Chapter 4 - The Recording My Father Left Behind

Mateo took the photograph from my hand.

For the first time since I had met him, his control cracked.

Not much.

A tightening in his jaw.

A shallow breath.

The kind of fracture only visible if you were already watching too closely.

“My mother never knew your father.”

“That’s what you were told.”

His eyes lifted.

I didn’t apologize.

We had passed the point where politeness mattered.

The cassette tape sat between us inside the metal box.

Old plastic.

No label.

Just a red dot drawn in permanent marker.

“There’s no player,” Mateo said.

“There is in the sacristy.”

He looked at me.

I shrugged.

“My grandmother volunteered here.”

That was only half the truth.

Lucia Mercer had practically lived in this church after my father disappeared.

Every Sunday.

Every Wednesday.

Every Christmas Eve.

I had thought grief made her religious.

Now I wondered if she had been waiting for something.

We found an old tape recorder in a cabinet beneath faded choir books.

It took Mateo three minutes to get the batteries from an emergency flashlight working.

I pressed PLAY.

Static filled the room.

Then my father’s voice spoke for the first time in twelve years.

“Tessa, if you ever hear this, I failed to keep you out of it.”

My knees nearly gave way.

Mateo grabbed the back of a chair and pulled it toward me without taking his eyes from the recorder.

I sat.

The tape continued.

“My name is Daniel Mercer. I married Elena Ferrante, Lucia’s only daughter. After Elena died, Lucia showed me what Rosalia brought from Sicily.”

My mother had died when I was six.

Cancer.

That part, at least, I believed.

“Rosalia kept financial records belonging to Paolo Ferrante. Paolo did not betray Marco Vitiello. Domenico Russo did.”

Mateo’s face turned to stone.

The static hissed.

“Domenico sold Marco’s travel route to the Bellaforte family, then planted evidence pointing to Paolo. Salvatore killed the wrong man.”

I closed my eyes.

Hearing it was worse than suspecting it.

“There is more,” my father said. “Sofia Vitiello found payments connected to the ambush. She came to me because she no longer trusted anyone inside her husband’s organization.”

Mateo whispered, “No.”

His mother had died in a car crash when he was fourteen.

Everyone in Chicago knew that story.

Drunk driver.

Rain.

Wrong intersection.

The tape kept playing.

“If something happens to Sofia, it was not an accident.”

Mateo stood so fast the chair scraped across stone.

I reached for the recorder.

He caught my wrist.

“Don’t.”

His voice was rough.

I looked at him.

He released me immediately.

“Sorry.”

We listened.

My father explained that Sofia had copied banking records from a charitable foundation controlled by Domenico.

Money had moved through Palermo, Zurich, Montreal, and Chicago.

Some of it funded legitimate businesses.

Some of it paid men who disappeared after Marco’s murder.

And one payment had been made forty-eight hours before Sofia’s car crash.

“To a mechanic named Arturo Bellini,” my father said. “If I vanish, find him before Russo does.”

The tape clicked.

Then came one final sentence.

“Tessa, your grandmother knows where the ledger is. She promised she would never tell Salvatore unless his family chose truth over revenge.”

Silence.

The tape stopped.

Rain tapped the stained-glass windows.

I stared at the machine.

“My grandmother died without telling me anything.”

Mateo’s eyes were still on the recorder.

“Maybe she did tell you.”

“I would remember a murder ledger.”

“Not if she disguised it.”

I thought about Lucia’s apartment.

Her sewing cabinet.

Her recipe books.

The old wooden chest she had left me.

Then I remembered something.

A cookbook.

Handwritten.

Hundreds of recipes nobody in my family ever cooked.

Every page covered in strange numbers beside the ingredients.

I had assumed they were old measurements.

My pulse jumped.

“The cookbook.”

Mateo looked at me.

“What cookbook?”

“It’s in my apartment.”

His expression changed immediately.

“No.”

“What?”

“We’re not going there.”

“My grandmother’s cookbook may be the ledger.”

“And Domenico knew your name before tonight.”

“I need it.”

“I’ll send people.”

“You just spent an hour learning that someone inside your family has been lying to you since you were fourteen.”

His mouth closed.

Point for the maid.

We left the church through the rear entrance.

Mateo drove himself.

No chauffeur.

No convoy.

A black sedan that looked ordinary until you noticed the reinforced glass.

For three blocks, neither of us spoke.

Then he said, “What was your father like?”

The question hurt more than I expected.

“Funny. Terrible cook. He used to put notes in my lunchbox.”

“What kind of notes?”

“Mostly reminders not to become boring.”

Mateo glanced at me.

“You listened.”

I almost smiled.

Then headlights appeared behind us.

Same distance.

Same turns.

Mateo noticed.

His hand moved to the steering wheel.

“Seat belt.”

“I’m wearing one.”

“Tighter.”

“That isn’t how seat belts work.”

The car behind us accelerated.

Mateo took the next turn hard.

No panic.

No dramatic swerving.

Just precise movement.

We lost the headlights near a police station and doubled back through side streets.

When we reached my building, the front door was open.

I knew I had locked it.

Mateo stepped in front of me.

We climbed the stairs without speaking.

My apartment door had been forced inward.

Drawers were emptied.

Cushions cut.

My mattress overturned.

Nothing expensive was missing.

Not my laptop.

Not the emergency cash inside a coffee tin.

They had been looking for one thing.

I crossed the room to the wooden chest beside my bed.

The lid was open.

Empty.

My grandmother’s cookbook was gone.

On the floor lay a single torn page.

I picked it up.

A recipe for orange-almond cake.

At the bottom, in Lucia’s handwriting, was a note I had never noticed before.

Tessa, if the book disappears, go where your father taught you to count stars.

Mateo read it over my shoulder.

“Do you know what that means?”

I looked toward the broken window.

And remembered a rooftop.

A cheap telescope.

My father’s hand pointing toward Orion.

“Yes.”

Then my phone rang.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I answered.

A man breathed softly into the receiver.

Then Domenico Russo said, “Bring me the page, Tessa.”

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A pause.

“Or the next voice you hear from your family will be screaming.”