Chapter 6 - THE SECRET BURIED INSIDE HIS FATHER'S WATCH
Alexander opened the vehicle door.
“I'm going after her.”
Nicholas grabbed his arm.
“Look at the pier.”
Alexander turned.
Several men stood near the warehouse entrance. Others were positioned along the gangway.
Ferraro wasn't merely transporting Emily.
He was expecting someone to attempt a rescue.
Ortiz raised her radio.
“Hold your positions. Nobody moves until we know where the other guards are.”
Alexander stared at Emily.
She was less than two hundred yards away.
After six months of uncertainty, he could see her breathing.
Walking.
Alive.
And he couldn't reach her.
Salvatore appeared to speak to Emily.
She shook her head.
Then he pointed toward the harbor.
Emily's shoulders sagged.
She stepped onto the vessel.
Nicholas quietly said, “If you rush them, they'll take her out of sight before we reach the gangway.”
Alexander clenched his fists.
“So we just watch?”
“No. We remember everything.”
Ortiz ordered surveillance to continue.
But before the vessel departed, something unexpected happened.
Salvatore returned to the pier alone.
He approached a concrete security post and placed a small object on top.
Then he looked directly toward the observation vehicles.
Alexander recognized the movement.
Salvatore knew he was being watched.
“He's leaving something for me.”
Ortiz waited until Salvatore had driven away before allowing an evidence team to approach.
The object was a silver pocket watch.
Lorenzo Romano's watch.
Alexander held it carefully.
The scratched glass caught the harbor lights.
He remembered his father winding it every morning while reading the newspaper.
When Alexander was nine, Lorenzo had shown him how to open the back.
“Every Romano man should know where his time comes from,” his father had said.
Alexander pressed the tiny release.
The back opened.
Inside was a faded photograph of two young men.
Lorenzo Romano.
And Salvatore's son, Michael.
Alexander stared.
Michael had died in a warehouse fire twenty-two years earlier.
He was nineteen.
Alexander remembered the funeral.
Salvatore standing alone beside his son's coffin.
His mother crying so hard that she could barely speak.
And Lorenzo refusing to explain why Michael had been at the warehouse that night.
Nicholas saw the photograph.
His face changed.
“Alexander, there's something I should have told you years ago.”
Alexander turned slowly.
“What?”
“The fire wasn't an accident.”
Alexander looked at the picture again.
“Everyone said an electrical fault started it.”
“That was the official explanation.”
Nicholas swallowed.
“Your father had ordered the warehouse cleared because he suspected someone was stealing from the shipping accounts. Michael was there that night.”
“Why?”
“Nobody knew. But Lorenzo believed someone had sent him to collect money.”
Alexander's eyes narrowed.
“Someone?”
Nicholas hesitated.
“Salvatore.”
Alexander felt cold.
His uncle had spent twenty-two years blaming Lorenzo for Michael's death.
But what if Salvatore had placed his own son in danger?
“What happened to the investigation?”
“Records disappeared. Witnesses changed their statements. Your father refused to discuss it afterward.”
Alexander looked down at the watch.
A family tragedy.
Missing evidence.
A fortune tied to the Manhattan waterfront.
And a man whose grief had never healed.
Suddenly, Salvatore's behavior made a terrible kind of sense.
He didn't simply want control of Alexander's businesses.
He wanted something he believed had been stolen from his family.
But that still didn't explain Emily.
Or Rosie.
Or why Salvatore would help Ferraro place a bomb at his nephew's wedding.
Ortiz approached with another discovery.
Her investigators had traced the wedding necklace's payment.
The money had passed through a Carter family charity.
Then into an account associated with Ferraro.
Finally, a matching amount had been reimbursed by a company in Salvatore's financial network.
The payment trail wasn't complete proof of who ordered the bomb.
But it connected all three families.
Alexander closed the watch.
“Why would Salvatore pay for something that could kill Vanessa, too?”
Ortiz answered carefully.
“Maybe the people arranging the assassination didn't intend to leave any witnesses.”
Alexander thought of Vanessa's brother.
Evan.
And the frightened woman who had almost married him.
Salvatore hadn't merely exploited a family alliance.
He had used everyone's love for someone else against them.
Nicholas examined the watch once more.
“Wait.”
A narrow piece of paper was caught beneath the photograph.
Alexander removed it.
The paper had been folded so tightly that it was almost transparent.
On it were six words written in Emily's handwriting.
DON'T SIGN. FIND THE FIRE REPORT.
Alexander looked at Ortiz.
“She knew about Michael.”
Ortiz nodded.
“And she wants us to learn what really happened.”
Nicholas turned the note over.
On the other side was a small pencil drawing.
A rectangle.
Three circles.
And the number 17.
Alexander recognized it.
It was the same arrangement of windows on the harbor administration office overlooking Berth Seventeen.
May you like
Emily wasn't simply telling them where she'd been.
She was showing them where to look.
