Chapter 5: The Memory He Buried
Enzo’s flashlight swept across the footprint in the snow. It pointed toward the narrow road leading back to Nana’s Soup, but the wind was already softening its edges.
“Get Elena and Rosie to the car,” Lorenzo said. “Take them to the apartment. Use the back entrance.”
Enzo glanced toward the dark trees beyond the chapel.
“And you?”
“I’m following the trail.”
“Boss, it could be a trap.”
“It could be the only trail we have.”
Rosie tightened her arms around Lorenzo’s leg. Her curls were mussed, and the hem of her princess dress showed beneath her red coat.
“Don’t go where the bad man went.”
Lorenzo crouched until they were eye to eye.
“I’m going to try to keep him from coming after you.”
“Are you coming back?”
The question struck harder than it should have. He looked at the terrified child and thought of the photograph still tucked inside his coat—the one showing him holding a baby he could almost remember.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m coming back.”
Rosie studied his face, as if weighing whether the promise was worth believing. Then she nodded and let Enzo lift her.
Elena stood beside them, one hand wrapped in a clean cloth Enzo had taken from the car. The shallow cut on her palm had soaked through the makeshift bandage.
“Don’t be reckless,” she said.
“I’m trying something new.”
“That would be a first.”
For the briefest moment, their eyes met, and something old and painful passed between them. Before Lorenzo could ask what it was, Enzo guided Elena and Rosie through the side door.
Lorenzo followed the track around the chapel, his shoes crunching over crusted snow. He kept his flashlight low. The print led past a tangle of bare shrubs and toward a stone wall at the edge of the estate. Beyond it, the road narrowed between trees before opening onto a service lane.
The chapel stood quiet behind him. Too quiet.
“Enzo,” he said into his phone. “Let me know when they’re inside.”
“They’re in the car.”
“Keep moving.”
A pause. “I don’t like leaving you.”
“Neither do I. Keep moving.”
The call ended. Lorenzo pushed through the shrubs and reached the wall. On the far side, the snow was disturbed in several places. He spotted a second print, then a third, heading toward the narrow lane.
He followed.
A shape moved between the trees ahead.
“Stop!”
The figure bolted.
Lorenzo ran, branches catching at his coat as he chased the stranger toward the lane. The ground dipped under the snow. He slipped, recovered, and gained ground as the figure stumbled near the opening.
For one breath, the stranger was close enough to catch.
Lorenzo grabbed the back of a dark jacket. Fabric tore in his fist. The person twisted, driving an elbow into his ribs, then wrenched free and sprinted toward the road.
Headlights flared at the lane’s far end.
A second vehicle swung broadside across the narrow exit, its engine roaring. Lorenzo had to stop short to avoid being struck. Tires ground over ice. The stranger reached the passenger door, yanked it open, and disappeared inside.
Lorenzo surged forward, but the vehicle reversed hard, then shot through a gap beside the stone wall. Its rear lights vanished around the bend.
He stood in the road, chest heaving, one fist closed around the torn strip of fabric. No license plate. No clear view of the driver. No proof that the person who had stolen Isabella’s letters had been in that car at all.
His phone rang.
“Where are you?” Enzo asked.
“The lane. The intruder had help.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Nothing serious. Did you reach the apartment?”
“We’re inside. The door is locked. Rosie’s asking for you.”
Lorenzo looked back at the chapel’s distant windows. One of them was broken, spilling darkness into the snow.
“I’m on my way.”
The guarded apartment smelled of radiator heat and the coffee Enzo had abandoned on the kitchen counter. Rosie was asleep on the sofa, curled beneath a blanket with her satin bow still clipped in her hair. Elena sat at the table, her injured hand freshly wrapped.
When Lorenzo entered, she looked first at his face, then at the torn fabric in his fist.
“Did you catch them?”
“No.”
“But you got close.”
“Close enough to lose.”
He placed the fabric on the table. It was too small to identify anything, and the driver had left no impression except a set of tire tracks already fading under fresh snow.
Enzo set a first-aid kit beside Elena. “The cut needs cleaning again.”
“I can take care of it.”
“I know,” Enzo said. “Let me do it anyway.”
Elena hesitated, then held out her hand.
Lorenzo watched Enzo rinse the cut. He could have demanded answers from Elena at once. He wanted them badly enough to feel the questions pressing against his teeth.
Instead, he pulled the photograph from inside his coat and laid it on the table.
The image showed him holding a baby. Elena stood beside him, one hand on the child’s blanket. On the back, in his own handwriting, was the date and the words he still couldn’t quite remember writing: The first night she slept through.
“Who was the baby?” he asked.
Elena’s gaze settled on the photograph. Her fingers stopped moving.
“You already know.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
She looked toward the sofa. Rosie’s breathing was soft and even beneath the blanket.
“That was Rosie.”
The room seemed to draw tight around him.
“She was that small?”
“She was a newborn.”
“I held her.”
“Yes.”
A memory stirred: warmth against his forearm, a tiny fist curled against a blanket, a woman’s tired laugh. Then it slipped away, leaving only the photograph and the ache of knowing he had once been close to something he could not remember.
“Why don’t I remember the rest?”
Elena glanced at Enzo, who had finished bandaging her hand and was quietly gathering the supplies.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I only know that Isabella wanted that day recorded.”
“Why?”
“I never understood. She brought a small cake and said it was important.”
“That’s what you told me at the chapel.”
“I know.”
“There’s more.”
Elena lowered her eyes.
Lorenzo reached for the torn fabric, then let it fall back to the table. “The letters were stolen. The person who took them knew we’d come to the chapel. You said your mother knew the archive was watched.”
“She did.”
“And you recognized the letter.”
Elena’s hand tightened around the fresh bandage.
“I recognized the envelope.”
“What does that mean?”
“It was the same one I read before.”
“Before when?”
“Years ago.”
The radiator clicked. From the sofa came a small sleepy murmur, then Rosie settled again.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lorenzo asked.
“I was afraid you’d take it from me.”
“You were holding it at the chapel.”
“I mean the truth.”
He leaned a hand on the table. The photograph sat between them, a quiet record of a moment he had lost.
“Tell me now.”
Elena glanced again at Rosie. Her face softened, then hardened, as though she were choosing each word for the danger it might carry.
“When Rosie was a baby, Isabella came to me. She said the situation had changed. Someone connected to Sokov had been asking questions about the restaurant—and about you.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Where you went. Who you saw. Whether you had any family you cared about.”
A cold, familiar anger moved through Lorenzo, but he kept it out of his voice.
“Did she tell you who was asking?”
“She said she believed it was Sokov’s people. She didn’t have proof. She told me the archive wasn’t safe, that the records might be used against us, and that I shouldn’t trust any single piece of evidence.”
The warning Elena had read in the chapel. Not a vague fear. A plan for surviving a threat.
“What did she tell you to do?”
“To disappear.”
“Without telling me?”
Elena’s eyes met his.
“Yes.”
The word opened a wound he hadn’t known was there. He stared at her, waiting for an explanation that might make it hurt less.
“She said she was protecting you,” Elena continued. “She thought if you knew we existed, you would try to keep us close.”
“I would have.”
“That was what frightened her.”
He felt the answer land, but it didn’t make sense. “Why would keeping you close frighten her?”
Elena drew a slow breath. Her gaze flicked to Rosie again.
“Because Isabella believed she knew what you would do when someone threatened us.”
Lorenzo looked down at his hands. The tattoos ran over his knuckles and disappeared beneath his sleeves. He had built a life in which fear was a tool, then wondered why the people near him sometimes flinched.
“I would have protected you,” he said.
“I know.”
“You don’t sound like you believe that.”
“I believe you wanted to.”
The distinction hurt more than an accusation.
Elena stood and moved to the sofa. She adjusted the blanket over Rosie’s shoulder, careful not to wake her. For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. Then Elena turned back.
“Your mother said there was a difference between the man you were with us and the man your world had made you become.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened. “What exactly did she say?”
May you like
Elena held his gaze, and the fear in her face was no longer only for herself.
“She told me you could become the danger we were hiding from.”
