Chapter 2 - The Man Who Should Have Been Dead
Matteo was already halfway through the study door when I caught his sleeve.
“Wait.”
He turned.
Behind him, Leo stood with one hand beneath his jacket, his attention divided between us and the security image glowing on the tablet.
The elderly man in front of Locker 314 looked ordinary enough if you ignored the scar beneath his left eye.
Gray hair.
Black overcoat.
Slight bend in his shoulders.
But Matteo Conti looked at him the way people looked at ghosts.
“You said you watched him die,” I said.
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“I did.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.”
I stepped closer.
“My mother is missing. Someone tried to put a bullet through my head. There’s apparently a birth certificate in that locker that she doesn’t want you to see, and now a dead man is stealing it.”
Matteo’s expression remained controlled, but his eyes were darker than I had ever seen them.
“So forgive me if I’m finished accepting mysterious answers.”
Leo glanced toward Matteo.
“Boss, the locker access alert was ninety seconds ago.”
Matteo made the decision instantly.
“We go.”
This time I didn’t argue.
Twenty minutes later, three black SUVs swept beneath the covered entrance of Harbor Pines.
The assisted-living residence looked wrong at midnight.
Too quiet.
Too clean.
Too normal.
A security guard waited in the lobby with the manager, Carla Whitmore. Carla rushed toward me the moment I stepped inside.
“Sophie.”
“Where’s my mother?”
Her face crumpled.
“We still don’t know.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I forced myself to breathe.
“Show us the locker.”
The storage floor was below the east wing.
Matteo walked beside me, Leo two steps ahead.
Four of Matteo’s men moved through the hall without speaking.
When the elevator doors opened, I smelled bleach and old cardboard.
Carla pointed toward the far end.
“Locker 314.”
The steel door stood open.
My heart dropped.
“No.”
I ran.
Matteo caught up with me before I reached it.
The locker was barely larger than a closet.
Inside were three shelves.
All empty.
Except for one thing.
A photograph lay on the concrete floor.
I bent to pick it up.
Matteo stopped me.
“Wait.”
He pulled a handkerchief over his fingers and lifted it carefully.
The picture showed my mother.
Young.
Maybe twenty-four.
She stood in front of a brownstone holding a newborn wrapped in a pink blanket.
Me.
Behind her stood a man.
His face had been scratched out.
Not faded.
Not damaged.
Deliberately destroyed.
On the back, someone had written:
SOPHIA — THREE DAYS OLD.
I stared at it.
“Sophia?”
Leo frowned.
“Your name isn’t Sophia?”
“No. It’s Sophie.”
Matteo looked toward me.
“You were told Sophie from birth?”
“Yes.”
The manager cleared her throat nervously.
“There’s something else.”
She pointed toward the rear wall.
Someone had written on the concrete with a black marker.
THE DAUGHTER DOESN’T KNOW WHO SHE IS.
My stomach twisted.
Matteo stared at the message.
Then Leo said quietly, “Boss.”
He was kneeling beside a tiny rectangle on the floor.
A SIM card.
Matteo looked toward him.
“Bag it.”
Carla wrapped her arms around herself.
“I’m so sorry.”
I looked at her.
“The security footage.”
She hesitated.
“Someone erased it.”
“Who has access?”
“Myself. Two night supervisors. Corporate security.”
Matteo’s voice sharpened.
“And police?”
Carla’s eyes widened.
“Police can request remote access during emergencies.”
Matteo exchanged a look with Leo.
The same police system the nightclub shooter had apparently used.
I felt suddenly cold.
“Someone inside law enforcement is helping them.”
“Possibly,” Matteo said.
“Possibly?”
He looked at me.
“I don’t call something a fact until I can prove it.”
That was the most Matteo Conti thing I had heard all night.
Leo stood.
“There’s another camera.”
Carla frowned.
“What?”
“Elevator cab.”
She shook her head.
“That feed is separate.”
Exactly.
Five minutes later we crowded into the cramped security office.
The elevator footage had survived.
Leo rewound to 11:41 p.m.
The doors opened.
The elderly man entered.
Scar beneath his eye.
Black coat.
He held something against his chest.
A folder.
He pressed the button for the lobby.
Then, just before the doors closed, another hand appeared between them.
Someone stepped inside.
My mother.
I grabbed the edge of the desk.
“Mom.”
She wore her night cardigan.
Her hair was unbrushed.
But she was walking under her own power.
The old man didn’t force her.
He didn’t grab her.
Instead, Eleanor looked directly at him.
And hugged him.
The room became silent.
“No.”
Carla whispered, “She knew him.”
My mother pulled away and touched the man’s cheek.
Then she said something.
No audio.
Leo zoomed in.
Matteo watched her lips.
His entire body tightened.
“What?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Matteo.”
“I think she called him Gabriel.”
Leo turned slowly.
“That’s what I saw too.”
I looked between them.
“Who is Gabriel?”
Neither answered.
My temper snapped.
“WHO IS GABRIEL?”
Matteo faced me.
“Gabriel Vescari.”
The name meant nothing.
Apparently my face showed it.
“He worked for my father,” Matteo continued. “Not as muscle. Not officially.”
“What did he do?”
“Problems disappeared around Gabriel.”
My skin crawled.
“And you watched him die?”
“Seventeen years ago. Warehouse fire in Chelsea.”
“Did you see his body?”
Matteo hesitated.
That hesitation answered me.
“No.”
“I watched the building collapse with him inside.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
Leo crossed his arms.
“Vescari was Salvatore’s fixer for almost fifteen years. He knew every account, every informant, every secret alliance.”
“And my mother hugs him?”
Matteo’s voice was quiet.
“Apparently.”
I stared at the frozen frame.
My mother had spent the last two years forgetting birthdays, forgetting names, sometimes forgetting whether my father had been dead for twenty-three years.
Yet she remembered Gabriel Vescari.
Something didn’t fit.
I leaned closer to the screen.
“Go forward.”
Leo did.
The elevator opened into the lobby.
Gabriel stepped out.
My mother followed.
Then she suddenly stopped.
She looked upward.
Straight toward the camera.
Slowly, Eleanor reached inside her cardigan.
She removed something.
A folded piece of paper.
She let it drop beside the elevator.
Gabriel never noticed.
“Stop.”
Leo froze the image.
“We need that paper.”
Carla sent a guard upstairs.
He returned four minutes later carrying a folded yellow note inside a plastic evidence sleeve.
My hands shook as he gave it to me.
The handwriting was my mother’s.
Unsteady.
But hers.
There were only two lines.
SOPHIE — DON’T TRUST THE STORY ABOUT YOUR FATHER.
Beneath it:
MATTEO IS NOT THE CONTI YOU SHOULD FEAR.
I read the sentence twice.
Matteo stood beside me.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Leo’s phone vibrated.
He checked it.
“SIM card extraction is ready.”
He connected the recovered SIM card through an isolated reader.
Three files appeared.
Two were corrupted.
The third was an audio recording.
Date:
March 14, 2001.
My heart pounded.
“Play it.”
Static filled the room.
Then a man’s voice.
Salvatore Conti.
I knew it because every Boston documentary about Matteo’s family had used archival recordings.
“Eleanor, you take the baby and leave.”
My knees weakened.
My mother answered.
“What about Daniel?”
Daniel.
The first unfamiliar name.
Salvatore spoke again.
“He made his choice.”
My mother was crying.
“He’s her father.”
Everything inside me stopped.
Matteo’s head turned sharply toward me.
The recording continued.
A second male voice shouted somewhere in the background.
Then Salvatore said something that changed the room.
“If Daniel reaches Boston police before sunrise, Sophie dies.”
I couldn’t breathe.
My father.
A man named Daniel.
Alive in 2001.
Apparently dangerous enough that Salvatore Conti was hiding me from him.
Then came my mother’s voice.
“What are you going to tell Matteo?”
Salvatore answered:
“The same thing he must believe for the next twenty-five years.”
Matteo stepped toward the speaker.
“What?”
The recording cracked.
Salvatore’s final sentence came through.
“That his brother died with Daniel.”
Matteo went completely still.
I looked at him.
“Your brother?”
His face had lost all color.
“I never had a brother.”
The security monitor behind us suddenly flickered.
Every camera feed disappeared.
Black.
A second later, the fire alarm started screaming.
Leo drew his weapon.
“Everybody move.”
Matteo grabbed my hand.
Smoke began slipping beneath the security-room door.
Someone shouted in the hallway.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
“Hello?”
No response.
“Mom?”
A man breathed softly into the phone.
Then Gabriel Vescari said:
“You found Salvatore’s recording.”
Matteo heard him.
His grip tightened around my hand.
“Where’s my mother?” I demanded.
Gabriel ignored the question.
“You have one dangerous problem, Sophie.”
“What?”
“The brother Salvatore erased from history?”
A pause.
“He’s alive.”
My eyes moved toward Matteo.
Gabriel’s voice dropped.
“And tonight, he’s coming home.”
May you like
The line went dead.
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