The caption read: MARCEL ORSINI, 1998.

Daniel’s father had spoken that name only once, during the last evening of his life, when fever and medication had stripped away his usual caution. Daniel remembered leaning close to the hospital bed and hearing: “If Orsini comes, don’t let him choose for you.”

“What do you want?” Daniel asked.

“To correct a mistake that has lasted twenty-six years.”

“Then start by explaining why you brought bodyguards to a diner.”

Vale glanced toward the window. “They’re not here to threaten you. They’re here because the man you fed yesterday is in danger.”

Kent reached for the dossier. Vale shut it before his fingers touched the leather.

“Private conversation,” Vale said.

“This is my restaurant,” Kent protested.

“Then you can decide whether your customers should hear it.”

Daniel led Vale into the narrow hallway by the storeroom, leaving the door open. He had learned early that secrecy often benefited the person who demanded it.

Vale explained that Marcel Orsini had once run a criminal organization along the eastern docks. Daniel’s father, Nathan Brooks, had been a commercial refrigeration mechanic. Twenty-six years earlier, a warehouse blaze killed six workers. Orsini was blamed for ordering the fire; Nathan was blamed for disabling a safety alarm. Both accusations had survived because nobody trusted either man’s account.

“My father wasn’t a criminal,” Daniel said.

“I didn’t say he was.”

“You put his name in a mafia file.”

“I put it in a file about people who were harmed by the mafia. There’s a difference.”

Vale opened the folder to a page of portraits. Daniel recognized his father in a photograph taken before his hair turned gray. Nathan stood with a wrench in one hand, smiling at someone outside the frame. Behind him was a painted sign: HARBOR NIGHT SHIFT COOPERATIVE.

“Your father built something,” Vale said. “Orsini helped destroy it. Now someone is rebuilding the same arrangement, and the people who know how it worked are disappearing from the conversation.”

Daniel looked at the folder again. “Is Marcel alive?”

“Yes. But he won’t be safe for long if he stays where he is.”

Chapter Three: A Different Kind of Debt

Daniel refused Vale’s offer of a ride. He finished his shift, called his younger sister, June, and met her at their father’s old garage. June repaired bicycles for a living and had no patience for dramatic strangers with expensive cars.

“A mafia figure comes into your diner with Dad’s name in a folder,” she said, “and your first instinct is to investigate?”

“My first instinct was to ask him to leave.”

“That’s reassuring. What was your second?”

“To find out why Dad said Orsini’s name in the hospital.”

June put down a wheel rim. “Dad also told you to fix the porch step. That took four years.”