Chapter 14: The Second Deposit

Gemma's POV

Luca told me all of it standing at the window, without once looking away from me.

When he finished, I put the earring in my pocket.

"She burned your letters," I said.

"Yes."

"And you want to know who else paid my mother."

"The account is in Brooklyn." He opened the safe and handed me the card. "I wired two million to it and never saw the name."

I read the number.

It was a Rossetti account, and I knew every Rossetti account by heart, because I kept the books.

This one was not on any list I had ever kept.

"Give me the desk," I said.

I sat in his chair and opened his laptop, and for two hours the sun climbed over the ocean while I did what I was good at.

Luca brought coffee and did not speak.

At eight the answer sat on the screen.

The account had opened in September, three weeks before my mother laid out two files on the table.

Two days before Luca's wire, it had taken in a different two million, from a company called Bay Ridge Cartage.

"Who owns Bay Ridge Cartage?" Luca said.

"Nunzio's father."

Luca went still.

"So the Tessaris paid her two million to send you away," he said slowly. "And I paid her two million to take you."

"She was paid twice for me."

"Gemma."

"It's all right." My voice sounded very calm to me. "I'd like to sit with it later. Now I'd like to talk to Nunzio."

"About the money?"

"About his father's money. It's a different subject, and he'll like it less."

By noon I had a table in the Amadori dock office.

It was a plain room with a window onto the cranes, and I'd had the cousin's old desk wiped down and moved to the middle.

Nunzio came in with his gold watch flashing and a coffee in each hand.

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