His Ring on Her Finger, My Name on the Door novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Fire

Her father's old aide tells Francesca that Benedetto's brakes failed, that Claudia left his study at 2 a.m. the night he died, and who put out the fire an hour later.

The hotel clerk smiled when Francesca gave her name.

"Welcome back, Ms. Ruggiero. Your suite is ready. Mr. DeMarco took care of everything."

"Cancel it."

The clerk blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Cancel the suite. I'll take your smallest room, and I'll pay for it myself."

The clerk looked at her screen, then at Francesca's single suitcase.

"The smallest room faces the parking garage."

"Perfect."

Francesca put her own card on the counter.

It was a French debit card, and the clerk had to try it twice.

Upstairs, the room smelled of carpet cleaner.

The window looked straight at a concrete wall.

She almost laughed.

She washed her face and looked at her cheek in the mirror.

The mark from her mother's hand had faded to a pink shadow.

She put on a clean sweater and went down to the bar.

Nino Ferrante was already there, in the corner booth, with his flat cap on the table.

He'd gotten thin.

His white mustache was neatly trimmed, and his tweed coat hung off his shoulders.

He stood up when he saw her.

Then he did something he'd never done in twenty years of driving her to school.

He hugged her.

"Look at you," he said into her hair. "Your father would have cried."

"Papa never cried."

"He cried when you were born. I was in the car. I saw him."

They sat down.

Nino ordered her a hot chocolate without asking, the way he had when she was nine.

She didn't stop him.

She took the paper out of her pocket and smoothed it on the table.

Nino didn't look at it.

"I know what it says," he said. "Everyone at the table knows."

"Did you know it was fake?"

"I knew you were in the air at nine o'clock that morning. I drove you to the airport, Miss Francesca. Don't you remember?"

She did.

He had carried her suitcase to the curb and kissed her forehead and said nothing at all.

"And you didn't tell them?"

"I'm a retired driver. I don't sit at the table." He turned his cup in a slow circle. "Ottavio read the paper out loud. Michael's name was on it. Nobody asked the driver."

Francesca folded the page again.

"Why did you email me, Nino? Really."

He glanced at the bar.

The bartender was polishing glasses at the far end with his earbuds in.

Nino leaned in anyway.

"Your father didn't fall asleep at the wheel."

Francesca's hands went still around the cup.

"They said he hit a tree on the Jamaicaway. At four forty in the morning."

"He did hit a tree," Nino said. "Because he couldn't stop. The brake line was cut through."

"Who says?"

"The man at the garage who towed it. He told me before the car disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

"Gone from the lot the next week. No paperwork. No car."

Francesca set the cup down.

Three years of not knowing pressed against her ribs all at once.

"That's why the districts fought about it," she said slowly. "That's why he sat in a vault for three years."

"Half the captains think somebody inside did it. Ottavio told them it was the Irish. Then he told them it was an accident. He told them whatever kept them quiet."

"And the elders let him."

"The elders are old men who want to die in their own beds."

Nino reached into his coat and set something on the table.

It was a key ring with a brass tag.

It said STUDY in her father's square capitals.

"I kept the spare," Nino said. "Nobody's been in that room since the fire."

"What fire?"

He stared at her.

"Nobody told you about the fire?"

"Nobody told me anything, Nino. I found out my father was dead from a voicemail."

He rubbed his mustache with one knuckle.

"The night before the accident, there was a fire in your father's study. Small. A wastebasket and some curtains. The portrait over the desk was smoked half black."

"The portrait of Papa with us?"

"That one."

She remembered it.

Her father in his good gray suit.

Claudia at twelve, in white, leaning against his arm.

Francesca at nine, scowling, because her braid was too tight.

"There's something else," Nino said. "I've never told anybody this."

"Tell me."

"I was sleeping in the room over the garage that week. Your father wanted me close." He lowered his voice. "Around two in the morning I got up for water. I saw the study door open."

"Papa?"

"Your father was upstairs. His light was off." He swallowed. "It was Claudia. In her robe. She came out of the study and closed the door very quietly, and she went up the back stairs."

Francesca's skin prickled.

"Claudia doesn't go into Papa's study. She never did. She said it smelled like cigars."

"I know."

"What was she doing in there?"

"I don't know." Nino looked down at his cup. "An hour later, the smoke alarm went off. The whole house came down in pajamas."

He paused.

"The study door was locked from the inside. Somebody had to break it open and put the fire out before the trucks came."

"Who?"

Nino looked up.

"Ottavio Abate," he said. "At three in the morning. In a suit and tie. As if he'd never gone to bed."

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