Part 4 — I Helped a Strange Old Woman Find Her Way, but When I Returned Home, a Black Car Was Waiting for Me and Enzo’s Smile Immediately Disappeared

Enzo did not answer the call.

The phone rang a second time.

Then a third time.

Maria lay on the bed and was barely breathing. The doctor drew the curtain, but could not hide the tension remaining in the room.

“Answer it,” I told Enzo.

“It isn’t my mother.”

“Then who is it?”

He looked at the screen. The call ended.

For one moment everyone thought that this was the end. But a message arrived on the phone.

“If you do not get Lucia away, the next call will be about Maria’s death.”

Enzo read the message and his face froze.

“Is this my father’s people?” I asked.

“My father died ten years ago.”

“Then who controls them?”

He could not answer me.

The lawyer took the phone from him.

“This is a threat. Now we must tell the police everything.”

Enzo looked sharply at him.

“If we go to the police, Maria will die.”

“If we do not go,” I said, “I will die.”

This was the first time Enzo could not look directly into my eyes.

Alessandro placed a second folder on the table.

“The fingerprints on the car may have been forged. But I cannot protect you if you hide information yourself.”

“You are my lawyer,” Enzo told him.

“Not anymore today.”

It seemed as if the air disappeared from the room.

“What are you saying?”

“I will not defend a man who leaves his own sister in danger only to preserve the family secret.”

Enzo’s fists tightened.

“You do not know what you are saying.”

“I know very well. I am calling the police now.”

Two cars stopped outside. From the window I saw uniformed officers get out. Enzo exhaled for the first time, though there was no relief on his face.

“You will stay here,” he told me.

“No.”

“Lucia, please.”

“You lied to me all evening. Now a request is no longer enough.”

Maria opened her eyes.

“Enzo, tell her.”

“What?”

“What happened that night.”

Enzo went to the bed. He took Maria’s hands in his.

“Father ordered my mother and your daughter to be killed,” he said. “I was twelve then and heard everything. Your mother ran away. Your family thought the child had died with her. But Maria secretly got her out and gave her to another family.”

“A family adopted me?” I asked.

“Yes. Your parents were good people. They knew that this was the only way you could be protected.”

“When did you find out?”

“When I was eighteen. Father left me a letter. It said that if I ever found your trail, I should protect you, but never look for you.”

“Why did you start watching me?”

Tiredness appeared in Enzo’s eyes.

“Because I thought the enemies would come to you because of me. I could not imagine that Grandmother would deliberately stand in your path.”

Maria smiled weakly.

“I did not meet you by chance. I needed your help, Lucia. Only you could read the record and decide whom you would give it to.”

“Where is the record?”

Maria shifted her gaze to my hand.

Only then did I notice the inner seam of the small velvet bag. In one corner a thread had come loose. I took a knife and carefully cut it.

A small voice recorder fell out from inside.

Enzo stepped back.

“That is impossible.”

Alessandro picked up the device. The recording was so old that the voice began with a crackle.

We heard a man’s voice.

“If the girl survives, the Russo name is finished. You will drive the car. I will take care of the rest.”

Then my mother’s voice sounded.

“You will not lay a hand on my child.”

The recording stopped.

Enzo slowly sat down.

For the first time he heard his own father’s voice as we heard it—not from family memories, but as evidence of a crime.

“That is not my voice,” he whispered.

“No one said it was yours,” I told him.

“But I was at that car.”

“You were twelve.”

“I knew that something was happening. I did nothing.”

His shoulders dropped.

The police officers entered the room. Alessandro handed them the recording, and Maria gave her statement. Then everything happened quickly: the car was sealed, the garage was searched, Enzo’s company accounts were temporarily frozen, and two of his men were arrested that same night.

Enzo did not try to escape.

He went with the police officers himself.

He stopped at the door.

“Lucia,” he said to me, “if you want, I will never appear in your life again.”

“For once, do something for me that is truly good.”

“What?”

“Stop protecting me with lies.”

He nodded.

“I’ll try.”

“No. Do it.”

He left.

Maria lived for two days.

On the third morning she held my hand and told me that my mother had always believed kindness could not protect a person from danger, but it would still leave us our own selves.

Then she closed her eyes.

It rained at her funeral. I placed on the grave the small leather gloves that had lain in the clinic room. One glove’s seam had opened near the finger. I sewed it and kept it in my pocket.

Six weeks later I moved from my apartment in Queens to a small, sunny house in Brooklyn. I hung a photograph of my mother on the wall. By the window I arranged a work desk where I translated Italian and English documents.

In the first days I startled at every car.

I held my breath at every call.

Then, little by little, I learned that not every black car came from my past.

Enzo’s trial had not yet ended, but he handed everything over to the investigation. He dismantled his father’s network. Some people were arrested, some fled the city. Enzo began living in a small house outside the city while the case continued.

One Sunday, Maria’s old neighbor visited me and brought me her letters. Among the letters was an envelope on which only my name was written.

“Lucia, if you ever read this letter, know that you are not my secret. You are my greatest regret and my greatest hope.”

I read the letter to the end and did not cry for the first time.

Three months later I received a message from Enzo.

“Today I gave my final testimony in court. Before I leave the city, I want to see you once. I will ask you for nothing. I will only say goodbye.”

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote to him:

“The goodbye has already happened. Now we both must live our own lives.”

He did not write to me again.

On the first morning of winter, there was snow on the windowsill. My little niece, who lived in the neighboring apartment, came to me and gave me a picture drawn by Maria. Three people stood in the picture: an old woman, a man in a black shirt, and a woman holding a small bag.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“Yes. Grandmother is in the middle so that no one gets lost again.”

I attached the picture to the refrigerator.

Then I went toward my desk. The small velvet bag lay there, already sewn, without the voice recorder. Morning light came through the window and left a golden stripe on its surface.

At one time I thought that I had found the woman who was lost that day.

Now I knew that in truth she had found me.

And this time I knew the way home myself.