Chapter 1 – THE TRUTH ABOUT GRANDFATHER’S LEATHER JOURNAL

“My grandfather?” I repeated, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.

I stared at Matteo. He hadn’t moved, but the muscles in his jaw were tight, flexing under his skin. The silence in the dining room was absolute. Twenty-four relatives held their breath.

“Nonna,” Matteo said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, quiet register. “We are not discussing this at the dinner table.”

“We are discussing it right now,” Lucia replied in English, her spine perfectly straight. She didn’t look like an eighty-two-year-old woman in need of care. She looked like the matriarch of a Chicago syndicate.

I turned fully toward my husband. “Matteo. What did my grandfather leave behind?”

My grandfather, a humble baker from Naples, had died three months before I married Matteo. He had nothing. His bakery had barely survived his final years, and his only possession of value was a worn leather journal he used for recipes.

“Sophia, sit down,” Matteo ordered.

“Answer her,” Lucia commanded.

Matteo finally looked at me, his dark eyes entirely unreadable. “Your grandfather didn’t just bake bread, Sophia. He held on to things. Things that didn’t belong to him.”

“That’s a lie.” I stepped toward him, my heart hammering against my ribs. “He was a good man. He had nothing to do with your family’s business.”

“You’re right,” Bianca’s voice echoed from the hallway.

I turned. She hadn’t left. She was standing in the arched doorway of the dining room, her red silk dress catching the chandelier’s light. She held a small, familiar object in her manicured hand.

It was my grandfather’s leather journal.

The one I thought was locked safely in my cedar chest at home.

“He wasn’t in the business,” Bianca said with a cruel, knowing smile. “But he kept the ledger for the men who were. And this little book? It doesn’t contain recipes.”

My breath caught. “How did you get that?”

Bianca looked at Matteo, waiting for him to stop her. When he didn’t, she tossed the journal onto the center of the long dining table. It slid across the polished wood, stopping right in front of Lucia’s plate.

“Matteo gave it to me,” Bianca said simply. “Because he didn’t want you to know that the Moretti family owes your grandfather’s estate three million dollars.”

I looked at Matteo, the room spinning.

He didn’t look apologetic. He looked cornered. But before he could speak, Lucia picked up the journal and opened it.

She stared at the first page for a long time. Then, she looked up at me, her eyes filled with a sudden, terrifying realization.

“Sophia,” Lucia whispered, her hands trembling. “This isn’t your grandfather’s handwriting. This is your father’s.”