Chapter 16 - The Last Loaf
An arson scene isn't a treasure hunt.
The investigator had warned me that entering the burned structure could destroy evidence or cause the damaged ceiling to collapse.
So I waited for official permission and brought the old building plans.
The bakery's oven platform sat over a narrow cavity originally built to store coal.
Rose had sealed it during a renovation and refused to let contractors pour concrete across one small square.
The inspection photographs showed the square still intact.
With investigators present, a mason removed the damaged tile.
Beneath it was a shallow metal compartment.
Inside sat a waterproof cylinder wrapped in old bakery cloth.
I recognized the blue stitching along the edge.
Grandma had used the same fabric for my lunch bags when I was little.
An investigator opened the cylinder under controlled conditions.
It contained three digital storage devices, an old microcassette, and a sealed letter addressed to Emily.
The devices were booked into evidence.
I was allowed to read the letter after it was photographed.
Rose had written it a week before she died.
She apologized for every question she had refused to answer.
She explained that Lucia had recorded Enzo and Dominic discussing financial transfers, witness disappearances, and the true circumstances of the riverfront fire.
For years Rose and Lucia kept duplicate evidence apart, believing that no single person should possess enough information to be killed over it.
When Lucia learned Dominic was preparing to eliminate surviving witnesses, she brought her final recording to the bakery.
She planned to tell Sofia only how to recognize the hiding place in case both women died.
"I never wanted you to inherit my fear," Rose wrote. "But I cannot ask you to live inside a lie just because I did."
I had to put the page down.
A federal evidence specialist began recovering the data.
One recording captured Dominic saying he had arranged Thomas Carter's disappearance.
Another captured Enzo approving shipments under the Victor Bell identity.
A third contained a furious argument between Lucia and an unidentified male voice.
The voice said, "Matteo will never take the business from me."
Matteo listened in stunned silence.
"That sounds like Anthony," he whispered.
His cousin had already been implicated in the failed ambush.
But a younger voice on an old recording complicated the story.
Anthony had been just a teenager when part of the network began.
Had he been brought into it early, or was someone impersonating him?
We refused to guess.
Audio authentication would have to do the work.
The final file on the newest device was a short video recorded eighteen months earlier.
Lucia sat at a kitchen table, visibly exhausted.
She looked directly into the camera.
"If anything happens to Sofia," she said, "ask who signed the transfer order for the second vehicle. The crash was not an accident."
A rustling sound interrupted the recording.
Lucia turned her head.
A shadow crossed the wall.
Then a man's voice said, "Put the camera down, Mother."
Matteo turned white.
"That's my father's voice."
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The man who had just admitted he knew Enzo was alive had been in the room when Lucia recorded her final warning.
