They Gave Her a Convoy, I Built My Own Legacy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Not Renata Anymore

Move-in day in Manhattan ends with her father calling from the road: stay silent while Lucrezia uses her name, or he tells Miami she is a fraud; two of his men are already in the lobby.

The student residence let me in at nine in the morning.

I had booked the first room they offered a week before graduation, in case I ever needed to leave fast.

The woman at the front desk checked my name against her list.

"Renata Ostuni. Fourth floor, room 412. Lift's on the left."

"Thank you."

She slid a key card and a welcome folder across the counter.

I carried my broken suitcase into the elevator and stood with it between my feet.

I had slept four hours on a hostel bunk in Chelsea, with the card and the ferry schedule under my pillow.

Gianluca had left me at the terminal with a plain white card.

It had one phone number on it and nothing else. He hadn't asked me to call.

I had put it in my pocket, and I did not take it out now.

Room 412 had a narrow bed, a desk and a window over the street.

The radiator had been painted so many times it had lost its edges.

It was the best room I had ever had.

I unpacked my drafting books and lined them up on the shelf.

I hung my three good shirts in the closet. I put the bank card in a zipped pocket of my backpack.

Then my phone rang, and the screen said Dad.

I let it ring four times.

"Where are you?" my father said.

His voice came through a bad connection, with road noise and my mother murmuring behind him.

"In Manhattan."

"Your mother found the boxes still sitting in the hall this morning."

"I know."

"You don't leave without telling anybody. We're on the turnpike. Do you know what it looks like to have a daughter vanish the day of the send-off?"

"I told Lucrezia okay," I said. "I meant it for about an hour."

"Don't talk back to me, Renata."

I sat down on the bed.

"I'm not talking back. I'm going to school."

"Listen to me. And listen to all of it." He lowered his voice. "As of this morning, the Marchesis know the Ostuni daughter as Renata."

I held very still.

"Lucrezia is Lucrezia," I said.

"She's whoever the Marchesis need her to be. The Don asked for the daughter who keeps my books, and I'm giving him a daughter. That's all that matters."

"You told them she's me."

"I told them what they wanted to hear. You have your school. She has Miami. Everybody gets what they want."

"I don't get a name?"

"You get to stay out of it." His voice hardened. "So here is what happens. You don't say your name to anyone with a connection to Miami. If a Marchesi shows up, you've never heard of us."

"And if I say it anyway?"

"Then I call the Don and tell him there's a girl in Manhattan using my family's name."

My mouth went dry.

"A fraud," he said. "Do you know what Don Marchesi does to frauds? I won't have to lift a finger."

I didn't answer him.

My mother's voice came on the line, smooth and kind.

"Renata, sweetheart. Nobody wants it to be like this. You'll come home Sunday, and you'll do the book, and everything will be fine."

"The book," I said.

"Your father can't read his own numbers, you know that."

There it was.

They hadn't called to ask where I was.

They'd called because the one person who could balance the register had walked out, and my father's skim was not going to hide itself.

"I'm not coming Sunday," I said.

"You're making a mistake."

"Maybe. I'm making it with my own money."

"Renata." My father was shouting now, and I could hear Tommy laughing in the back seat. "I'll send someone to get you."

I ended the call.

My hands were not steady, so I put them flat on my knees until they were.

On the desk, my phone lit up with a message from Lucrezia.

Don't be mad, it said. I'm only doing what they asked. Love you!

I stared at it.

I did not answer, and I did not delete it.

Then the front desk called the room phone, and the woman's voice was pitched too bright.

"Ms. Ostuni? You have visitors in the lobby. Two gentlemen. They say they're family."

I crossed the room and looked down through the narrow window at the street.

Two black cars were double-parked at the curb.

Beside them stood two men in dark suits, and one of them was looking up at the fourth floor.

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