Chapter 3 - The Fire That Never Killed HerEmmett dragged the man into the alley before anyone inside the shelter could understand what they had witnessed.
Snow had begun falling in soft, hesitant flakes.
Valerie remained under the shelter awning.
She looked as though she might run.
Emmett’s eyes stayed on her.
“Don’t.”
Her jaw tightened.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
The words surprised him.
Not because she challenged him.
Because beneath the fear, he heard her.
The old Valerie.
The girl who had once told a thirteen-year-old Castelli that his haircut looked like something a lawn mower had regretted.
Emmett released the attacker only long enough for Luca’s car to slide to the curb.
Luca stepped out with two men.
“Take him.”
The attacker resisted.
It lasted three seconds.
“Alive,” Emmett added.
Luca nodded.
Valerie’s face went paler.
“No police?”
“No.”
“That’s worse.”
Emmett looked at her.
“Probably.”
She gave a broken little laugh.
It sounded almost accidental.
“Still honest when it’s inconvenient.”
“You remember me.”
Her expression closed.
“I remember a boy.”
“That boy became inconvenient.”
“So I’ve heard.”
The black sedan had disappeared.
Luca’s men searched nearby streets while Emmett led Valerie toward his car.
She stopped.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Someone just came to kill you.”
“I’ve survived that before.”
“Apparently.”
Her eyes flashed.
He regretted the word immediately.
He was not practiced at regret.
It irritated him.
“I have questions,” he said.
“I don’t owe you answers.”
“No.”
That stopped her.
Emmett continued.
“But you need somewhere protected tonight. My house is protected.”
She stared at him.
“That sentence is exactly why I’m not getting in your car.”
Despite himself, Emmett almost smiled.
Then he noticed her hands shaking.
“Choose the place.”
“What?”
“You don’t want my house. Fine. Choose somewhere you consider safe.”
“There isn’t one.”
“Then choose somewhere public.”
She looked toward the shelter.
“People in there could get hurt.”
“Yes.”
That was the answer that decided her.
Twenty minutes later, they sat in a twenty-four-hour diner near Cranston.
Emmett had bought the entire back section for privacy.
Valerie sat opposite him in a cracked vinyl booth.
A bowl of soup steamed before her.
She had not touched it.
Emmett removed his gloves.
Her eyes dropped to his right hand.
The scars had faded over the years but never disappeared.
“You still have them,” she said.
“So do you.”
He looked at the burn mark on her arm.
She covered it with her sleeve.
“What happened?”
Valerie glanced toward the windows.
“That depends which fire you’re asking about.”
Emmett leaned forward.
“The one that killed you.”
She looked at him for a long time.
Then she took the brass button from beneath her shirt.
She placed it between them.
His crooked V caught the diner light.
“You left this outside our apartment,” she said.
“I know.”
“My mother found it.”
“I thought you did.”
“No. She kept it.”
“Why?”
“She said one day I might need proof that there had been someone in my childhood who knew me before everyone started lying.”
Emmett said nothing.
Valerie rubbed one thumb over the metal.
“When I was fourteen, my mother came home early from work. She told me to pack a bag. She was crying.”
“What was her name?”
“Angela Russo.”
“I remember.”
“My father had disappeared again. I thought that was why she was scared.”
Valerie swallowed.
“But she kept saying, ‘They found us.’”
“Who?”
“She never told me.”
Emmett’s voice lowered.
“What happened next?”
“A car followed us.”
She stared at the soup.
“We reached a house near Pawtucket. Not ours. She said it belonged to a friend.”
Her breath changed.
“There were two men waiting inside.”
“The one from tonight?”
“One of them.”
“What did they want?”
“My mother.”
“For what?”
“She had records.”
“What records?”
“I didn’t know then.”
“And now?”
Valerie finally looked up.
“Accounts.”
Emmett’s eyes narrowed.
“What kind?”
“Construction contracts. Port payments. Judges. Police officers. Companies used to wash money.”
The names formed in his mind before she said them.
Castelli.
Costas.
Possibly others.
“My mother worked nights in a nursing home,” he said.
“That was one job.”
“What was the other?”
“She cleaned offices.”
Emmett’s stomach tightened.
“Whose offices?”
“Costas Development.”
Silence.
Valerie continued.
“She copied things. Ledgers. Payment sheets. Names.”
“Why?”
“Because my father was involved.”
Emmett remembered Valerie’s father as a thin, nervous man who smelled of cigarettes and always seemed to owe money.
“What did he do?”
“He moved cash.”
“For Costas?”
“For your father too.”
That landed harder.
“My father?”
Valerie nodded.
“Your father and Adrian Costas were partners before they became enemies.”
Emmett leaned back.
His father, Salvatore Castelli, had died fifteen years ago.
A violent man.
A paranoid man.
But Emmett had never known the full shape of his business.
“He stole from Costas,” Valerie said.
“I know.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“He stole from both families.”
Emmett remained silent.
“He was hiding money offshore,” she continued. “My father helped him. Then they tried to blame Costas.”
“Why would your mother have proof?”
“Because my father hid copies where he thought nobody would look.”
“At the cleaning company?”
“In her supplies.”
Emmett exhaled slowly.
“And the fire?”
Valerie’s eyes went distant.
“They tied my mother to a chair.”
The diner noise seemed to fade.
“They made me watch while they demanded the records. She kept saying she didn’t have them.”
Her thumb pressed harder into the brass button.
“She told me to run.”
Valerie’s voice became smaller.
“I didn’t.”
Emmett’s jaw tightened.
“They poured gasoline.”
He stared at her.
“They intended to burn the house?”
“They intended to burn us.”
“Who gave the order?”
“I heard a name.”
His entire body went still.
“Whose?”
“Costas.”
Emmett thought of Adrian.
Then Delphine.
Valerie shook her head before he spoke.
“I don’t know which Costas.”
“What happened?”
“My mother got one hand loose.”
Valerie looked down at the scar on her arm.
“She pushed me through a laundry window after they started the fire.”
“And her?”
“She didn’t get out.”
For the first time, the careful control on Valerie’s face broke.
Emmett watched tears fill her eyes.
She blinked them away angrily.
“The men found me behind the house. One grabbed me. I bit him. He hit me hard enough that I don’t remember much after.”
“Where did you wake up?”
“A hospital.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were fourteen.”
“Yes.”
“How did nobody connect you to the fire?”
“Because I wasn’t Valerie Russo anymore.”
Emmett felt cold.
“They changed your identity.”
“A woman came to the hospital. She said she worked for social services.”
“Name?”
“Marian Vance.”
Mara.
Vance.
“She told me my mother was dead. She said people were still looking for me. She gave me a choice: disappear or die.”
“You believed her?”
“I had watched men set my mother on fire.”
Fair.
“What happened to Marian?”
“She moved me three times in two years.”
“Foster homes?”
“Safe houses, I think.”
“And then?”
“When I was seventeen, she disappeared.”
“Dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Valerie folded her arms around herself.
“I stayed Mara Vance.”
“You never came back?”
“I did.”
Emmett’s voice dropped.
“When?”
“Ten years ago.”
His blood seemed to stop moving.
“The funeral.”
She nodded.
“You were there?”
“Across the street.”
He pictured rain.
Black umbrella.
Cheap flowers.
A priest speaking over the grave of Valerie Russo.
He had stood alone.
Except he had not been alone.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
Her expression changed.
“That night Marian disappeared, she left one message.”
“What?”
“Never trust a Castelli.”
Emmett went still.
Valerie continued.
“She said the man who wanted my mother dead had spent years hiding behind two family names.”
“Castelli and Costas.”
“Yes.”
Emmett thought of his father.
Then his uncles.
Then himself.
“What made you come back now?”
“I didn’t.”
“You’re in Providence.”
“I was passing through.”
“People don’t pass through Providence in February without a reason.”
She gave him a tired look.
“I was looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“Marian.”
“You think she’s alive?”
“I know she is.”
“How?”
Valerie reached into her battered backpack.
Emmett tensed automatically.
She noticed.
“Relax, mafia king. It’s paper.”
He hated how familiar the insult felt.
She removed an envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
Recent.
A woman in her sixties walking outside a grocery store.
On the back, written in blue ink:
FEBRUARY 3.
PROVIDENCE.
DON’T TRUST THE MAN WEARING YOUR BUTTON.
Emmett read the sentence twice.
“What man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who sent the photo?”
“No return address.”
He looked at the brass button.
There had been three.
One buried at St. Ambrose.
One left for Valerie.
One placed beneath her gravestone.
His stomach tightened.
He stood.
“Finish the soup.”
She stared at him.
“Where are you going?”
“To a cemetery.”
“At midnight?”
“Yes.”
“That’s normal.”
“Nothing about today has been normal.”
One hour later, they stood beneath falling snow at Saint Ann Cemetery.
Luca had opened the gate.
Valerie remained beside the car while Emmett walked to the grave.
VALERIE ANGELA RUSSO.
BELOVED DAUGHTER.
He knelt.
Ten years ago, he had pushed the third brass button into soft earth beneath the stone.
He dug with his bare hands.
Frozen dirt tore at his fingers.
“Emmett,” Valerie called.
He kept digging.
Then his fingers struck metal.
Not a button.
A small tin box.
Emmett pulled it free.
Valerie approached slowly.
“I didn’t put that there.”
He opened the rusted lid.
Inside lay the third brass button.
And beneath it—
A photograph of Emmett’s father standing beside Adrian Costas.
Between them stood Angela Russo.
Valerie’s mother.
All three were smiling.
May you like
On the back were six handwritten words.
ASK FRANCA WHO STARTED THE FIRE.
Related Stories
