Chapter 2 - The Secrets Beneath the Brick
Night fell hard over the North End, bringing a howling, icy gale off Boston Harbor that rattled the bakery’s aged single-pane windows in their wooden frames. Upstairs in the small, drafty two-bedroom apartment above the kitchen, seven-year-old Lily was fast asleep beneath three layers of thick quilts, her stuffed yellow bear tucked firmly beneath her chin.
Clara sat at the small formica kitchen table, staring down at the elegant black-stitched initials R.V. on the linen handkerchief Roman had left behind earlier that morning.
Her father, Thomas Evans, had always been a quiet, unassuming man whose skin perpetually smelled of active yeast, toasted barley, and sweet butter. But during the final six months before his sudden, fatal heart attack, he had changed. He had become jumpy, checking the window locks three times every evening and spending hours down in the damp cellar beneath the bakehouse under the cover of darkness, claiming he was repairing dry rot in the foundation beams.
Unable to sit still any longer, Clara stood up, pulled a heavy iron flashlight from the utility drawer, and tiptoed down the creaking wooden staircase into the pitch-black basement beneath the shop.
The cellar was a subterranean labyrinth of stacked linen flour bags, wooden apple crates, and rusted baking machinery dating back to her grandfather’s era in the early 1920s. In the center of the subterranean space stood the massive brick foundation of the original coal-fired oven, built over a century ago.
Clara dropped to her knees on the cold, damp concrete beside the primary oven structure. She remembered watching her father crouched in this exact spot with a hammer and a cold chisel late at night. She ran her fingers along the crumbling mortar lines near the floor. Near the back corner, one heavy red brick sat slightly offset from the rest.
Her heart thumping against her ribs, she pulled a sturdy butter knife from her apron pocket and jammed it into the mortar line, prying the brick outward. It scraped against the surrounding masonry and slid free, raining dust onto her lap.
Behind the wall, tucked deep into a hollowed-out cavity, lay a thick object wrapped tightly in black oilcloth and bound with yellow electrical tape.
Clara pulled the heavy package out and sliced through the tape using her knife. She peeled back the oilcloth to reveal a thick, leather-bound accounting ledger with yellowed pages and stained edges.
She opened the cover under the flashlight beam. Inside were hundreds of pages filled with her father’s neat, meticulous handwriting. But these weren't record books for flour shipments or butter purchases.
They were double-entry ledgers detailing illegal maritime shipping manifests, contraband kickbacks, docks payouts, and political bribes spanning more than twenty years—involving both the South Boston Irish mob and the Valenti crime family.
Clara swallowed hard, her breath catching in her throat. Her father hadn't just borrowed money to pay for her sister's hospital care; he had been coerced into acting as the secret, untraceable bookkeeper for the city's dark underworld because no federal agent or rival mobster would ever think to look inside an innocent bakery on Hanover Street.
May you like
Suddenly, a distinct floorboard creak echoed from directly above her head.
Clara snapped the book shut, her blood running cold. She killed the flashlight beam instantly, pulling her legs tight against her body in the pitch-black darkness, listening as slow, heavy footsteps paced calmly across the floorboards directly over the cellar door.
