Chapter 2 - The Man Who Wouldn’t Leave My Kitchen
Vincent Costello should have gone to a hospital.
Instead, twenty minutes after twelve armed men tried to kill him, Chicago’s most feared man was sitting on a flour sack in my bakery kitchen while I cut open the leg of his four-thousand-dollar trousers.
“This hurts me more than it hurts you,” I said.
Vincent looked down at the ruined suit.
“I sincerely doubt that.”
Luca Marino stood near the door watching me like I was an unpredictable animal.
Two more Costello men guarded the alley.
The police had arrived, found shell casings, questioned neighbors who suddenly developed collective blindness, and taken away the man I had thrown.
Vincent had disappeared through my bakery before officers entered the alley.
I should have objected.
I had.
Nobody listened.
“Hospital,” I repeated.
“No.”
“You were shot.”
“Grazed.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Less than before.”
“That isn’t how medicine works.”
“I have a doctor coming.”
“To my bakery?”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
“You’re unbelievably irritating.”
“So I’ve been told.”
His mouth twitched.
I hated that he was attractive.
It felt morally inconvenient.
Then I remembered what he had said.
My father had been murdered.
I put down the scissors.
“Talk.”
Vincent’s expression became guarded.
“Maggie.”
“Do not ‘Maggie’ me. Twelve years ago, police told me my father crossed the center line during a storm. They told me he died instantly. You just told me somebody killed him.”
Luca looked toward Vincent.
Vincent nodded slightly.
Luca left the room.
That scared me more than if he had stayed.
Vincent leaned back.
“My father was Antonio Costello.”
“I know.”
“Your father worked for him.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Dad owned a bakery.”
“He also kept Antonio’s books for seven years.”
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“My father could barely use email.”
“He intentionally appeared less capable than he was.”
I stared.
Vincent continued.
“Joseph Russo handled accounts my father didn’t trust anyone else to see.”
“What accounts?”
“Some legal. Some not.”
My stomach turned.
Dad lectured me about parking tickets.
Dad donated bread to church.
Dad refused to cheat on taxes because, and I quote, “The IRS has no sense of humor.”
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“Why?”
“Because if Joseph was still alive, tonight probably wouldn’t have happened.”
I folded my arms.
“Explain.”
Twelve years earlier, Antonio Costello began moving parts of his organization into legitimate businesses. Somebody inside his circle resisted.
Money disappeared.
Weapons moved without permission.
Police raids somehow missed certain warehouses and hit others.
Antonio suspected a traitor.
He asked Joseph to create a private record.
A ledger.
Every payment.
Every unexplained transfer.
Every name.
“Dad agreed?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because my father once saved your mother.”
I stopped.
My mother died when I was sixteen.
Cancer.
“What are you talking about?”
Before my parents married, my mother worked at a restaurant where an abusive former boyfriend stalked her. Antonio Costello intervened after the man attacked her outside work.
“He got her away.”
“How?”
Vincent paused.
“I don’t know every detail.”
Meaning I did not want every detail.
“Joseph never forgot it.”
“So Dad worked for your father out of gratitude?”
“Partly.”
“And died for it?”
Vincent did not answer.
That was answer enough.
I turned away.
My hands began shaking.
I grabbed the stainless-steel counter.
“All these years…”
“I’m sorry.”
I looked back.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t sit in my father’s bakery wearing a suit bought with blood money and tell me you’re sorry.”
Luca reappeared.
His eyes sharpened.
Vincent only said:
“She’s allowed.”
That made me angrier.
“I don’t need permission to be angry.”
“No.”
He stood despite the injured leg.
“You don’t.”
For the first time, I realized how tired he looked.
Not weak.
Worn down.
“Who killed him?”
“We believed one of my father’s rivals.”
“Believed?”
“We were wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the man who ordered tonight’s ambush used a phrase.”
“What phrase?”
Vincent’s eyes hardened.
“‘End of the line.’”
I remembered the blond man.
“So?”
“That phrase was written on the windshield of your father’s wrecked car.”
My skin went cold.
“That wasn’t in the police report.”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“My father saw the car before police removed it.”
I stared.
“Who was the blond man?”
“Gavin Mercer.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
Gavin ran a crew for a rival named Sebastian Vale, a wealthy developer with political connections and a clean public image.
Vale and Vincent had been circling each other for years.
“But Vale didn’t know my father,” I said.
“Maybe he did.”
A knock came at the rear door.
Luca drew his weapon.
I nearly screamed.
“Could we stop doing that in my bakery?”
The visitor was Vincent’s physician.
Dr. Elena Park.
She was forty-something, exhausted, and entirely unimpressed by mafia drama.
“You were shot again?”
Vincent sighed.
“Hello, Elena.”
“That was not an answer.”
I liked her immediately.
While she treated him, I walked into my father’s old office.
Nothing had changed except the computer.
His wooden desk remained under the window.
Photographs.
Receipts.
Recipe notebooks.
A framed picture of me at seventeen wearing a chef’s hat too big for my head.
I opened drawers.
I did not know what I expected.
A confession?
A mafia ledger conveniently labeled CRIMES?
Nothing.
Then I noticed the bottom drawer.
It had always stuck.
Dad used to tell me never to force it.
I pulled.
Nothing.
Pulled harder.
Still nothing.
Then Vincent appeared behind me using a temporary cane.
“What are you doing?”
“Destroying furniture.”
“Need help?”
“No.”
I kicked the drawer.
It opened.
Inside were old baking catalogs.
Tax forms.
And one red recipe book.
I knew it.
Dad’s personal recipes.
He never let anyone touch it.
I opened the cover.
Flour dust.
Handwriting.
Cannoli cream.
Focaccia.
Sunday rolls.
Then something fell onto the desk.
A photograph.
Two men standing outside the bakery twenty years earlier.
My father.
And Antonio Costello.
On the back, Dad had written:
If anything happens to me, trust the son who refuses the crown.
I read it twice.
Then looked at Vincent.
“The son who refuses the crown?”
His face had gone still.
“My father had two sons.”
I knew Vincent had a younger brother who died young.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No.”
Vincent took the photograph.
“My brother Marco wanted the organization.”
“I thought he died.”
“He did.”
“When?”
“Fourteen years ago.”
Dad’s note was written twelve years ago.
Two years after Marco’s death.
Vincent looked at me.
“There shouldn’t have been another son to choose from.”
I turned another page.
A small key was taped beneath the binding.
Beside it, Dad had written one address.
Union Federal Bank. Box 314.
Vincent whispered a curse.
“What?”
“That branch closed eleven years ago.”
My hope dropped.
“But the safe-deposit boxes were transferred.”
“To where?”
He looked at me.
“Costello National.”
I stared.
“You own a bank?”
“My family has investments.”
“Of course you do.”
Vincent almost smiled.
Then Luca rushed into the office.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We found the vehicle from tonight.”
“And?”
“Gavin Mercer wasn’t driving.”
Vincent frowned.
“Who was?”
Luca handed him a phone showing a surveillance image.
A man in a dark coat.
Older.
Gray-haired.
I didn’t recognize him.
Vincent did.
His face changed.
“Impossible.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
Vincent stared at the image.
“My father’s consigliere.”
“So?”
“He died eleven years ago.”
I looked from the photograph of Antonio to the security image.
Dead men.
Hidden ledgers.
My father’s secret life.
And a bank box waiting under the name of a mafia family.
Vincent looked at me.
“We open Box 314 tomorrow.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
His eyebrows rose.
“My father left it.”
“Yes.”
“So I open it.”
“You may need me.”
I stepped closer.
“You may be the scariest man in Chicago, Mr. Costello.”
“Maggie—”
“But that is my father’s key.”
I took it from his hand.
May you like
“And tomorrow, you’re coming with me.”
For the first time all night, Vincent Costello looked like someone had given him an order he intended to obey.
