Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW HOW ELENA MORETTI DIED
Gabriel pushed Lorenzo and Mia behind the kitchen wall before the echo of the third gunshot disappeared.
“Stay down.”
Two security men rushed toward the stairwell.
A woman screamed from the floor below.
Then came heavy footsteps.
Not moving upward.
Running away.
Lorenzo reached beneath his jacket.
Mia saw the weapon in his hand and stared at him.
“You carry that to birthday parties?”
“I carry it everywhere.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It isn’t supposed to be.”
Gabriel returned ninety seconds later.
“One of my men spotted someone leaving through the rear exit. Black hoodie, baseball cap, motorcycle waiting in the alley. Shots were fired into the ceiling to create panic.”
“A distraction,” Lorenzo said.
Gabriel nodded.
“They wanted us looking down instead of inside the apartment.”
Mia turned toward the ruined kitchen.
Something had changed.
The flour.
She stepped closer.
“What?”
Lorenzo followed her gaze.
Earlier, the floor beneath the window had been covered in white powder.
Now there were footprints.
Fresh ones.
Leading toward the pantry.
Gabriel opened the narrow pantry door.
Nothing.
Then he saw a square cut into the drywall behind several fallen shelves.
A hidden compartment.
Empty.
Mia stared.
“I didn’t know that was there.”
Lorenzo crouched.
Inside the compartment remained one small object the intruder apparently had not noticed.
A brass key.
Mia picked it up.
Stamped into the metal were the letters E.M.
Elena Moretti.
Lorenzo stared at the key.
“My mother.”
Mia looked frightened now.
Not merely confused.
Not merely overwhelmed.
Frightened.
“My grandmother hid something in my apartment that belonged to your mother.”
“Yes.”
“And someone knew.”
“Yes.”
“And they broke in tonight because they thought I had it.”
“Yes.”
Mia pressed the key into Lorenzo’s palm.
“Then take it.”
He closed her fingers back around it.
“No.”
“What?”
“If Evelyn hid it in your apartment, she wanted you to find it.”
“I don’t want to find it.”
Lorenzo’s voice softened.
“That might not matter anymore.”
The truth hung between them.
Mia was already involved.
Not because she had chosen Lorenzo Moretti.
Because someone from thirty years ago had chosen her grandmother.
Lorenzo moved Mia that night to a secured penthouse above one of Moretti International’s Manhattan hotels.
Mia protested for exactly twelve minutes.
Then Gabriel showed her security footage of a man photographing her bakery class three weeks earlier.
She stopped protesting.
At seven the next morning, Lorenzo found her in the penthouse kitchen making coffee.
She wore one of the hotel robes and had tied her hair back with a rubber band.
On the counter were flour, eggs, sugar, butter, and a mixing bowl.
Lorenzo stared.
“You’re baking?”
“I’m stressed.”
“And baking helps?”
“It keeps me from screaming.”
“What are you making?”
“Cinnamon rolls.”
“At seven in the morning?”
She turned.
“When do you think people make cinnamon rolls?”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“That may be the saddest thing you've said so far.”
He looked at her.
“You slept?”
“No.”
“Neither did I.”
Mia returned to kneading dough.
After several moments, she asked, “Was your mother sick?”
Lorenzo stood very still.
“Toward the end.”
“With what?”
“Doctors said she had a neurological condition.”
“What kind?”
“They never agreed.”
Mia slowed.
“When did she die?”
“When I was nineteen.”
“Suddenly?”
“Three months after symptoms began.”
She looked at him.
“And nobody thought that was strange?”
“My father controlled the doctors.”
“That does not answer my question.”
“No.”
Lorenzo looked toward the windows.
“Nobody was allowed to think it was strange.”
For the first time, Mia understood something fundamental about Lorenzo.
Power had not simply been something he inherited.
It had been the language of his childhood.
Questioning the wrong person could be dangerous.
Trusting the wrong person could be worse.
A knock came.
Gabriel entered with an old banker’s box.
“We found records tied to the key.”
He placed photocopies on the counter.
In 1998, Elena Moretti rented a private box at Saint Catherine’s Trust, a small bank that later merged with another institution.
The account was closed one month after Elena died.
But an item had been transferred before closure to a private storage vault.
The authorization signature belonged to Evelyn Bennett.
Mia stared.
“So Grandma took something.”
“She protected something,” Lorenzo said.
Gabriel tapped another sheet.
“The storage unit still exists.”
“Under whose name?” Lorenzo asked.
Gabriel looked at Mia.
“Yours.”
Mia stopped breathing.
“What?”
“Evelyn transferred ownership to Mia Bennett sixteen years ago.”
“I was twelve.”
“Yes.”
The vault was located beneath an old commercial building in Brooklyn.
By noon, Lorenzo, Mia, Gabriel, and two security men stood inside a private archive room surrounded by hundreds of metal drawers.
The brass key opened number 811.
Inside was not money.
Not jewelry.
Not documents.
It was an old cassette recorder.
Three tapes.
A photograph.
And a sealed letter.
TO LORENZO.
His hands did not move.
Mia looked at him.
“You don't have to open it here.”
“Yes, I do.”
He broke the seal.
The handwriting belonged to his mother.
My beautiful boy,
If you are reading this, then Evelyn kept her promise.
I pray that I was wrong.
I pray that I lived long enough to tell you everything myself.
But if I did not, there are things you deserve to know.
Lorenzo stopped.
Mia said nothing.
He continued.
Your father believes danger always comes from enemies.
He is wrong.
The greatest danger to this family has always worn our name.
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed.
The next paragraph had been partially destroyed by moisture.
Only several lines remained legible.
Marco knows what happened at Lake Como.
Vincent knows why.
Neither man can ever learn Evelyn has the recordings.
Lorenzo went cold.
Marco Moretti.
His father’s younger brother.
Uncle Marco had attended every birthday, funeral, wedding, and board meeting for most of Lorenzo’s life.
And Vincent Romano was the advisor currently accused of moving twenty-three million dollars.
Mia whispered, “They knew each other back then?”
“Everyone knew everyone.”
Gabriel inserted the first cassette into the recorder.
Static filled the room.
Then Elena Moretti’s voice.
Older than the woman in Lorenzo’s childhood memories.
But unmistakable.
“If this recording is ever played, something has happened to me.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
Mia quietly moved closer.
Elena continued.
“Marco believes Carlo is weak. Vincent believes loyalty can be purchased. They are planning something involving the European accounts. Evelyn saw documents she was never supposed to see.”
A knock suddenly sounded above them.
Gabriel’s hand moved toward his weapon.
Nobody was supposed to know they were there.
The lights went out.
Mia inhaled sharply.
Emergency lights flickered red.
Then a metallic sound came from the corridor.
Gabriel whispered, “Get behind the vault.”
Gunfire shattered the glass door.
Lorenzo grabbed Mia and pulled her down as bullets tore through shelves.
Gabriel returned fire.
Someone screamed.
Mia crawled behind a steel cabinet.
The cassette kept playing.
Elena’s voice floated eerily through the gunfire.
“If Lorenzo survives what they are planning, Evelyn must take him away.”
Lorenzo froze.
Survives?
What they were planning?
A masked man burst through the doorway.
Gabriel fired.
The man dropped.
Then another appeared behind Mia.
Lorenzo saw him.
“Mia!”
She turned too late.
A hand grabbed her hair.
A blade pressed against her throat.
“Drop it, Moretti.”
Lorenzo’s weapon lowered.
The attacker smiled beneath his mask.
“Good.”
Mia’s breathing shook.
“Let her go.”
“Not until you give me the tapes.”
Lorenzo’s voice became deadly calm.
“If you hurt her, you won't leave this room.”
The man laughed.
“You still don't understand.”
He tightened his grip.
“This was never about her.”
Then he looked directly at Mia.
“It was about what Evelyn put inside that bracelet.”
Mia’s eyes widened.
May you like
Lorenzo looked at his wrist.
And for the first time, he realized the tiny gold strand inside Mia’s handmade gift was not thread at all.
