Chapter 5 - What Really Happened to Samuel
Bessie gripped the table.
“Say it.”
Helen did.
Samuel had been poisoned.
Not with something dramatic.
Not enough to cause instant death.
A cardiac medication had been introduced into his system at a dangerous concentration, producing symptoms that resembled sudden heart failure.
Three years earlier, nobody had looked deeper.
Samuel was fifty-eight.
He had a history of high blood pressure.
The death seemed tragic but ordinary.
Now it didn't.
“Who had access?” Helen asked.
Bessie thought.
Employees.
Suppliers.
Customers.
Samuel drank coffee all day.
He ate at the diner.
Anyone could have reached him.
Then she remembered.
The final morning.
Samuel had received a package.
Small.
Brown paper.
No return address.
Inside was a bag of coffee.
A specialty roast.
Samuel loved trying new coffee.
He brewed it himself.
Bessie had been fasting for a medical test that morning and hadn't tasted it.
Samuel drank three cups.
By afternoon, he was dead.
Dante listened.
“Did you keep the package?”
“No.”
“Bag?”
Bessie closed her eyes.
“Maybe.”
She saved everything.
Samuel teased her about it.
Receipts. Birthday cards. Old menus.
After his death, she'd packed his office into plastic storage bins.
Those bins had been in the cellar.
The cellar beneath a diner now burning.
Dante immediately stood.
“We go back.”
Helen stopped him.
“Sorrento's people may still be there.”
“Exactly.”
Bessie stood too.
Dante looked at her.
“No.”
She almost smiled.
“You haven't learned much.”
“You're not going.”
“My husband's things are there.”
“Victor wants you dead.”
“Then he can get in line behind everyone telling me what I'm allowed to do.”
Carlo coughed to hide a laugh.
Dante looked at him.
Carlo became fascinated with the ceiling.
Two hours later, they returned.
Oak Haven was ruined.
Bessie stood in the parking lot.
Windows gone.
Roof partially collapsed.
Kitchen blackened.
Her hand rose to her mouth.
Dante remained several feet away.
Bessie walked inside.
Every step hurt.
The booth where Samuel proposed to her was burned.
The counter where they ate anniversary pie was covered in ash.
A mug lay shattered near the register.
She picked up one piece.
Then kept walking.
The cellar survived.
Concrete had protected it.
They found the bins.
Bessie searched.
Tax records.
Photographs.
Samuel's old jacket.
Then a small brown package.
She froze.
“That's it.”
Helen bagged it.
Inside remained a handful of coffee beans.
Evidence.
Dante found something else.
A delivery receipt.
Signed by the courier.
M. Vale.
Arthur's younger brother.
Arthur stared at it.
“No.”
Bessie looked at him.
“Your brother?”
“He's dead.”
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“After Samuel.”
“Yes.”
Arthur sat heavily on a stair.
“He told me Victor had asked him to make deliveries. He swore he didn't know what they were.”
Bessie wanted answers from dead men.
Instead, she had ashes.
Helen's agents began moving the archive.
Dante stood outside the cellar.
Bessie joined him.
“You could leave.”
He looked at her.
“Would you?”
“You're risking everything.”
“So are you.”
“I don't have an empire.”
“No.”
His eyes moved across the destroyed diner.
“You had something better.”
Bessie swallowed.
“Had.”
Dante looked at her.
“Have.”
She frowned.
“What?”
“People.”
His eighteen men were working through the wreckage.
One carried boxes.
Another covered a hole in the roof.
Carlo was salvaging dishes.
These men who had entered her diner with weapons were now searching through ashes for pieces of her life.
Bessie watched silently.
“Why are they doing that?”
“Because you fed them.”
“That can't be the reason.”
“You'd be surprised what hungry men remember.”
Dante walked away.
Bessie stared after him.
For all his danger, he had never touched her without reason.
Never ordered her obedience and expected it.
Even the declaration that she was “his” had been a tactical lie designed to keep predators away.
She was beginning to see the man beneath the title.
That frightened her differently.
Helen approached.
“We found another file.”
Inside Samuel's archive was evidence against Victor.
But there was also a ledger involving Moretti businesses.
Bessie looked toward Dante.
“Does he know?”
“He will.”
Helen handed it to her.
Bessie took it to Dante.
He opened it.
Read three pages.
Then closed it.
“This could put you in prison,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You still want me to give it to Helen?”
Dante looked at her.
“If Samuel kept it, there's a reason.”
“That's not an answer.”
“Yes, Bessie. Give it to her.”
She did.
That evening, Dante received word that several of his businesses had been raided.
He didn't complain.
Carlo did enough for everyone.
“You're dismantling twenty years of work.”
Dante stared at him.
“Some of that work should have been dismantled twenty years ago.”
Carlo lowered his voice.
“For her?”
Dante looked toward Bessie.
“No.”
Then back at Carlo.
“For me.”
Bessie heard.
And something inside her shifted.
Not forgiveness.
Not trust.
Not yet.
But possibility.
At sunset, Helen prepared to move Bessie into protective custody.
Dante stood beside the SUV.
“This is where I leave you.”
Bessie blinked.
“You're not coming?”
“Federal protection and mafia bosses don't mix.”
She almost smiled.
“You think?”
He held out Samuel's brass key.
Bessie took it.
Their fingers touched.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For moving the gun away from my side of the table.”
Dante smiled.
It changed his entire face.
Then a shot cracked across the parking lot.
Dante jerked.
Bessie screamed his name.
He fell against her.
Blood spread across his black shirt.
Carlo shouted for cover.
Agents drew weapons.
Bessie dropped beside Dante.
His eyes remained open.
“I'm fine.”
“You're bleeding!”
“I've had worse.”
Another shot struck the SUV.
Helen dragged Bessie toward cover.
Carlo pulled Dante behind a concrete wall.
Agents searched the tree line.
Then Bessie's phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
One message.
WE HAVE ARTHUR.
A second arrived.
BRING THE KEY TO THE OLD BELL FACTORY.
Then a photograph appeared.
Arthur sat tied to a chair.
Behind him stood Victor Sorrento.
May you like
And beside Victor was someone Bessie had believed was dead for twenty years.
Her father.
