Chương 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPHSofia did not flinch.
That surprised me.
Matteo Vescari had only been inside my bakery twice, and both times the entire room seemed to reorganize itself around him.
People lowered their voices.
Men twice his age suddenly found somewhere else to look.
Even the two suited men who followed him everywhere watched him with the careful attention of soldiers standing near a live grenade.
His sixteen-year-old niece merely crossed her arms.
“I asked a question.”
“You came here without telling anyone.”
“I’m sixteen, not six.”
“You have security for a reason.”
“Because our family is insane?”
“Sofia.”
“No. You don’t get to use the scary voice.”
I looked between them.
“Would someone like to explain why there’s a photograph of a supposedly dead Vescari woman standing inside my bakery in 1976?”
Matteo’s gaze shifted to me.
His suit was flour-free today.
Almost disappointing.
“Where did you get it?”
“It belonged to my grandmother.”
“Rosa Moretti?”
The way he said her name made my skin prickle.
“You know who she was?”
“I know the name.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He stepped toward the photograph.
Sofia placed her phone beside it.
The resemblance was unquestionable.
Same high cheekbones.
Same dark eyes.
Same tiny mole near the left side of her mouth.
“My grandfather said Aunt Lucia died in Sicily when she was twenty-five,” Sofia said. “He has a photograph of her in his study. I found another one in Uncle Matteo’s safe.”
“You broke into my safe?”
“You use Grandma’s birthday as the code.”
Matteo closed his eyes.
“That is changing tonight.”
“You’re avoiding the point.”
For once, we agreed.
I flipped over my grandmother’s photograph.
I had done that a hundred times as a child.
There was nothing on the back except an old photography studio stamp and a faded date.
September 1976.
Sofia tapped it.
“Lucia supposedly died in February 1977.”
Six months later.
My stomach tightened.
“Maybe your family lied about where she lived.”
Matteo’s expression hardened.
“My family lies about many things.”
That answer didn’t help.
I stared at him.
“And you already knew there might be a connection to this bakery.”
It wasn’t a question.
He hesitated.
One second too long.
I felt anger rise.
“That’s why you came here Tuesday.”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me again.”
“I came here because Sofia wanted pastries for her school fundraiser.”
Sofia raised a finger.
“That part is true.”
“But you knew the Moretti name.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He looked toward the old wooden wall behind my counter.
For the first time, the confidence disappeared from his face.
“My grandfather hates this building.”
I almost laughed.
“This building?”
“He has hated it for as long as I can remember.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It never did to me either.”
Sofia leaned closer.
“Until now.”
The bakery suddenly felt different.
The counter where my father taught me how to knead dough.
The scratched floorboards.
The ancient brass register we kept even though it no longer worked.
The framed menus from the seventies.
They had always been ordinary pieces of my family history.
Now they felt like evidence.
“Your grandmother never told you about Lucia?” Matteo asked.
“No.”
“Never mentioned the Vescari family?”
“No.”
He looked genuinely unsettled.
My grandmother Rosa had died when I was nineteen.
She had been seventy-one, sharp-tongued, stubborn, and capable of making a grown man apologize with one raised eyebrow.
She had told me hundreds of stories about the bakery.
But never about Lucia.
At least, not by name.
“There was a woman,” I said slowly.
Matteo looked at me.
“My grandmother used to talk about someone named Lucy.”
Sofia stopped breathing.
“What did she say?”
“Not much. They were best friends. They opened the bakery together, or at least that’s what Grandma implied.”
Matteo glanced toward the storefront.
“Bellflower opened in 1975.”
“Yes.”
“Vescari Imports bought three buildings on this block in 1977.”
I stared at him.
“How do you know that?”
“Because my grandfather still owns them.”
My blood went cold.
“This building?”
“No. Yours is the only one he never acquired.”
I remembered letters arriving when I was a child.
Offers to purchase.
My father tearing them up.
My grandmother calling someone an old devil.
I had never paid attention.
“Your grandfather tried to buy my bakery?”
“For decades.”
“Why?”
Matteo looked at the photograph.
“I think we just found out.”
The bell above the door rang.
An elderly man stepped inside.
Mr. Adler from the tailor shop next door.
He came every afternoon for black coffee and whatever pastry I was about to throw away.
He stopped when he saw Matteo.
His face changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“You,” he said.
Matteo turned.
Mr. Adler looked at the photograph in my hand.
Then he gripped the nearest chair.
“Where did you find that?”
“You know her?”
Mr. Adler ignored me.
He stared at Matteo.
“You have her eyes.”
Matteo became completely still.
“Whose?”
“Lucia’s.”
Sofia whispered, “You knew her?”
Mr. Adler lowered himself into a chair.
“I was seventeen when they opened this place.”
He pointed around the bakery.
“Rosa and Lucia. Two crazy young women with no money and one broken oven.”
My heart hammered.
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Why did nobody ever tell me?”
“Because your grandmother made us promise.”
“Promise what?”
His expression darkened.
“That when Lucia disappeared, we would stop asking questions.”
Silence swallowed the bakery.
Sofia pulled out a chair.
“Disappeared?”
Mr. Adler nodded.
“One morning Lucia was here. The next morning she wasn’t.”
“What did my grandmother say?”
“That Lucia had gone away.”
“Where?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
Matteo’s voice was quiet.
“When?”
“January 1977.”
A month before the Vescari family claimed Lucia died.
I leaned against the counter.
“What about the pregnancy?”
Mr. Adler’s eyes moved to the photograph.
His face collapsed.
“You can see?”
“She was pregnant, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“With whose child?”
He looked toward the windows as if fifty years had vanished and someone dangerous might still be waiting outside.
“I don’t know.”
“You do.”
“I never knew the man’s name.”
“But?”
“He used to come late at night. Rosa hated him. Lucia loved him.”
“What happened?”
“One night I heard them fighting in the alley.”
“Who?”
“Rosa and Lucia.”
“About him?”
Mr. Adler nodded.
“Rosa told Lucia he would get them both killed.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“What kind of man?”
Mr. Adler looked directly at him.
“A Vescari.”
Sofia frowned.
“But Lucia was a Vescari.”
“I wasn’t talking about her.”
The silence that followed felt heavy.
Matteo crouched beside the old man.
“Who was the father?”
Mr. Adler swallowed.
“Your family has repeated the same lie for fifty years. Maybe you should ask why.”
A black sedan slowed outside the bakery.
Matteo noticed immediately.
His body changed.
One second he was a nephew asking questions.
The next, he was the man people feared.
He stood.
“Lena, close the shop.”
“What?”
“Now.”
The sedan stopped.
Two men stepped out.
Neither was one of Matteo’s.
Sofia moved instinctively closer to him.
Matteo’s hand slipped inside his jacket.
“Back room,” he ordered.
“I’m not leaving my bakery.”
“This isn’t negotiable.”
“It absolutely is.”
Then one of the men outside raised something.
Not a gun.
A brick.
It crashed through my front window.
Glass exploded across the floor.
Wrapped around the brick was a piece of paper.
Matteo picked it up.
Three words had been written in thick black ink.
BURN THE PHOTOGRAPH.
I stared at it.
Then at Matteo.
“Still think your family secret is none of my business?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“No.”
May you like
For the first time, Matteo Vescari looked worried.
“It just became your problem too.”
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