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“Close the door and take a seat.” His words were colder than before.
I closed the door, and he rounded the desk to his chair. “I love this store—meeting the people, feeding them—it’s a good business, one we can all be proud of. Do you remember when your dad became my partner?”
It was etched solidly in my brain, because it had given Dad purpose when he needed it most, after losing everything. “Vividly. Isn’t that when you moved to this location?”
“It sure was. The old space was too small, and it never would have supported us both. Coming here…” He tapped the desk. “…was key.”
“It’s a good location,” I agreed.
“Why do you hate his family so much?”
“Because his father intentionally ruined our family.”
“You mean the bankruptcy?”
“Duh.”
He wagged a finger at me. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady. You went to college. Now act like it.”
“Sorry. Yes, I mean the bankruptcy.”
“And why did it happen?”
I’d been told a dozen times. “Daddy said Fergus McAllister pulled out of the Evergreen project, guaranteeing it would fail.”
“Your father was very ambitious and always working with a lot of borrowed money. Each project was bigger than the last. Everything was mortgaged to the hilt. He was addicted to the risk, like a gambler who didn’t know when to quit. When the Evergreen project fell apart, the whole house of cards followed.”
I nodded. I’d known Dad had become overleveraged.
“Did you know that your father and Fergus had been best friends before that?”
“Seriously? I understood that they were friends, but not best friends.”
“Well, they were. Now, what I’m going to tell you can never be repeated to anyone, understand?”
I nodded. “Not a soul.”
Uncle Luca leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Have you heard of the Romanov family?”
I nodded. There weren’t many people in this part of town who hadn’t heard of them. It seemed that every year there was a local killing where the whispers in the neighborhood pointed to the Romanov brothers.
“Your father had an even bigger project than Evergreen he wanted to pursue, but he didn’t have enough borrowing power to get it done. He told me he planned to get money from the Romanov brothers.”
I shivered at the thought of Daddy getting involved with the mob like that.
“I couldn’t,” Uncle Luca continued. “I just couldn’t sit back and do nothing. I couldn’t watch my brother risk his life with them and have you and your sister be fatherless. I had to save him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I asked, nobeggedFergus to pull out of Evergreen.”
My hands flew to my face. “You what?” I couldn’t have heard that right.
“I had to get your father out of the real estate business and have him join me here at the deli. It was the only way, and I’d do it again in a second. It was also Fergus who gave me the loan to get this location. It was the only way to save him.”
My head spun with the implications. I’d had it wrong this whole time, because my uncle had hidden the truth from us, from all of us. “Does Daddy know?”
Uncle Luca shook his head. “Nope, and it has to stay that way. He can’t know about Evergreen, the loan, any of it.”
