Chapter 4 - THE BLUE RECIPE TIN
Nikos did not ask Vale to repeat himself.
He understood perfectly.
“Name.”
“I don't have one.”
“You said someone inside my father's organization paid Delano.”
“I said Delano was already being paid.”
Vale rubbed both hands over his face.
“The captain showed me financial records. Cash deposits. Protection money. Evidence disappearing. Delano was dirty before Callista died.”
“Then why bring my father into it?”
“Because Callista found out.”
Silence.
Eleni leaned forward.
“How?”
Vale looked at her.
“She was volunteering at a women's shelter.”
Nikos's eyes shifted.
He hadn't known.
“She never told you?” Vale asked.
“No.”
“Some of the women were being arrested repeatedly by the same narcotics unit. Charges disappeared if they became informants. Sometimes evidence disappeared too.”
“Marcus.”
“Yes.”
“Callista reported him?”
“She tried.”
Eleni looked toward the owl necklace photograph.
“So he was hurting her and she discovered he was corrupt.”
Vale looked startled.
“Hurt her?”
Nikos's voice hardened.
“You didn't know?”
“No.”
That was the first time Vale looked genuinely shocked.
“He was the man she was seeing?”
“Yes.”
Vale whispered something under his breath.
Then he pushed the receipt away from himself.
“God.”
Nikos's fingers curled.
“What did my father know?”
“That Callista had evidence connecting Delano to stolen narcotics and cash.”
“And?”
“He believed exposing it would bring investigators into every waterfront business associated with the Stavros name.”
Eleni watched Nikos absorb that.
His father had not necessarily protected Marcus.
He had protected the empire.
The distinction did not make it kinder.
“Did he know Marcus was abusing her?”
Vale shook his head.
“I don't know.”
That was somehow worse.
Nikos dismissed him after arranging for Vale to speak with an attorney Andreas trusted.
Not because the councilman deserved protection.
Because a frightened witness was more useful alive and talking than cornered and desperate.
After Vale left, Nikos remained standing by the windows.
Rain streaked Manhattan gray.
Eleni stayed near the desk.
“You can go.”
“I know.”
He looked over.
“Then why aren't you?”
“Because you're doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“Standing like you're fine while clearly not being fine.”
“I am fine.”
“Your knuckles are bleeding.”
Nikos looked down.
He had been gripping the sharp edge of the metal blind control so tightly that it had cut his palm.
Eleni walked toward him.
“Open your hand.”
He stared at her.
She lifted an eyebrow.
“That wasn't a request.”
For one second, something warm passed through his face.
Then he obeyed.
She cleaned the shallow cuts.
Same desk.
Same trauma kit.
Roles reversed.
“My father taught me loyalty was everything,” Nikos said.
“Maybe he confused loyalty with silence.”
He looked at her.
“You say that like there's a difference.”
“There is.”
Eleni taped gauze over his palm.
“Loyalty protects people.”
She met his eyes.
“Silence protects secrets.”
He said nothing.
Her phone buzzed.
Her mother.
Rosa did not waste time.
“Your father found your blue tin.”
Eleni froze.
“What blue tin?”
“The recipe tin you told me never to throw away.”
Nikos noticed immediately.
“What is it?”
Eleni closed her eyes.
“I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
She looked at him.
“When I left Marcus, I copied files off his home computer.”
Andreas, standing near the bar, turned.
“You did what?”
“I was scared.”
“Where are they?”
“In my parents' bakery.”
Nikos stared at her.
“You hid evidence against a corrupt narcotics detective in a bakery?”
“I panicked.”
“In what?”
“A recipe tin.”
Andreas muttered something in Greek.
Eleni pointed at him.
“I don't need judgment from the armed man.”
Nikos grabbed his coat.
“We're going.”
The Costa bakery smelled like yeast, cinnamon and worry.
Rosa placed the dented blue tin on the prep counter.
It had belonged to Eleni's grandmother.
Handwritten recipe cards filled most of it.
Cannoli cream.
Easter bread.
Tomato sauce.
Underneath was a cheap black memory card sealed in wax paper.
Antonio stared at his daughter.
“You had this here?”
“I thought Marcus would search my apartment.”
“He searched our house twice.”
Rosa slapped her husband's arm.
“What?”
“He said it was police business.”
“You never told me?”
“I didn't want you nervous.”
Rosa stared at him.
“Men.”
Eleni almost laughed.
Nikos didn't.
He was watching the bakery windows.
Andreas loaded the files on an offline laptop.
Photographs appeared.
Stacks of cash.
Evidence bags.
Narcotics seals.
Names.
Badge numbers.
Then spreadsheets.
Payments.
Dates.
One repeated abbreviation:
T.V.
Thomas Vale.
Vale had not merely accepted one payment from Dimitri.
Marcus had been paying him for years.
Nikos's face hardened.
“Vale lied.”
“Maybe,” Eleni said.
Then she noticed the dates.
The payments started seven years after Callista died.
Not before.
Different corruption.
Same men.
Answer one.
Open two.
Then Andreas opened an audio file.
Marcus's voice filled the bakery.
“You keep voting the way you're told, Tommy, and nobody ever has to hear what you did for the Stavros family.”
Vale responded.
“You're the one who killed her.”
Everyone froze.
Marcus laughed.
“I didn't say that.”
“You left her there.”
A chair scraped in the recording.
Then Marcus's voice changed.
Lower.
Colder.
“Careful.”
Vale spoke again.
“The girl at Olympus knows about the necklace.”
Eleni's blood went cold.
The recording was dated four months earlier.
Before Marcus started hitting her.
Before she left him.
He had already known she found Callista's necklace.
Then another man's voice entered the recording.
Older.
Rough.
“You handled the Stavros girl once.”
Nikos leaned toward the speaker.
“Who is that?”
Andreas's face had gone pale.
He recognized it.
Nikos turned.
“Andreas.”
His underboss swallowed.
“Captain Sean Halloran.”
The retired narcotics commander who had signed Callista's original case file.
Halloran continued on the recording.
“Keep this one quiet too.”
Then Marcus answered:
“Not until I know what she copied.”
Eleni looked at the memory card.
Marcus had not begun stalking her because she left him.
May you like
He had been keeping her close because he knew she possessed evidence.
And Halloran knew too.
