Chapter 2 - THE WORD THAT STOPPED THE ROOM
Salvatore’s arm swept across the table.
A wineglass shattered against the floor.
A porcelain plate spun once beneath the chandelier before breaking into three pieces. Red sauce splashed across the white tablecloth like blood. One of the guards near the door instinctively moved forward, then stopped when Salvatore slammed his fist against the wheelchair armrest.
Dominic remained seated.
His jaw tightened.
“Finished?”
Salvatore made another furious sound.
Dominic finally looked at him.
“You terrorized everyone in this house for forty years. Don’t expect sympathy because now you need someone to hold a spoon.”
The old man’s face changed.
Not anger.
Something deeper.
Humiliation.
Norah saw it immediately.
She had worked with dying men who had commanded corporations, families, military units, classrooms, construction crews. Illness did something particularly cruel to people who had once controlled everything.
It made witnesses of them.
Witnesses to their own decline.
Salvatore struggled to reach the spoon again.
His fingers missed.
Dominic pushed back his chair.
“Forget it.”
That was when Salvatore seized the medication cup from the table and hurled it.
It struck Dominic’s shoulder.
The guards moved instantly.
Dominic stood.
Salvatore’s breathing became ragged.
His good hand searched blindly for something else to throw.
Norah stepped between them.
“Basta!”
The word cracked through the dining room.
Enough.
Every person stopped.
Frank’s eyes widened.
One guard actually looked at the floor.
Dominic stared at Norah as if she had just fired a gun.
Norah realized, approximately three seconds too late, that she had shouted at one of the most feared men in New York in his own house.
In Italian.
Her grandmother would have been proud.
Or horrified.
Probably both.
Salvatore froze.
The fury disappeared from his face.
His left eye locked onto Norah.
She swallowed.
“Basta,” she repeated more quietly.
Then she pointed at Dominic.
“You don’t humiliate him because he can’t feed himself.”
Dominic’s eyebrows rose.
Norah pointed at Salvatore.
“And you don’t throw glass at people because you’re angry.”
Nobody spoke.
She took the napkin from the table and wiped sauce from Salvatore’s robe.
“You’re both grown men.”
She glanced between them.
“Start acting like it.”
Frank looked as though he was preparing mentally for where they might bury her.
Dominic took one slow step toward Norah.
“You have an interesting understanding of employment.”
“I have an interesting understanding of stroke recovery.”
“You screamed at my father.”
“He needed screaming at.”
Salvatore made a strange noise.
Norah turned toward him.
It came again.
Not rage this time.
A broken syllable.
“Ba…”
His hand trembled.
“Ba…”
Norah crouched beside his wheelchair.
“What?”
Salvatore touched his chest.
Then pointed toward her.
“Ba…”
Dominic had gone completely still.
Norah looked at him.
“What is he trying to say?”
Dominic didn’t answer.
Salvatore’s breathing quickened.
His fingers grabbed Norah’s wrist.
Not painfully.
Desperately.
Then he whispered a sound that had not emerged clearly from his mouth since his stroke.
“Bellini.”
Norah felt the floor disappear beneath her.
Dominic heard it too.
“What did he say?”
Norah stared at Salvatore.
The old man’s eye had filled with something she had never seen there before.
Fear.
“My grandmother’s maiden name,” Norah whispered.
Dominic’s face hardened.
“What?”
“Elena Bellini.”
The wineglass fragments glittered beneath the chandelier.
Salvatore began crying.
Not dramatically.
One tear slipped from his functioning eye and crossed the deep lines of his cheek.
Norah had never seen him cry.
Neither, apparently, had Dominic.
“My grandmother was Elena Bellini,” Norah repeated. “She came to America from Sicily when she was seventeen.”
Salvatore squeezed her wrist harder.
“E…le…”
“Elena?”
He blinked once.
“Yes?”
He blinked again.
Norah remembered something from neurological training.
“Once for yes?”
Another blink.
Dominic moved closer.
“Father.”
Salvatore ignored him.
Norah’s pulse accelerated.
“Did you know my grandmother?”
One blink.
Yes.
Dominic’s face became unreadable.
“How?”
Salvatore’s mouth twisted with frustration.
Norah immediately understood the problem.
His mind might contain the answer.
His damaged brain simply could not send it through his mouth.
She reached for her phone.
“I can make you a communication board.”
Dominic looked suspicious.
“A what?”
“Letters. Common words. Yes or no. He points or looks.”
“He can barely control his hand.”
“He controls his eyes.”
Norah turned to Salvatore.
“Can you read?”
Salvatore gave her the most insulted expression she had seen since arriving.
For the first time in two weeks, Norah almost laughed.
“I’ll take that as yes.”
Twenty minutes later, they were in Salvatore’s bedroom.
Norah had printed a crude alphabet chart using the office printer.
Dominic stood behind her.
Frank remained by the door.
Norah held the page at Salvatore’s eye level.
“I’m going to move through the letters. Blink when I reach the one you want.”
It was painfully slow.
The first word took six minutes.
E.
L.
E.
N.
A.
The second took longer.
S.
A.
V.
E.
D.
Dominic leaned forward.
“Saved?”
Salvatore blinked.
Norah continued.
M.
E.
Silence filled the bedroom.
ELENA SAVED ME.
Norah felt goose bumps travel along her arms.
“My grandmother saved you?”
Yes.
“When?”
The question was too complicated.
Norah changed direction.
“Before Dominic was born?”
Yes.
“Before you were married?”
Yes.
Dominic folded his arms.
“My father knew hundreds of people.”
Salvatore glared at him.
Norah continued.
“Was she your friend?”
Yes.
“Family?”
No.
“Did you love her?”
Salvatore closed his eye.
For a long time, he did nothing.
Then—
Yes.
Dominic turned away.
Norah’s chest tightened.
Her grandmother had died six years earlier.
Elena Gallagher had been seventy-nine, sharp-tongued until the end, famous for cooking enough food to feed strangers and for refusing to discuss Sicily.
Norah remembered one old photograph.
Her grandmother at approximately nineteen.
Standing beside an unidentified young man outside a grocery store in Brooklyn.
The photograph had been folded in half.
Norah had once asked who he was.
Elena had taken it from her.
“Someone who chose the wrong life.”
That had been her entire answer.
Norah looked at Salvatore.
“You were the man in the photograph.”
One blink.
She stepped backward.
Dominic’s voice came quietly.
“What exactly did your grandmother save him from?”
Salvatore suddenly began moving violently.
His hand struck the bedrail.
Once.
Twice.
His gaze shifted toward the door.
Frank stepped forward.
“What is it?”
Salvatore stared at him.
Then at Dominic.
Then violently toward the hallway again.
Norah lifted the chart.
“Someone?”
Yes.
“In this house?”
Yes.
“Danger?”
Salvatore blinked so hard his entire face moved.
Dominic’s posture changed instantly.
The son disappeared.
The crime boss returned.
“Who?”
Norah began scanning letters.
Salvatore blinked.
R.
She continued.
I.
Z.
Z.
O.
Dominic’s face drained of color.
Frank whispered, “Jesus Christ.”
Norah looked between them.
“Who is Rizzo?”
Dominic answered without taking his eyes from his father.
“My godfather.”
A shadow crossed the doorway.
Everyone turned.
A silver-haired man stood in the hall wearing a charcoal suit and carrying a glass of whiskey.
Victor Rizzo smiled.
May you like
“Did someone say my name?”
And for the first time since Norah had entered the Moretti mansion, Salvatore Moretti looked genuinely terrified.
