Chapter 16 - The Third Box
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Two days passed in a strange, insulated peace.
The Boston syndicate was busy securing their territory, purging the traitors who had sided with Silvio, and sending Lorenzo Mancuso back to Italy. Christopher was consumed by meetings, but he returned to my side every evening, refusing to let me out of his sight.
On the third afternoon, I wandered back into the library.
The room smelled of stale coffee and old paper. The three archival boxes still sat on the mahogany desk, exactly where we had left them before the power was cut.
I walked over to the desk and pulled the final, unopened box toward me.
Christopher had said these were the last of her personal effects, the documents she had kept hidden even from her own family. I broke the ribbon and opened the lid.
Unlike the other boxes, this one was not filled with loose letters. It contained a single, thick, leather-bound journal.
I opened the cover. The pages were filled with Maria’s elegant handwriting, but the dates were shocking. The journal entries didn't stop nineteen years ago when she died. The final entry was dated merely six months before her death.
I sat down in the leather chair, my heart pounding, and began to translate.
“Vincenzo thinks he has won,” the entry began. “He thinks by destroying my music, he has destroyed my soul. But he does not know what I did before I married him.”
I leaned closer, my eyes flying across the page.
“When the Mancusos threatened me in Calabria, I did not just run to Boston. I ran to a small village near Caserta first. I sought out the only woman who could help me disappear. A woman who possessed the old magic, the old ways of hiding in plain sight. Her name was Rosa.”
I stopped breathing. The journal slipped from my fingers, landing heavily on the desk.
Rosa.
That was my grandmother’s name. Rosa Carter, though she had changed her last name when she immigrated to America. She was from the exact village outside Caserta that Maria had fled to.
My hands shook violently as I picked the journal back up and forced myself to read the next lines.
“Rosa gave me the identity I needed to reach America safely. But she demanded a price. She demanded I leave my most precious possession with her, to ensure the Mancusos would never find it. Vincenzo believes Christopher is his only child. He does not know that before I fled Italy, I gave birth to a daughter.”
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I stared at the faded ink, the world spinning violently around me.
“I left my baby girl with Rosa. Rosa promised to raise her as her own, to take her across the ocean and hide her in America, far away from the mafia’s reach. I gave up my daughter to save her life.”
