Chapter 2
PART 2: THE PROMISE MY MOTHER MADE ME KEEP
"Your mother worked for me."
Matteo said it after ordering his men to move the remaining customers into the front lounge.
I stared at him.
"That's impossible."
"Why?"
"Because she would have told me."
He studied my face.
"Would she?"
The question made me angry.
My mother had been dead for eleven years.
I had spent more than a decade protecting what little I remembered of her.
I wasn't going to let a stranger turn those memories into something ugly.
"You didn't know her."
Matteo's expression hardened.
"I knew Isabella before you were old enough to remember me."
My chest tightened.
He noticed.
"That surprises you."
"Everything about tonight surprises me."
He glanced toward the plate.
"Then we have something in common."
I wanted to leave.
I wanted my coat, my purse, the safety of my apartment, and the ordinary silence of a night when nothing unexpected happened.
Instead, I was standing in a locked restaurant with a suspected poisoned dinner and a man who claimed to know my dead mother.
"How?" I asked.
Matteo didn't pretend to misunderstand.
"She cooked for my family."
"When?"
"Seventeen years ago."
I did the calculation.
I had been eight.
Eight years old.
The age when my mother began teaching me the recipe.
A strange sensation moved through me.
I remembered our kitchen in Cicero.
The yellow curtains.
The cracked windowsill.
My mother standing beside an old stove, telling me to wash my hands before touching the parsley.
I remembered the smell of garlic warming in butter.
And I remembered her voice.
The fennel goes in last, Elena.
Always last.
Promise me.
Back then, I had thought it was simply her way of cooking.
Now I wasn't sure.
Matteo watched me.
"What are you remembering?"
"Nothing."
"Elena."
"Don't say my name like you know me."
Something passed across his face.
Not anger.
Regret.
He nodded once.
"You're right."
That surprised me.
Men like Matteo weren't supposed to admit when they were wrong.
He moved toward the chair opposite his place setting.
"Sit down."
"I'd rather stand."
"Then stand."
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Behind the kitchen doors, someone dropped a metal tray.
I flinched.
Matteo didn't.
"Your mother saved my life," he said.
My breathing stopped.
"What?"
"Seventeen years ago, someone tried to poison my dinner."
I looked at the plate.
Then at the fork.
Matteo followed my gaze.
"Isabella noticed something the rest of us missed."
"What?"
"A mark on a piece of silverware."
He placed the fork carefully on the napkin.
"Three scratches."
A chill ran down my spine.
"The same as those?"
"Exactly."
I stared at him.
"Who tried to kill you?"
Matteo looked toward the front of the restaurant.
For the first time, he seemed uncertain.
"That's the question I should have answered seventeen years ago."
I felt anger rising through my fear.
"And my mother? What happened to her?"
"She left."
"Why?"
"Because she said she couldn't trust anyone around me."
"Did you let her go?"
His silence told me more than his answer could have.
Finally, he said, "Not as easily as I should have."
I stepped backward.
My mother had rarely spoken about the years before our life became small and quiet.
Whenever I asked why we moved so often, she said we needed a fresh beginning.
Whenever I asked why we never visited certain neighborhoods, she changed the subject.
And whenever I asked about the recipe, she smiled.
Except once.
The last time we cooked it together.
She had been sick then.
Very sick.
Her fingers trembled as she helped me squeeze lemon into the pan.
I remembered asking why I couldn't change the fennel for another herb.
Her smile disappeared.
She gripped my wrist.
Not painfully.
Desperately.
Promise me you'll remember it exactly.
Even if someone tells you it doesn't matter.
Even if someone frightens you.
I had promised.
And she had started crying.
Standing in Bellavita, I suddenly understood that those tears had never been about the food.
"My mother left me a notebook," I whispered.
Matteo turned sharply.
"What notebook?"
"Her recipes."
"Do you still have it?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
I hesitated.
There was no reason to trust him.
He had locked me inside a restaurant.
He knew secrets about my mother.
And someone had tried to kill him using a meal I had prepared.
"At home," I said.
Matteo looked toward Luca Ferraro, who stood near the doorway.
"Have a car brought around."
I took another step backward.
"No."
Matteo turned to me.
"I need to see that notebook."
"You don't get to order me into your car."
His eyes narrowed.
For one awful moment, I thought I had gone too far.
Then he said, "You're right."
I blinked.
He lowered his voice.
"But whoever arranged this dinner knew the recipe would matter to me. They knew it might make me ask questions. If your mother's notebook contains what I think it contains, the person responsible may already know where you live."
My blood ran cold.
Before I could answer, Luca's phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
His expression tightened.
He moved close to Matteo and whispered something.
Matteo's face changed.
"What do you mean?" he demanded.
Luca glanced at me.
Then he answered.
"The kitchen camera stopped recording twenty minutes before the dish went out."
Matteo looked at the fork again.
"And the private silverware cabinet?"
Luca hesitated.
"Opened earlier this evening."
"By whom?"
"We're checking."
Matteo turned to me.
"Elena, listen carefully. Your mother warned me about a dinner seventeen years ago. Tonight, someone has repeated almost every detail."
My voice came out barely above a whisper.
"Why?"
He stared at the scratches on the fork.
"Because someone is trying to finish what they started."
And in that moment, I remembered something else about my mother's notebook.
Something I hadn't thought about in eleven years.
A page near the back.
Folded twice.
Sealed with a strip of yellowed tape.
On the outside, in my mother's handwriting, were four words.
Only when he remembers.
I had never understood who he was.
May you like
Now I was beginning to.
And I had the terrible feeling my mother had known this night would come.
