Chapter 2 - The Watch Antonio Gave Away
Margaret refused the limousine.
“Too much attention.”
Dante arranged an ordinary car.
She approved that.
At the clinic, she insisted on speaking with staff before anyone discussed payment. Dante remained in the waiting room with Sophie while a social worker helped Margaret review available assistance.
He had expected money to simplify the morning.
Instead, he discovered how many decisions had nothing to do with what he could afford.
Sophie sat beside him, boots dangling above the floor.
“Are you cross?”
“No.”
“You look cross.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That makes Grandma cross sometimes.”
He glanced at her.
“Does she think a lot?”
“Mostly when she thinks I’m asleep.”
Sophie pulled a folded paper from her pocket.
It was a pharmacy receipt, carefully flattened.
She offered it to him.
“What’s this?”
“Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That I did the delivery.”
Dante looked at the amount paid.
Then at her earnest face.
“You don’t owe me proof.”
“We had a deal.”
“Yes,” he said. “We did.”
He returned the receipt.
“You kept your side.”
She folded it again.
After a moment, she asked, “Did I sell something bad?”
“No.”
“Grandma looked scared when you held it.”
Dante considered the answer.
Adults had lied around this child long enough.
“I think the watch reminded her of something painful.”
“Grandpa?”
“Yes.”
Sophie looked toward the treatment corridor.
“She says he fixed things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Doors. Cars. The toaster once. Mommy said he could fix almost anything except a bad mood.”
Dante smiled before he could stop himself.
Then he remembered that Rachel was dead.
The smile disappeared.
When Margaret returned, a nurse accompanied her. There would be follow-up care, additional tests, and help coordinating treatment.
No promises of miracles.
A plan.
Margaret looked less frightened holding one.
She found Sophie drawing on the back of an appointment envelope.
“Would you get me some water, sweetheart?”
After the child left with the nurse, Margaret sat beside Dante.
“Your father gave Joseph that watch.”
Dante turned toward her.
“On October twelfth?”
“That morning.”
“My birthday.”
“I know.”
She studied his face.
“You were eight. Joseph bought you a wooden boat from a shop near the harbor. He spent three evenings painting it.”
Dante remembered the boat.
Blue hull.
White sails.
He had broken the mast two weeks after the funeral.
Victor told him to throw it away.
Dante leaned forward.
“Why did my father give him the watch?”
“Because Joseph agreed to help him leave.”
“Leave what?”
Margaret gave him a tired look.
“Don’t make me explain the business your family called business.”
He said nothing.
“Antonio wanted out of certain arrangements. He’d begun separating legitimate properties from money that should never have touched them.”
Dante frowned.
“That isn’t what I was told.”
“I imagine not.”
Joseph had driven Antonio to meetings with an attorney.
He had carried envelopes.
He had noticed that Victor’s name appeared on transactions Antonio did not recognize.
“Joseph wasn’t an accountant,” Margaret continued. “But he knew when a man was frightened.”
“My father?”
“Your father.”
The idea felt strange.
Antonio existed in family stories as a man who inspired fear, not someone who experienced it.
Margaret looked toward Sophie.
“That morning, Antonio said Joseph had earned more than wages. He gave him the watch and promised the family would be looked after if anything happened.”
“Why was Joseph’s name engraved inside?”
“He had ordered it for him earlier that week.”
“And the date?”
“Your father wanted to remember the day he began doing something right.”
Dante stared at the floor.
For twenty years, he had believed his birthday marked only an ending.
Now there was another story buried beneath it.
“What happened that night?”
Margaret’s hands tightened.
“Joseph called from a pay phone. Said the route had changed. He told me to lock the door.”
“Who changed it?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Then?”
“He never came home.”
Dante looked up.
“You said he went back.”
“A man came to see me three days later. A dockworker. He said Joseph got out of the car when the shooting started, then ran toward Antonio.”
“His name?”
“Samuel Finch.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Margaret reached into her bag.
“But Rachel tried to find him.”
She withdrew a small notebook.
Its cover was bent, the corners softened by use.
“My daughter started asking questions before she died.”
Dante did not touch it.
“May I?”
Margaret hesitated.
Then she placed it in his hands.
May you like
On the first page, Rachel had written a sentence in blue ink.
If Dad betrayed Antonio, why did Victor pay to make the second body disappear?
