Page 129 of The Killer Cupcake
"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.
