Chapter 4 - THE APARTMENT ON 31ST AVENUE
I insisted on going home.
Dominic offered to send a car. Detective Park offered to have a
uniformed officer accompany me. I accepted the officer and refused
Dominic’s driver, because I needed one small part of the day to belong
to me.
My mother opened the apartment door before I had the key fully turned.
She had been waiting in her robe, hair wrapped in a scarf, eyes bright
with worry. Noah stood behind her with his phone in his hand.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
So I did. Not the legal details, not every suspicion, but enough: the
wine, the police, the false document, the threatening message. I showed
her the screenshots and told her that the officer outside was there
because someone had been watching our building.
My mother listened without interrupting. When I finished, she sat down
at the kitchen table.
“You always said that knowing languages would keep you out of trouble,”
Noah said.
“I said it would help me understand trouble.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
My mother reached for my hand. “Are you safe?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the first honest answer I’d given her all night.
We checked the locks, and the officer spoke to both of them. He
explained that the police could arrange additional patrols, but they
could not promise no one would come near the building. My mother thanked
him and said she did not want strangers stationed outside her home
indefinitely.
After he left, I helped Noah review his tuition account. He was studying
engineering at a public college and working evenings at a grocery store.
The remaining balance was not huge by Rinaldi standards, but it was
enormous to us. He had already taken a loan and was trying not to ask
our mother for more.
“I can pick up extra shifts,” I told him.
“You might not have a job after this.”
“I’ll find another one.”
He stared at me. “You say that like it’s easy.”
“It isn’t. But it’s possible.”
At three in the afternoon, I went to my bedroom to change. My dresser
drawers had been opened. The closet door stood at an angle. A stack of
papers lay on the floor, and the envelope containing my university
transcripts had been cut open.
Nothing expensive was missing. My old laptop was still there. My jewelry
box was untouched. Whoever had entered the apartment had not come to
steal. They had searched.
I called the officer. He returned with a detective, photographed the
room, and asked us not to touch anything else. The front door showed no
obvious damage. The building’s back entrance had a faulty lock that the
landlord had promised to fix for months.
My mother stood in the hallway with one hand pressed to her mouth.
“They came into our home,” she whispered.
I felt the fear settle into anger. “They wanted me to know they could.”
The detective asked whether anyone had a key. We listed the landlord,
the superintendent, and a former roommate who had moved out two years
earlier. The building’s camera had been broken since summer. There was
no footage to check.
I called Detective Park and told her what had happened. She arrived
within forty minutes. She did not suggest that I move into Dominic’s
property or accept his protection. Instead, she arranged for my mother
and Noah to stay temporarily with a relative while the apartment was
processed, and she asked whether I would consent to a formal protective
plan.
“I’ll consider it,” I said. “But I won’t be kept somewhere without being
told why.”
“That’s reasonable,” she replied. “I’ll put every restriction in
writing. You can speak to your own attorney before signing anything.”
Dominic called while Park was still there. I put him on speaker.
“Your apartment was entered,” I said.
“I heard.”
“From whom?”
“Detective Park informed my security team that a possible witness had
been threatened. I asked her to tell me if there was a direct incident.
She did.”
That answer was careful. I respected it.
“Someone searched my papers,” I said. “They didn’t take anything.”
“They may have been looking for the document you found or the notes from
the translation.”
“I have no original documents. I only wrote down what I saw.”
“Then they may be trying to frighten you into silence.”
“I know.”
There was a pause. “Mara, I can arrange a secure apartment for you and
your family. Separate entrances, controlled access, no one from my staff
entering without your permission.”
“I don’t want to owe you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“People always say that before they send a bill.”
He didn’t argue. “Then let the police arrange it. I will pay for the
accommodation through the foundation’s witness-safety budget, with the
expense disclosed to the board and reviewed by counsel. No personal
debt. No private contract.”
I looked at Park. She nodded slightly. That was a sensible arrangement,
not a favor hidden in a locked room.
“I’ll agree for forty-eight hours,” I said. “Then we review it.”
“Agreed.”
The apartment the police arranged was a furnished unit in a building
used for temporary relocation. It was plain, clean, and close to a
subway station. My mother and Noah went to stay with my aunt in Astoria
instead. I packed two bags, my laptop, my mother’s medication, and the
folder containing my degree records.
Before we left, I walked through our apartment one last time. The
kitchen table still held Noah’s tuition statement. A dish towel hung
from the oven handle. The little crack in the bathroom mirror had been
there for years. Everything looked exactly as it had that morning, which
made the violation feel worse.
Someone had entered our ordinary life and treated it like a file
cabinet.
At the temporary apartment, Park reviewed the safety plan with me. I
would not meet Dominic alone. Any document I handled would be copied and
logged. If I received another threat, I would send it to the police
before responding. I could leave the apartment at any time, but I should
tell the assigned officer if I was going somewhere connected to the
case.
“Do you think the person who sent the message is the same person who
entered my apartment?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Do you think Celeste is behind it?”
“We don’t know that either.”
I appreciated that she refused to give me the certainty I wanted.
That evening, Dominic arrived with Nora, his assistant, and a sealed
envelope from the restaurant. He stayed by the door until I invited him
in. Inside the envelope was a copy of the staff access log for the
Obsidian Room. Several entries had been changed by hand. The kitchen
employee who had crossed the service station was listed under a
temporary vendor number.
“Can you identify the handwriting?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Dominic said. “The original log is with the police.”
I looked at the page. The vendor number had been used for a delivery of
specialty glassware three days before the dinner. The company listed
beside it was called Bellini Hospitality Supply.
“Is that a real company?”
“Registered in New Jersey,” Nora said. “It supplied glassware to three
Rinaldi properties. The account was closed last year.”
“Who authorized it?”
“Celeste’s office.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened. “That doesn’t prove she knew what happened
tonight.”
“No,” I said. “But it gives us something to check.”
He looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “That’s how we’ll proceed.”
After they left, I sat at the small kitchen table and opened my
notebook. I wrote down every fact I could remember about the dinner: who
stood where, which hand held the bottle, when the sommelier left, when
the glass changed, and how Celeste reacted when I corrected the
translation.
The list grew longer than I expected.
At the bottom, I wrote one sentence:
The person who planned this knew the room better than the guests did.
I underlined it twice.
Then I heard a soft knock at the door.
The assigned officer was on the other side, holding a small package
addressed to me. It had been delivered to the building’s front desk
without a return name.
Inside was a photograph of my mother and Noah leaving our apartment that
afternoon.
On the back, someone had written:
You can move the witness. You can’t move everyone she loves.
For a long time, I could not breathe properly.
Then I called Detective Park.
My aunt Rosa arrived with two bags of groceries and a look that
suggested she was prepared to fight anyone who came near her family. She
hugged my mother, checked Noah’s face for signs of panic, and then
turned to me.
“You look like you haven’t eaten.”
“I haven’t.”
She unpacked bread, soup, fruit, and a container of rice. For the first
time in two days, I sat at a table where no one asked me about a bottle,
a document, or a suspect. We ate in silence for a few minutes.
Then Rosa asked whether the Rinaldi family had offered money.
“They offered secure accommodation through the proper process. No one
has offered me personal money.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
“I intend to.”
She squeezed my wrist. “Your mother taught you to speak up. She also
taught you not to let powerful people decide what you owe them.”
The reminder helped. I had begun to feel that every decision had to be
justified to someone: the police, Dominic, my family, the people who
might be watching. Rosa reminded me that I was allowed to make ordinary
choices without turning them into statements about loyalty.
That afternoon, I walked to the corner store with the assigned officer
keeping a respectful distance. I bought coffee, bread, and the cheap
oranges my mother liked. No one followed me. No car idled across the
street. For ten minutes, the city was only a city.
When I returned, Park had left a message asking whether I could identify
the handwriting on the altered access log. I called her back and agreed
to look at it. The investigation still needed me, but it did not own
every hour.
I placed the groceries away, made tea, and then opened the evidence
May you like
photographs. Work first, I told myself. Rest after. It was a habit I
needed to change, but I was not ready to change all of it at once.
