Chapter 6 - HANNAH'S BROTHER
Hannah called David from Lucas's study.
“Come to the Upper West Side.”
Her brother laughed.
“You finally get a rich nanny job and suddenly I'm summoned?”
“David.”
He heard her voice.
“What happened?”
“Come alone.”
Forty minutes later, Detective David Cooper walked into the penthouse and stopped when he saw Lucas Ravellini.
His hand instinctively moved toward his jacket.
“Jesus, Hannah.”
“You know him?”
“Everyone in organized crime knows him.”
Lucas closed the study doors.
David turned on Hannah.
“What have you gotten yourself into?”
She placed the photograph on the desk.
His anger disappeared.
“Where did you get that?”
“You tell me.”
David sat.
For the first time in Hannah's life, her older brother looked afraid.
Not for himself.
For her.
“You need to leave.”
“No.”
“Hannah.”
“You left money in my mailbox. Mom keeps offering to pay my rent. Were you trying to keep me away from this job?”
David looked toward Lucas.
“How much does she know?”
“Enough to know Elena investigated you.”
David closed his eyes.
Then he pulled his badge from his belt and placed it on the desk.
“She should have.”
Hannah's heart dropped.
Lucas moved slightly.
David raised a hand.
“Not because I was helping them.”
“Then why?”
“Because I was taking money.”
Hannah stared at him.
Her brother.
The cop.
The man whose check she couldn't bring herself to deposit.
“From who?”
“A shell company connected to the network.”
She stepped backward.
“You're dirty.”
“I was undercover.”
Lucas laughed once.
“Convenient.”
David looked at him.
“You think I like saying this in your house?”
He explained.
Internal Affairs had suspected officers were protecting cargo moving through Ravellini properties.
David had been selected because his record was clean and because his mother had once worked for one of the charities linked to the transactions.
“Mom knew?”
“No.”
Hannah pushed the photograph toward him.
“She knew Elena.”
David stared at it.
That surprised him.
At least one family secret hadn't been shared with him either.
“Elena contacted me,” he admitted. “She said she had names.”
“Did you meet?”
“Once.”
“Then she vanished.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell Lucas?”
David looked at him.
“Because officially, Lucas Ravellini was a suspect.”
Lucas didn't react.
“And unofficially?”
“I thought someone was setting him up.”
Another reversal.
The cop investigating Elena had actually believed Lucas might be innocent of the trafficking.
David opened his phone and showed them a photograph from an evidence file.
A ledger page.
Several payments.
One name repeated.
M. Donnelly.
Michael.
Hannah shook her head.
“We just found evidence Michael was helping Elena.”
David nodded.
“I know.”
“Then why is he being paid?”
“Because the payments weren't to Michael.”
He enlarged the document.
M. Donnelly Foundation Services.
“His parish charity was being used to wash money without his knowledge.”
Lucas understood first.
“Someone chose people close to me.”
“Yes,” David said. “Your warehouses. Michael's charity. Gabriel's import company. Anthony's security contractors.”
“Building evidence against all of them,” Hannah said.
David nodded.
“If the operation collapsed, everyone around Lucas would look guilty.”
“And Lucas?”
David looked at him.
“Would look like the man at the center.”
It was elegant.
Cruel.
And patient.
“Who benefits?” Hannah asked.
David looked toward Mateo's room.
“Someone who wanted the Ravellini organization destroyed or inherited.”
Lucas's face hardened.
“My father had partners.”
“Most are dead.”
“Not all.”
Anthony returned with an old business ledger.
One surviving partner remained.
Victor Sanz.
Lucas's godfather.
A man who had attended Mateo's birthdays, Elena's wedding, and family dinners.
Someone Mateo saw constantly.
Lucas immediately remembered something.
“Mateo called him Uncle Vic.”
Hannah's stomach tightened.
They showed Mateo photographs carefully.
No leading questions.
No pressure.
Victor's photograph made him stop coloring.
He pushed it away.
“Don't.”
Hannah crouched.
“Okay.”
Mateo looked at Lucas.
“Daddy, no Uncle Vic.”
Lucas knelt.
“Did Uncle Vic hurt you?”
Mateo shook his head.
“Mama.”
Every adult in the room became still.
“What did he do to Mama?” Hannah asked gently.
Mateo touched his own cheek.
“Hit.”
Lucas stood so quickly the chair fell backward.
David blocked the door.
“You go after Victor now, you destroy whatever chance we have of finding Elena.”
“He hit my wife.”
“And if he's had her for eleven months, anger won't find her.”
Lucas's hands curled.
Hannah stepped in front of him.
“Mateo just gave you something he's been carrying for almost a year.”
Lucas looked at his son.
“He needs his father more than he needs revenge.”
Slowly, Lucas sat beside Mateo.
“I should've listened.”
Mateo climbed into his lap.
It broke something in Hannah to watch a feared man hold his son like the child was the only fragile thing he had ever been trusted with.
David began coordinating quietly with his Internal Affairs contact.
Victor couldn't know they suspected him.
They needed proof.
Hannah remembered Elena's memory card.
“There was only one video.”
Anthony nodded.
“Maybe not.”
He examined the file metadata.
The recording had been edited.
A second section had been deleted.
They recovered fragments.
Elena appeared again.
This time she was crying.
“Victor knows.”
Lucas leaned closer.
“He knows I found the route. He says Lucas's father promised him half of everything, and Lucas took it away.”
Then Elena looked off-camera.
Someone was with her.
A male voice said, “We need to go.”
Hannah recognized it.
So did Lucas.
Gabriel.
The video continued.
Elena whispered, “If anything happens, find the blue room.”
The image cut.
David frowned.
“What blue room?”
Mateo, sitting on the floor, answered immediately.
“Fish house.”
The aquarium.
They had already searched locker 214.
But not a room.
Lucas called an old contact there.
A former staff office had once been painted blue.
It had been closed for renovation eleven months earlier.
They drove to Brooklyn that night.
Behind a removable wall panel, Hannah found a woman's bracelet.
Lucas recognized it instantly.
Elena's wedding bracelet.
Beside it were dozens of photographs documenting women being moved through Ravellini warehouses.
And one photograph taken only six weeks earlier.
Elena.
Alive.
Standing beside Victor Sanz.
May you like
On the back were four words in her handwriting.
HE THINKS I HELP HIM.
