Page 70 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)

AFTER THE PAIN

P resent. Sandy blinked in the darkness.

Nicolas walked around the room with practiced memory, turning on lamps that cast pools of amber light.

As her eyes adjusted, she realized she stood in some kind of private gallery.

The walls were covered with sketches—beautiful, lifelike, all depicting the same subject at different ages.

A little brown girl.

She frowned. She stepped closer to the nearest drawing.

Why had he dragged her down here to look at—?

Her breath caught. That dress. A sailor’s dress with a white collar and navy stripes.

A dress her mom had made. She wore it in a picture sitting on her grandma Brenda’s lap.

It hung in the house in Harlem. She knew that dress.

"When he died, I finally got the key to this room from Uncle Matteo.” Nicolas's voice came from behind her. "The one room in the whole house I could never enter. I expected to find money, guns, the medallion—hell, anything but this."

"What is this?" Sandy's voice came out smaller than intended.

"It's you,” Nicolas said with exasperation.

She turned slowly, taking in the progression.

The earliest sketches showed her at three or four—gap-toothed smile, pigtails, eyes that hadn't yet learned wariness—the drawings aged with her, documenting years she couldn't quite grasp.

By the time she reached the far wall, the girl in the pictures was nine, maybe ten.

An easel stood apart from the others; this portrait was rendered in color. Sandy approached it with growing dread. The girl—herself—sat alone in a sterile room, staring at a window. But it was the helmet that made her knees weak. White plastic and metal, covering her head like a cage.

"That one caught my attention, too." Nicolas moved beside her. "That's after your accident. When everything went sideways."

"Why am I wearing a helmet?" The question emerged without thought.

"Seizures. Bad ones. The helmet was protection—it kept you from cracking your skull when you fell." He studied the painting. "My mother said they had to take you to specialists in Canada. Experimental treatments."

The word 'seizures' triggered something. A flash— falling, can't breathe, Mom's face above her, scared ? —

Sandy shivered. "I don't?—"

"Everyone knows the story of the Ricci brothers and the Freeman girls.

Everyone." Nicolas's tone carried bitter amusement.

"You're his kid. He and Aunt Kathy went to war over you.

I knew it the first time I saw you two together, the way you held his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.

" His voice dropped. "What I didn't know until a few years ago is I'm not his son.

Somehow missed that little detail growing up. "

"I'm sorry, but these drawings don't prove anything." Sandy forced steadiness into her voice. "My mother and Carmelo were close, yes. But I knew my father. Ely Brown. This is just... art."

"Art." Nicolas laughed without humor. "Right. Let me show you something else."

He moved to a cabinet she hadn't noticed, producing a manila folder. "Hospital records. December 1960. Seven-year-old female, severe head trauma from vehicular accident. Patient name: Alessandra Ricci."

Sandy's hand trembled as she took the papers. The admission form bore her photo—bruised, bandaged, but unmistakably her. And the name. That name. She knew that name. Memories came. They poured in. She finally remembered Carmelo. The time she spent with him. How he’d teach her Italian songs.

Play marbles with her, take her to get ice-cream, sit with her on his lap in a big chair watching baseball on a television while she combs her doll’s hair.

So many memories came at once, she felt like fainting.

Each time one surfaced, so did his voice in her head: Alessandra is what he called her.

"My name is Cassandra," she said, clinging to the one truth she would confess.

"He wanted it changed." Nicolas shuffled through papers with practiced efficiency. "Here—name change petition. And this, a revised birth certificate listing him as your father. Both signed by your mother. You were to become Alessandra Ricci, not Cassandra Brown."

"These are forgeries?—"

"Look at this one." He handed her another document with careful reverence.

She recognized it immediately from the diaries. A marriage certificate dated 1949—Kathy Freeman and Carmelo Ricci. This one was real. Her mother had written about that desperate day, the ceremony that bound them before everything fell apart.

Nicolas watched her face change. "Every document here is legally sound. I had attorneys verify them. The birth certificate revision, the name change—your mother's signature is authentic. They just were never filed with the state."

"Why wouldn't they file them?" She asked.

"Maybe he used them as leverage—sign these or lose your daughter forever.

Maybe they were filed and later destroyed.

But look—" He pointed to the medical records.

"Every hospital bill, every specialist report lists you as Alessandra Ricci.

For three years after your accident, that's who you were in every legal document except the ones locked in courthouse files. "

"Coincidence? Here's another." He handed her a document. "Bank records. Trust fund established in 1965 for 'A.R.' Deposits made monthly by C. Ricci until his death."

"This doesn't?—"

"Your medical bills from the accident? Paid by Ricci family accounts.

Your specialists in Canada? Arranged by my father's—by Carmelo's personal physician.

" Each time he said the truth it landed like a blow.

"Your mother tried to run with you. He brought her back to Harlem. The accident happened because he couldn’t stay away from her, you, or that bakery. "

Another flash— car, Carmelo screaming, the world turning upside down ? —

"Still think you're Ely Brown's daughter now?

Because I have more." Nicolas pulled out a photograph. "This is you, me, and Nina at my father’s place in New Jersey. He called it his safe house. He kept us all there with him. I remember this picture. He took it. When he treated us all the same, before you had that car accident, and everything changed. He blamed… me,” Nicolas voice choked on emotion.

"He visited Canada so much after your accident, he found a place for Uncle Nino. A center he could stay in for half the year. He and Aunt Kathy nearly lived in Canada for two years. And these images?” He turned and pointed to sketches of her sleeping in a bed, with bandages.

“He sat by your bed. Drew these for you.” Nicolas gestured to the walls. “Who does that for a stranger?"

Sandy's legs gave out. She sank onto a dusty chair, the helmet in the painting seeming to press against her own skull. Memories flickered— a man's voice, soft, reading stories, smell of expensive cologne mixed with paint ? —

"There's one more thing." Nicolas produced a final document with the reverence of someone handling explosives. "His will. Filed a week before he died."

Sandy's eyes immediately found her name. Not Sandy Brown. Alessandra Cassandra Brown Ricci, my beloved daughter. Listed alongside Nicolas and his siblings as a beneficiary. They weren’t equal shares. Sandy got 60 percent of his wealth. He and Nina had to divide the forty between them.

"He gave you the lion’s share. Everything that should be mine, is now yours.

Because you're not my sister, Sandy." Nicolas's voice carried years of resentment. "You're not even my cousin. I’m not a Ricci, and this Will tells the world that. Destroys my life and my grandfather’s legacy that he wanted me to have!”

The room spun as her headache surfaced. She fought nausea that had nothing to do with the basement's musty air. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I need you to accept it so we can fix it. Remember. Really remember." He knelt before her, desperation cracking his controlled facade. "He told you things. Showed you things. Before the accident scrambled your brain, you knew where he kept his secrets. Including the medallion."

"I don't know about any medallion—" She shook her head.

"Yes, you do. You can't access it. But it's in there, locked away with all the other memories your mother paid doctors to bury.

" He gripped her hands. "I need you to try for both our sakes. My life depends on it. Uncle Matteo is Don now. I barely have any standing at all. But if these men knew I was never a Ricci, I’m dead.

My sister is dead. Remember being Alessandra Ricci.

Remember your real father. Remember where he hid the one thing that could legitimize me. "

"What the hell's happening here?"

The voice hit like a slap. Sandy jerked her gaze to the door where a mountain of a man stood surveying the scene. Nicolas rocketed to his feet, hands balling into fists.

"We're talking! Get out!"

"Watch your tone, son." The man's casual authority filled the room. "You forget who you're speaking to?"

"I said, don't call me that!" Nicolas walked away from her. He shouldered past the man violently as he left.

Sandy found herself alone with the stranger, tears still wet on her cheeks. He studied the portraits with an unreadable expression before focusing on her.

"Shouldn't have shown you this place. Some doors are better left closed."

"Who are you?" Her voice came out smaller than intended.

"Name's Caesar. Your uncle Matteo asked me to keep an eye on things." He gestured toward the exit. "Let's go. Party's still happening upstairs."

"Is it true?" She held up the crumpled documents, needing confirmation from someone, anyone. "Am I really Carmelo Ricci's daughter Alessandra?”

Caesar's look held years of buried secrets. "Truth's a luxury, men our life can’t afford. He's in the ground. That's all the truth you need."