Chapter 1 - THE NAME THAT MADE GIOVANNI STAND
Marcus Bell knocked the tray out of my hands at 12:17 in the morning.
Three coffee cups shattered across the floor of the Northstar Diner.
He looked toward the man in the corner booth and laughed.
“She gets ideas sometimes.”
My name is Hannah Evans.
Twenty-eight.
Yale graduate.
Nine languages.
And at that moment, apparently worth $4.35 an hour plus tips because life does not care where you went to college when rent is due Friday.
The man Marcus was trying to impress wore a black suit and had two men sitting several feet behind him.
Giovanni Moretti.
Fifty-three.
Moretti Maritime.
Shipping.
Warehouses.
Import contracts.
And enough rumors attached to his name that nobody in Newark asked which parts of the business were legitimate.
Giovanni had heard me answer one customer in Italian, another in Spanish, then switch to Russian with a driver asking for directions.
“Nine?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“A waitress here speaks nine languages?”
Marcus appeared beside me.
“She’s nobody. Just pours coffee.”
Giovanni looked at him.
“Nobody?”
Marcus smiled nervously.
“You know these girls. Think because they went to school they deserve something better.”
I kept my face still.
Marcus liked reactions.
He used them later.
Hysterical.
Disrespectful.
Unprofessional.
So I bent down and picked up broken ceramic.
Giovanni watched me.
Then:
“If you could leave this place tonight, would you?”
“Yes.”
Marcus laughed.
“For what? Translation? She couldn't last a week in a real office.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
DO NOT SHOW MARCUS THE FOLDER.
HE ALREADY KNOWS YOUR FATHER’S NAME.
Every sound in the diner disappeared.
The folder was inside my bag.
My mother gave it to me four days before she died.
“Do not open this unless you have nowhere else to go.”
That had been three years earlier.
I had honored the instruction because dead mothers still possess authority if you let them.
Tonight I had sixty-three dollars in checking and a manager who had just threatened to cut my remaining shifts.
Close enough.
I took the folder out.
Marcus saw it.
For one second, he stopped breathing.
Giovanni saw that too.
“Open it,” he said.
“No.”
His eyebrows rose.
“If I open this, I do it because I choose to.”
Something almost approving crossed his face.
“Good.”
I broke the seal.
The first sheet was a twenty-seven-year-old memorandum.
At the top:
ELIAS WARD.
My father’s name.
The man Mom told me vanished before I was born.
Giovanni stood so abruptly his coffee spilled.
“No.”
I looked up.
“You knew him?”
Giovanni stared at the page.
Then at me.
May you like
“Your father disappeared with something my family has been looking for since 1999.”
Behind me, Marcus quietly reached for his phone.
