Chapter 3 - The Alleyway Warning

The kitchen exit led into a narrow concrete alleyway boxed in by towering brick walls and humming industrial air-conditioning units. The cool night air hit my face like a splash of cold water, clearing the heavy scent of restaurant grease and old paper from my senses. I pulled my denim jacket tight around my shoulders, clutching my tip envelope inside my pocket as I walked toward the staff parking lot.

"Tessa."

I froze. Marco stepped out from the shadow of a steel dumpster, the orange tip of a cigarette glowing dully in the dark. He didn't look like a corporate manager or a restaurant fixer now; he looked dangerous, wired into a world I had spent my entire life trying to stay clear of.

"You're playing a very dangerous game," Marco said, tossing his cigarette to the wet pavement and grinding it out with the toe of his leather shoe.

I turned to face him, keeping my chin up, channeling the stubborn set of jaw I had inherited from the woman in Don Salvatore's photograph. "I'm not playing anything, Marco. I came here to wait tables, take home my tips, and pay my bills. Your boss is the one who stopped me mid-pour."

Marco closed the distance between us, stopping just a few feet away. His breath fogged in the chill air. "Don Salvatore is an old man living on ghosts and regrets. People around him get caught in the backdraft of his history. If you keep talking to him about Rosa, about that mountain dialect, you're going to open doors that won't ever shut again."

"And what happens if I do?" I asked, my voice holding steady despite the fast, erratic hammering of my heart.

"You lose this job. You lose your peace. And maybe, just maybe, you find out why your great-grandmother ran away across an ocean with a one-way ticket and a sealed mouth," Marco said, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly whisper. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, heavy object, tossing it through the air toward me.

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I caught it by reflex. It was a brass skeleton key, cold and heavy in my palm.

"Salvatore told me to give you this," Marco muttered, turning back toward the shadows of the loading dock. "Address is on the tag. Be there tomorrow morning at ten before I convince him to change his mind."