Chapter 4

The house on Ridge Road smelled different at five in the morning.

For sixteen years, that hour had smelled of yeast, sweet butter, and the cold lemon oil Costa used to polish the hallway wainscoting.

It had been my time.

Before the phones rang, before the drivers lined up outside the garage, before Whit came down the stairs with the weight of the five boroughs pressing between his eyebrows.

When I stepped into the kitchen before sunrise, the lights were already on.

Two women in gray catering aprons stood at the island, packing sliced melon and greens into meal-prep containers.

A vacuum sealer buzzed on the granite counter where my marble pastry slab used to sit.

Neither of them looked up until my slippers clicked against the tile.

The older one—a woman Perry had hired from an agency in Manhattan—wiped her hands on a linen cloth.

"Can I help you, Mrs. Bellandi?"

"Where is the marble slab?"

"Miss Bellandi moved it to the basement yesterday," she said. "We need the counter for juicing. She has the Don starting some kind of cleanse on Monday."

A cleanse.

Whit had survived three assassination attempts, twelve wiretaps, and half a lifetime of street whiskey.

Now Perry had him drinking celery juice before breakfast.

"Move the vacuum sealer," I said. "I need the oven for Mrs. Carmine's almond sponge."

The woman hesitated. Her hand hovered near the power cord, her eyes darting toward the hallway door.

"Miss Bellandi left explicit instructions on the schedule," she said, tapping a tablet mounted beside the spice rack. "The ovens are reserved from six to noon for the junior council brunch. Private baking isn't permitted on production days."

"Private baking?" I repeated.

"That is what she logged it as."

I didn't raise my voice. I didn't reach for the screen.

I simply walked past them to the heavy walk-in cooler at the back of the pantry.

The door handle didn't turn.

A new digital keypad glowed dull blue against the brushed steel.

Four digits. The master key that had hung from my wrist since our wedding day was useless.

"The code, please."

"We aren't authorized to share management credentials, ma'am," the woman said, looking genuinely uncomfortable now. "Mr. Bellandi told the agency supervisor that you were on strict medical leave. If you need tea or toast, we can prepare it for you."

I stood before that cold steel door, looking at my reflection in the keypad's polished glass.

My gray hair was pulled back into its usual neat twist; my wool cardigan was buttoned to the throat. I looked like an old woman standing outside a bank vault.

"Who drove Maria Moretti from the gate on Thursday night?" I asked, turning around slowly.

The two women exchanged a blank look.

"I don't know who that is," the younger one murmured.

"She was twenty-four. Bruised jaw. A blue coat."

"We only arrived yesterday, Mrs. Bellandi."

I nodded once, stepped out of the kitchen, and walked down the back corridor toward the study.

Whit sat by the tall bay windows, reading the morning papers with a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose.

A cup of black espresso sat on the small mahogany side table. He had not touched it; a thin skin had formed over the dark crema.

He didn't look up when I came in, but the paper rustled slightly in his grip.

"You're up early," he said.

"You put a digital lock on my walk-in cooler, Whit."

He folded the front page deliberately, placed it across his knee, and took off his glasses. The bags beneath his eyes were dark, swollen from late-night calls.

"It's an inventory lock," he said. "There's expensive liquor and food in that cooler. The insurance company wants a record of everyone who goes in."

"You locked me out of the butter and eggs."

"I locked everyone out who doesn't have an employee badge," he replied, his voice dropping into that patient, unyielding tone that had broken capos twice his size. "You don't work for Bellandi Enterprises, Ines. You're the Don's wife. Why are you begging for flour at five in the morning like a scullery maid?"

"Donna Elena needs thirty-two covers for Carmine's memorial on Saturday."

Whit's gaze hardened. The slight softness around his mouth vanished completely.

"Elena Carmine needs to realize her husband died twenty years ago," Whit said, his voice flat as a tombstone. "The Carmine family holds six dry-cleaning plants and three funeral homes. They don't have a single crew on the street. Perry offered to send them three fruit platters from the new shop. Elena refused."

"She didn't refuse fruit, Whit. She refused Perry."

"Then she can eat nothing." He stood up, towering over me, his broad shoulders blocking the morning light from the window. "No Bellandi resources go to Elena's house on Saturday. No driver. No kitchen staff. No flowers. If she wants to host old men who talk about ancient grudges, she can pay a diner down on Fourth Street."

"And Maria Moretti?"

The study went so quiet I could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the main foyer.

Whit reached into his pocket, took out his gold lighter, and turned it over twice in his thick fingers. Click. Snap.

"Maria is with her sister in Cleveland," he said without looking at me.

"Maria's sister lives in Cleveland, Whit. Her mother lives on Second Avenue."

"Then she's in Cleveland."

"She never checked into the Fifth Street shelter," I said, stepping closer until I could smell the stale tobacco clinging to his wool jacket. "Perry gave Joe thirty dollars for a cab and had him drop a battered girl on the corner of Fourth and Main. Sal Moretti's son was waiting three blocks away in a black sedan."

Whit didn't flinch. Not a muscle in his jaw moved.

"Sal's son is her husband," Whit said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "A husband has a right to talk to his wife without my house becoming a halfway station for every marital spat in the district. We don't interfere in a soldier's domestic affairs unless it threatens business."

"You used to," I said. "For sixteen years, you let them leave their rings on my table."

"For sixteen years, the police have suspected you were running a safehouse out of my kitchen," Whit snapped. "Do you know what the Feds would do with notes showing which capo broke his wife's ribs? They'd build a RICO case before breakfast. Perry is trying to clean this house up before federal agents come through my front door, and all you care about is who sits beside Father Thomas at a dead man's wake."

I looked into the eyes of the man I had slept beside for sixteen years.

He wasn't evil. He was terrified.

He was an aging wolf smelling the hunter's dogs in the wind, frantically shedding everything he thought was dead weight to save his own hide. And in his mind, my sixteen years of quiet mercy was the heaviest weight of all.

"You think the Feds are coming for Maria Moretti?" I asked. "They don't care about her broken jaw. The street does. And when Sal Moretti finds his daughter-in-law in the river because Perry wanted everything neat on paper, let's see which captains are still standing behind you."

Whit stared at me, his chest rising and falling in heavy, ragged breaths.

He didn't answer. He turned his back, picked up his lukewarm espresso, and looked out at the rain-swept garden.

"Go back to bed, Ines," he whispered. "The car is leaving for the warehouse in twenty minutes. Don't be in the driveway."

I turned around and walked out of the study.

I didn't go upstairs. I went to the small coat closet beneath the service stairs, pulled out my old woolen coat, and slipped my hands into the deep pockets.

Inside the right pocket, my fingers touched the folded index card Donna Elena had given me.

Thirty-two names. Thirty-two families waiting for a room where no one would pull a gun over coffee.

Beneath the card lay a twenty-dollar bill and an old iron key to the side gate.

I pulled my scarf over my hair, pushed open the heavy wooden pantry door, and walked out into the cold, gray morning.