Chapter 4 - The Words His Mother Used
Olivia had thought the photograph would make her furious. Instead, it made the room tilt. She sat down before Rina could ask whether she needed water. DAUGHTER AVAILABLE THROUGH DEBT. The words reduced two years of scraped hands, forfeited classes and frightening nights to an inventory adjustment. Someone had considered her not a person but a means of retrieving whatever Jimmy knew.
Rina put the photograph away. "You don't have to look at it again today."
"I do," Olivia said. "I need to know whose handwriting that is."
"We can ask investigators to compare it. We won't accuse somebody on a guess."
Back at the medical center, Vincent was recovering slowly from the cardiac crisis. His injuries still required expert care, and no one on the medical team was willing to give him a cheerful prognosis. When he requested a phone, the attending physician negotiated a short call instead of an argument. Vincent asked Leo to bring Olivia only if she wanted to come, then immediately regretted the request. It sounded like one more order from a man who had mistaken ownership for loyalty his entire life.
Rina passed along the invitation. Olivia refused it on Tuesday. On Wednesday, after giving her statement to investigators, she agreed to a brief conversation with her attorney present and a nurse nearby. She wanted answers from a man who claimed ignorance of his own estate.
Vincent sat propped against pillows, one arm supported and a blanket pulled over his chest. He looked smaller without the mansion surrounding him. Leo waited outside. Rina positioned a chair beside the door rather than the bed. Olivia stayed standing.
"You remember me?" she asked.
"You corrected me," Vincent said softly. "You told me your name."
"Your underboss pointed a gun at me."
"I know."
"You hired me to work off a debt. Somebody kept my ID, threatened my rent, and signed my name on medical deliveries. You say you didn't know. How many things happen in your name that you don't know?"
Vincent didn't answer at once. He watched the monitor beside him as if it could supply a number. "More than I wanted to admit."
"That's not an answer."
"No. It isn't."
She laid a copy of the disposal inventory on his tray table. "Did you write this?"
He read the words slowly. His face changed when he reached her surname. "No. But I recognize the instruction at the top. I asked Anton to preserve records from North Pier after your father's death. He told me Jimmy had been stealing and that the originals were under seal with our attorneys."
"My father wasn't a thief."
"I don't know what he was. I know I let another man tell me, and then I moved on." Vincent took a painful breath. "I'm sorry. I understand that doesn't settle anything."
Olivia almost left. Apologies from rich men often came packaged as conclusions, an invitation to close the subject before the expensive part began. Instead, she noticed a faded gold medal attached to the inside of Vincent's medical wristband. It was a small Saint Agatha charm. Her father had once worn the same saint on a chain, a gift from his mother in Palermo. Olivia pointed without thinking. "My grandmother had one of those."
Vincent touched the charm. "My mother gave it to me. She spoke Sicilian when she didn't want my father understanding every word."
"Mine did too," Olivia said. The language had lived in their kitchen, tucked between English grocery lists and a grandmother's sharp commentary on wasteful people. Jimmy had taught his daughter the insults first, then pretended to be offended when she repeated them. For a moment she heard his laugh so clearly that the fluorescent room disappeared.
Vincent glanced at the photograph again. "If I give my attorneys permission to release every file, will you let me arrange protection?"
"You can release the files without buying my agreement. And I'm not letting your men park outside my home."
He held up his uninjured hand in surrender. "Understood."
When she walked into the corridor, Leo was there with two bodyguards. He stepped toward her. "The boss wants you safe."
"What I want is for you to stop treating me like contraband." Her voice rose, anger catching fire after days of careful statements. In the Sicilian Jimmy had used when a shopkeeper tried to shortchange him, she added a sharp, unmistakable insult about men whose expensive suits couldn't disguise their empty heads.
Vincent, who had heard the exchange through the open door, made a sound like a cough. Olivia turned. Against medical advice, he was grinning.
"Say that again," he said, "looking right at me."
She did. This time the insult included a polite suggestion that he find the courage to clean up his own house. Leo blinked, unable to translate. Vincent laughed once, painfully, and pressed a hand to his ribs. The nurse appeared immediately and ordered him to stop moving. Olivia refused to smile until she reached the elevator. Then she allowed herself a brief, surprised breath of laughter. It was not romance. It was the absurd relief of discovering a man accustomed to being feared could take one honest sentence without making her pay for it.
The following morning Vincent signed a broad authorization for outside counsel to review relevant business records and cooperate with the investigators. He also directed the estate to stop retaining employees' identification and to suspend debt-based deductions while claims were independently audited. Rina told Olivia that written directions were useful but had to be measured against what actually changed. She arranged for affected workers to receive advice independent of the Costa organization.
The medical investigators found something troubling as well. The medication combinations merited review, but the infusions had not all been ordered at the recorded rates. A duplicate pump setting had appeared under a login assigned to a nurse who'd been off duty. That irregularity didn't prove deliberate poisoning; it established a discrepancy worth preserving. Vincent read the report and asked Leo to identify who had access to the equipment.
May you like
Olivia went home to a message from an unfamiliar woman. "Your father helped me in the North Pier warehouse," the caller said. "I kept the paper he told me to hide. I saw your name in the news. If you still want to know why he died, meet me where they put the blue boats away. Come with someone you trust."
The message ended without a name. Rina listened twice and said they should not meet a stranger in an isolated place. She suggested passing it to investigators. Olivia agreed. Then she searched the recording for background noise and heard a gull, a bell, and a child asking about a ferry. It was a voice she remembered from her father's last voicemail. The unknown woman had been standing beside him on the day he disappeared.
