They Wrecked Her Shop He Found Her novel · Chapter 2 of 3

Chapter 2: The File

Matteo plays the footage in the back of the shop: two men, a plate, Tony's face. Lucia tells him she doesn't want his protection. Joe, on the floor, says the name Vito.

They took Joe to the hospital on Taylor and left me standing in the wreck of my shop.

He argued the whole way onto the stretcher. Four hundred dollars.

Then the paramedic touched his left hand and he stopped arguing.

I rode as far as the ambulance doors and got out. Somebody had to stay with the shop.

Matteo was still there when it pulled away.

He'd folded his overcoat on the cutting table, out of the glass, and opened a laptop on the clean end.

"Mrs. Marchetti lent it to me," he said. "She says hello."

"She says hello at five in the morning."

"She says you fixed her daughter's confirmation dress for free."

I didn't answer that. I sat down on the stool by the register.

The card went in.

The footage was grainy and pointed straight across Taylor Street.

At 4:38 a gray sedan parked in the loading zone in front of my window.

Two men got out. The first one was thick through the shoulders in a hooded sweatshirt, face down.

The second was smaller and walked with his hands in his pockets like he was bored.

Four minutes inside.

The small one came out first. The thick one came out carrying my mannequin by the hair and dropped it in the street.

Then they drove off.

"Again," I said.

At 4:41 the driver's door opened and the man in the sweatshirt leaned out to say something.

The streetlight caught his face.

I knew him.

He'd been in my shop twice this spring. Once to pick up a jacket for Vito Lazzaro.

Once to stand by the door and watch me pin a hem.

"Tony," I said.

"You know him."

"Vito's driver. He sat on that chair right there in March."

Matteo closed the laptop.

"Then you know who sent them."

"I know who sent them."

He stood and put his coat back on and looked around my shop.

At the slashed dresses. At the empty frame where the window used to be. At the two pieces of my father's cane.

"Pack what you can," he said. "I'll have men on the door tonight."

"No."

"Lucia."

"No."

He stopped.

I stood up off the stool and made myself say it plainly, because plainly was the only way through it.

"I know what you're offering. I know what it costs."

"It doesn't cost you anything."

"It always costs something."

He didn't flinch. He never flinches. That's the worst thing about him.

"Your father is in a hospital bed with a splinted hand," he said. "Your window is on the sidewalk. Tonight somebody walks in and it's your turn."

"So I'll board it up."

"With what."

"I'll figure it out."

"With what money."

There it was.

The register had four hundred and twelve dollars in it and rent was due on the fifteenth.

I looked at the floor so he wouldn't see my face do whatever it was doing.

"I don't want your protection," I said.

"I know."

"I don't want to be a thing you take care of."

"You were never that."

"Six years ago I paid for your grandfather's heart and you stayed eleven months after. I know why you stayed."

He was quiet for a second.

"Do you."

"You owed me. You're a man who pays what he owes. That's the whole thing with you."

"That's what you decided."

"That's what I know."

He looked like he wanted to say something and then thought better of it, which is also the whole thing with him.

My phone rang. A nurse from the hospital, saying my father was asking for me.

Two ribs and a hairline in the wrist, she said. He'd refused painkillers until I got there.

Twenty minutes, I told her.

When I came back out, my father was standing in the doorway of my shop.

On a hospital cane, in a hospital gown, with a nurse behind him saying sir, sir, sir.

"Dad. You can't be here."

"I'm not staying in that bed while you stand in this."

He looked around at the glass and the dresses.

The nurse stood in the street holding the car door and gave up.

Joe walked himself to the cutting table and sat down on my stool.

He looked at the laptop.

"What's that."

"Mrs. Marchetti's camera. It got them."

"Show me."

Matteo turned the laptop around.

Joe watched the whole thing without moving.

When Tony's face came up in the streetlight, my father didn't say anything for a long moment.

Then he said the name out loud, like he was setting it down on a table.

"Vito."

"Dad."

"Vito sent them, and he told them to leave me breathing." Joe's good hand lay flat on the table. "That's how he's always done it. He leaves you breathing so you can thank him."

He turned to Matteo.

"How long you been in this."

"Long enough."

"Then you know what he wants."

"I know what he wants."

"He wants my girl to come to that club and sign."

"She's not signing anything."

My father looked at him for a long time. Then he looked at me.

"Lucia. Get me my flannel out of the back room. I'm not doing this in a gown."

I went into the back room and stood in the dark with my hand on the flannel.

They were talking through the wall. I couldn't hear the words.

When I came out, Matteo was at the empty frame, looking down Taylor Street.

Joe was on the stool, and I got his sleeve on for him over the hospital bracelet.

"Lucia," Matteo said, still looking out. "Come here."

I went and stood beside him.

There was nothing on the street. Gray light, one bus, a man hosing the sidewalk three doors down.

"The debt on your father," he said. "The one Vito's held over him since 2019."

"What about it."

"It's not Vito's paper anymore."

I turned and looked at him.

"I bought it off his book in January," he said. "Six hundred thousand, cash, in his own office. He shook my hand and poured me a drink."

"You bought my father's debt."

"Yes."

"Why."

"Because Vito was going to call it in on you."

"So now you own my family."

"No."

"That's what owning is."

Behind us my father said my name, quiet.

Matteo turned to face me. He put his hands in his coat pockets, which is what he does instead of reaching for somebody.

"I own the paper," he said. "I don't own you. And Vito knows exactly whose name is on it now."

I stood in the empty window with the glass on the sidewalk behind me and looked up at him.

"Vito knows?"

"He found out four days ago," Matteo said. "That's why your window is on the street."

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