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

That evening, the black car parked in front of my house immediately made me realize that helping the old woman was no longer a simple act of kindness.

The car engine was running quietly. The windows were so dark that I could not see anything inside. I was still holding that small piece of paper on which Maria Russo’s address was written, with a red stain left by her lipstick visible in the corner.

Several hours earlier, I had found Maria crying in Times Square. She was holding an old paper map, while people flowed around me as if the woman did not exist at all.

“Excuse me, ma’am, do you speak Italian?” I asked.

The old woman raised her head so quickly, as if she had been pulled out of the water.

“Oh God, at last!” she breathed. “I am lost.”

“You are safe now.”

“I don’t know where I am. The phone doesn’t work. My grandson was supposed to meet me, but the plane landed early.”

Her voice was trembling. I took her cold fingers in mine and led her aside from the flow of people.

“Do you have your grandson’s address?”

“Enzo Russo. He lives in Brooklyn.”

The paper showed the address of an upscale neighborhood. Maria refused to get into a taxi, and she was afraid of the subway. So I spent the entire journey with her. I translated the signs for her at the ticket machine, carried her suitcase up the stairs, and stood beside her on the train when the noise coming from the tunnel frightened the woman.

“Is your grandson an important person?” I asked when Maria was clutching the suitcase handle.

The old woman looked at me strangely.

“He is important to me.”

At the time, I did not understand that answer.

We arrived in Brooklyn at dusk. Maria’s house turned out to be tall, old, and luxurious. The brass numbers on the door shone as if they were cleaned every day.

“I’ll leave you here,” I said.

“No. You will come inside with me.”

“It really isn’t necessary.”

“I cannot send to the door the person who did not abandon me on the way.”

A large man opened the door. He was wearing a dark suit and had such a calm gaze that it seemed as if he checked every person entering the room in advance.

“Mrs. Russo, we were going to the airport,” he told her in Italian.

“My plane landed early. This girl helped me.”

The man looked toward me.

“You speak Italian?”

“Yes.”

“She only helped you on the way?”

“Only.”

The sound of footsteps came from inside. Then he appeared.

Enzo Russo was about thirty years old, with broad shoulders, slicked-back hair, and dark tattoos stretched across his forearms. The sleeves of his black shirt were rolled up to his elbows. First he looked at his grandmother, then at me.

His face changed immediately.

“Grandmother,” he said and hugged Maria. “I should have warned you that I would not be able to meet you at the airport.”

“You should have met me,” Maria scolded him. “This girl did everything instead of you.”

“Thank you,” Enzo said to me.

“It’s nothing.”

“Come in. You will at least drink some water.”

There was politeness in his voice, but his gaze was asking questions. I entered. Silence stood in the house, so heavy that I could hear every tick of the clock hanging on the wall.

In the dining room they set a crystal glass before me. Enzo sat opposite me. Maria went into the kitchen, but she did not close the door completely.

“Where do you live?” he asked.

“In Queens.”

“Alone?”

“Is this question part of the thank-you?”

A smile appeared at his lips, though it did not reach his eyes.

“I’m simply interested in who saved my grandmother today.”

“I didn’t save anyone. I showed her the way.”

“You don’t know the whole city, but you reached my house exactly.”

“She had the address.”

Enzo looked at my wallet lying on the table. The corner of my work card could be seen sticking out of it.

“You do legal translations?”

“Sometimes.”

“Perhaps you could translate a document for me tomorrow.”

“I’m busy tomorrow.”

“Then give me your number.”

I raised my head.

“Is that necessary?”

“If Grandma forgets again tomorrow where she lives, I’ll need to call someone.”

Maria intervened from a distance:

“Give him your number, Lucia. Enzo is rude, but he is a grateful man.”

Something froze in Enzo’s gaze for a moment. It was as if the word “grateful” were an unfamiliar accusation to him.

I gave him my number. He entered it into his phone and called me immediately. The phone inside my bag began to vibrate.

“Now you have my number too,” he said.

“That is probably excessive caution.”

“Often caution is exactly what saves you.”

As I left the house, Maria put a small velvet bag into my hand.

“What is this?”

“You will open it in the morning.”

“I can’t take it.”

“You will. Otherwise I’ll get angry.”

Enzo stood at the door. The streetlamp cast sharp shadows across his tattoos.

“Text me when you get home,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because it will be late.”

“You are not my neighbor.”

“No,” he answered calmly. “But I already know that in this city kindness sometimes comes at a high price.”

I took his words as a joke.

When I returned home, the car was waiting for me.

Its doors opened. Someone in the back seat raised a phone and took a photo of me. At the same time, a message came from Enzo: “Do not open the door. Do not go near the window either.”

A tall man got out of the car and headed toward the entrance of my building. I stepped back, but then my phone rang again. Enzo’s name lit up on the screen.

“Lucia, listen to me,” he said. “Now you will do exactly what I tell you. That man is coming to you because he thinks you know what I gave Grandma. If the door opens, tell him that the document is not with me. And then…”

I could already hear the stranger’s footsteps on the stairs. My hands went cold. And Enzo began counting silently on the phone as the entrance door slowly opened in front of me…

I froze at the entrance door. The stranger put his hand on the handle.

“Lucia Romano?” he asked.

I could hear Enzo’s voice from the phone.

“Don’t answer. Just tell him that the document is not with me.”

“Which document?” I whispered.

“Now is not the time for questions.”

The door opened. The man had a long scar on his cheek and held a small velvet bag like Maria’s in his hand.

“Mrs. Romano, you have Maria Russo’s bag.”

I looked at the bag. Maria had given it to me when I returned home, but I had not had time to open it.

“I know nothing.”

“Then hand over the bag.”

“Enzo told me that the document is not with him,” I said, not even understanding myself why I repeated his words.

The man’s face changed.

“So he has already spoken to you.”

Enzo said to me very calmly over the phone:

“Now look to the left. Come down the stairs. Don’t run.”

“Where are you?”

“Behind you.”

I turned around. Enzo stood in a dark corner of the entrance hall. His suit was wet with rain, and his hands hung freely, as if coming here were an ordinary matter.

The scarred man reached toward the bag.

“That item is mine.”

“No,” Enzo said. “You simply want him to think that.”

Within seconds two other men appeared from the street. I leaned against the wall, and the strength left my knees.

Enzo did not look toward me.

“Lucia, do not open the bag.”

“Why?”

“Because if you find inside what I think is there, you will have no way back.”

The scarred man suddenly pulled a knife from his pocket. Enzo stepped forward, but the sound of a siren rang out and the man stopped.

Then Enzo leaned toward my ear.

“Maria did not speak to you by chance today. She chose you.”

“For what?”

He looked at the bag.

“To tell you this…”

Outside, car doors closed simultaneously. Enzo’s phone rang. He answered, listened to a few words, and for the first time I saw his face become tense.

“They took her to the clinic,” he said.

“Who?”

“Grandmother.”

Then he turned toward me.

“And the doctor said she has only a few hours left…”

Enzo’s last words remained hanging in the entrance hall. Rain struck my face, but I looked only at the bag.

“Open it,” he told me.

“You yourself told me not to open it.”

“At the time I did not know that they had already come to the clinic to take Maria away.”

The scarred man tried to escape, but one of Enzo’s men pinned him against the wall. A few minutes later a police car appeared as well. Enzo did not tell the police everything, though what he said was enough for them to arrest the man.

I was sitting in Enzo’s car, clutching the bag on my knees. The velvet was cold. My fingers were trembling so much that the clasp slipped from them twice.

“If I open this, what will I learn?” I asked.

“The truth I have been trying to hide for ten years.”

“And why me?”

Enzo tightened both hands around the steering wheel.

“Because Maria knew your name before she met you.”

A doctor, Maria, and a lawyer, Alessandro Bianchi, were waiting for us in the clinic’s small conference room. Maria was pale, but conscious. Her old leather gloves lay on the bed.

“Lucia,” she said to me, “forgive me.”

“What should I forgive you for?”

Alessandro placed a document on the table.

“For years Mrs. Russo had been looking for a person who could independently read one record and several legal documents. This record concerns your parents.”

My breath caught.

“My parents?”

Enzo lowered his eyes.

Alessandro took a copy of an old certificate from the envelope. My mother’s name was written on the paper, though the place of birth was listed as another city. Then he unfolded a letter written in Maria’s hand.

“Twenty-nine years ago, in Sicily, your mother worked for Maria Russo’s family. She handed Enzo’s father records proving financial crimes. After that, she disappeared.”

“My mother died in an accident,” I said.

“That is what you were told,” Maria answered. “But she did not die that night. She left me a child.”

Silence fell over the room.

“Which child?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

Maria began to cry.

“You.”

Enzo stood up from his chair.

“Grandmother, enough.”

“No, Enzo. The girl must know. Lucia is your half-sister.”

The crystal glass that I had accidentally taken along the way fell from my hand and shattered on the floor.

Enzo leaned against the wall. For the first time there was no control on his face.

“My father hid this from me,” he said. “And Maria spent years trying to protect him.”

“You knew?” I asked.

“I suspected. Your surname, Italian, your mother’s name… But I had no confirmation.”

Alessandro took out a second sheet.

“There is a DNA test. Maria is your biological grandmother. Enzo is your half-brother.”

I looked at Maria. The woman extended her hand to me.

“I spoke to you in the street that day because your eyes looked like your mother’s.”

“And the enemies? Why were they following me?”

Enzo did not answer. Alessandro answered for him:

“Your mother had a record that was still considered missing. Maria hid it in the bag and gave it to you because she knew no one would suspect a strange woman who had simply helped an old lady.”

“Where is the record?”

Maria was closing her eyes, while the doctor checked her pulse.

“The record is no longer in the bag,” Enzo said.

“Then where is it?”

At that moment Alessandro’s phone rang. He answered, listened silently for a few seconds, and went to the window.

“Mr. Russo,” he said, “the police have found the car in which your father was taken on the night of the murder.”

Enzo stopped.

“Where?”

The lawyer slowly turned around.

“In your private garage. And they found fresh fingerprints in the car that belong to you…”

After this answer everyone in the room turned toward me. But the most frightening thing was that Enzo’s phone rang again, and instead of his father’s name, one word appeared on the screen: “Mother”…