinner.
Dinner became late-night walks.
By spring, she had fallen hopelessly in love with him.
And he had promised to tell his family about their relationship.
"That morning," Rosa said, returning to the present, "I waited at the train station."
Dante's eyes narrowed.
"What train station?"
"Union Station. We were supposed to leave for Wisconsin. Remember?"
He stared at her.
"Rosa, I was in Milwaukee that morning."
She went still.
"What?"
"My uncle called at six. He said my mother had been transferred to a specialist there. I left immediately."
"Your mother wasn't in Milwaukee."
"I know that now. She was at home. Nobody had transferred her."
Rosa felt the room tilt.
Dante continued carefully.
"When I returned, Carlo told me you'd ended things. He said you received an offer to study in California and didn't want anything more to do with me."
Rosa shook her head.
"That's a lie."
"I believe you."
"No, you don't understand. Your uncle came to see me."
Dante's entire posture changed.
"When?"
"The night before I received that letter."
"What did he say?"
Rosa remembered a black Mercedes parked outside her apartment building.
A silver-haired man sitting beneath a streetlight.
An envelope containing ten thousand dollars.
She had refused it.
Carlo Moretti had not appeared offended.
He had simply smiled and said that young women occasionally mistook attention for commitment.
And then he had mentioned Rosa's father.
Her father, who had died in what police called an unfortunate construction-site accident three months earlier.
"He told me," Rosa said slowly, "that my father had been involved in something illegal before he died."
Dante's expression hardened.
"What exactly?"
"He said if I didn't leave you alone, information would come out that would destroy my mother's life."
Dante said nothing.
Rosa looked down.
"I was twenty. My father was dead. Mom was barely functioning. I didn't know what to believe."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because the next morning, your letter arrived."
Silence settled between them.
Dante slowly stood.
Rosa looked up.
"Where are you going?"
He turned toward her.
"To ask my uncle what he did."
A cold sensation moved through her chest.
"Dante, please don't start a war because of me."
He looked at the letter.
Then at the faint red mark on her cheek.
"This didn't start tonight."
His phone vibrated.
An unfamiliar number.
He answered.
A man's voice spoke only seven words.
"Ask Rosa what her father left behind."
The call ended.
Dante looked toward the employee lounge door.
Outside, one of his bodyguards approached with a grave expression.
"Boss, there's something you need to see."
"What?"
The man held out a photograph.
It showed Rosa entering the Grand Aurelia that afternoon.
Taken from across the street.
May you like
On the back, someone had written:
THE BELLAMY GIRL HAS FINALLY COME HOME.
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