THE MAFIA BOSS CATERED MY WEDDING

Chapter Two — Ricci and Sons

Lena picked up on the second ring, which meant she was already awake and already caffeinated, which meant this conversation was going to be efficient whether I wanted it to be or not.

"The flowers are sorted," I said, because that was simpler than what I actually wanted to say. "The florist is sending someone at noon."

"Great. Are you okay? You sound like you swallowed something."

"I'm fine. Can you do something for me?"

"Depends on what it is."

"Google the catering company. Ricci and Sons."

A pause. I could hear her shifting position, the soft sound of her reaching for her laptop. Lena was the only person I knew who slept with her laptop on the nightstand, which she maintained was practical and I maintained was a personality concern.

"Why?" she asked.

"Just look it up."

I was sitting on the edge of the hotel suite's bed with Daniel's laptop open in front of me. He'd texted me twenty minutes ago asking me to pull the venue contract from his files — something about confirming the liability clause before the rehearsal dinner tonight. He'd said it was in a folder called Wedding Admin and I'd find it easily.

I found the folder. I found the contract.

Then I found the subfolder.

It was labeled with two letters: E.M.

My father's initials were Enzo Marchetti. I told myself that meant nothing. People organized files in all kinds of ways. E.M. could stand for anything.

I opened it anyway.

"Okay," Lena said, her voice shifting register slightly. "It's a holding company. Registered in Delaware. The listed director is a Marco A. Ricci." Another pause, longer. "There's a New York Times article. Business section. 2019."

I was looking at a column of financial transfers inside the E.M. folder. Wire transfers between accounts I didn't recognize, amounts with enough zeros to make my eyes do something uncomfortable. Property titles. Shell companies registered across four countries. And at the top of one document, in the slightly rounder handwriting my father had before the tremor developed, a signature I recognized.

"What's the article about?" I asked.

"Import and export." She was reading carefully now — I could tell by the quality of her silence. "Federal investigation. The Ricci family." She paused again. "Sofia, it says the charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence. But the investigation itself — this isn't a parking violation. This is organized crime territory."

I scrolled down the E.M. folder.

Property titles. More transfers. A corporate structure diagram I couldn't fully parse but which had my father's name in one of the boxes, connected by a line to an entity I didn't recognize.

"Who is this man?" Lena asked.

I scrolled to the bottom of the folder.

The last document had a different header from everything else. A government header. Federal Task Force letterhead, the kind of format I recognized from news articles I'd read without ever expecting to be adjacent to.

The title read: Asset Overview — Marchetti Estate Holdings.

I read it twice because the first time didn't produce a result I was willing to accept.

My name was at the top.

Not my father's name. Not my mother's name.

Mine. Sofia Elena Marchetti. Listed as primary account holder for a series of financial structures I had never opened, never signed for, never been told existed.

The document was dated fourteen months ago.

"Sofia." Lena's voice had gone careful. "Who is this Marco Ricci to you?"

I closed the laptop.

I did it slowly, with both hands, the way you close something you're not sure you should have opened. The suite was very quiet. Outside the window Connecticut looked entirely indifferent, which felt personally inconsiderate.

"He's someone I used to know," I said.

"The catering company isn't a catering company," Lena said. "I want to be clear about that."

"I know."

"And Daniel had a federal document with your name on it filed under your father's initials on his personal laptop."

"I know."

"And you didn't know about any of this."

"No."

Lena was quiet for three seconds, which for Lena was the equivalent of a long thoughtful pause. Then she said: "How are you doing."

It wasn't really a question.

"I'm fine," I said, which was so obviously untrue that saying it out loud almost made me laugh. Almost.

I was still looking at the closed laptop when I heard Daniel's voice in the corridor outside the suite — low, unhurried, the particular tone he used on work calls when he wanted to sound reassuring.

I went very still.

"No, it's fine," he was saying. "She doesn't know anything yet."

The corridor went quiet.

I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands flat on my knees and the laptop between us like a thing that had already changed its shape, and I thought about a catering company that wasn't a catering company, and a man who knew where the flowers were supposed to be, and my name at the top of a federal document I had never signed.

She doesn't know anything yet.

Past tense was going to be a problem for him.