Chapter 3 - What Carlo Promised
Claire turned the photograph over three times as if the sentence might change.
It did not.
Vincent must never know what his father promised Claire.
Vincent read it beside her.
Neither spoke.
Mrs. Pierce sat in one of the boathouse chairs, looking suddenly older beneath the fluorescent lights.
Claire finally faced her.
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
Mrs. Pierce nodded.
“I know.”
“This picture was taken two years before that.”
“Yes.”
“So why was my mother meeting Carlo Bellini?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
Mrs. Pierce glanced at Vincent.
“Walter said Daniel Dawson helped rebuild part of the Mariner.”
“Cabin Three?” Vincent asked.
“Yes.”
Claire tightened her fingers around the brass key.
“Why?”
“Because your father wanted a place nobody else knew existed.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
“My father had many places nobody knew existed.”
“This one wasn’t for money.”
That surprised him.
Mrs. Pierce continued.
“Walter handled upholstery and interior fabric. Daniel handled woodworking. Malcolm Reeves handled paperwork. Your father supervised everything himself.”
“And Audrey?” Claire asked.
Mrs. Pierce hesitated.
“Walter only called her the Langford girl.”
Vincent looked sharply at her.
“So she was there.”
“She came aboard twice that Walter remembered.”
“How old?”
“Early twenties.”
Audrey was thirty-seven now.
That fit.
Vincent had met her four years ago.
Or believed he had.
Claire sat slowly.
“What did Carlo promise me?”
Mrs. Pierce shook her head.
“Walter never told me.”
“Never?”
“He said that part belonged to Daniel.”
Claire swallowed her frustration.
Again, they had answered one question only to create another.
Vincent picked up the photograph.
“Where was this taken?”
Mrs. Pierce looked.
“Harbor Point Marina. Before the redevelopment.”
Vincent knew the property.
Bellini companies had purchased most of Harbor Point fifteen years earlier.
Claire suddenly remembered something.
“My father hated that place.”
Mrs. Pierce stared at her.
“What?”
“After my mother died, he wouldn’t drive past Harbor Point.”
Vincent asked, “Did he say why?”
“He said rich men had ruined it.”
The words landed badly.
Vincent looked away first.
Claire noticed.
“You think he meant your family.”
“I think there’s a strong chance.”
“Then why would he tell me to trust you?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer sounded almost angry.
Not at her.
At Carlo.
Vincent had spent years being the man who knew what everyone around him was hiding.
Tonight his dead father was making him feel like the last person invited into his own family.
Owen entered with updated marine data.
“I found the Lucy D.”
Claire stood.
“Where?”
“Registered in Maine for three years. Then Delaware. Last official inspection was six years ago.”
“And after that?”
“Private vessel exemption. No public tracking requirement.”
Vincent pointed to Audrey’s route.
“Can she reach it?”
“If Reeves knows where it’s moored.”
“He does.”
Claire looked at the photograph again.
“Then we go after them.”
Vincent looked at her injured knee.
“No.”
Her head snapped up.
“No?”
“You can barely walk.”
“My father built whatever is under that floor.”
“And if Audrey reaches it first, your knee won’t help you.”
“Neither will leaving me here.”
“You have a twelve-year-old son at home.”
Claire froze.
Vincent knew immediately he had hit the one argument she could not dismiss.
“Ethan is staying with my sister tonight.”
“Then keep him away from this.”
Claire’s anger changed shape.
“You don’t get to use my son to order me around.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“You’re trying to control the only person who may recognize what my father built.”
They stared at each other.
Owen became extremely interested in the radar screen.
Vincent finally exhaled.
“You stay beside me.”
Claire almost laughed.
“I work for you. I don’t belong to you.”
“I know.”
His answer came instantly.
The anger left her.
Vincent added, “I’m asking.”
That mattered.
“Fine.”
They departed before dawn aboard a larger Bellini boat.
Mrs. Pierce remained behind under protection.
The ocean beyond Newport was cold and nearly black.
Owen navigated while Claire sat in the cabin with Daniel’s key around her neck.
Vincent stood across from her.
After twenty minutes, he placed something on the table.
A silver watch.
Claire recognized it.
Carlo’s.
“I found it among my father’s personal effects after he died,” Vincent said.
Claire turned it over.
The back was engraved:
V.B. — SOMEDAY YOU’LL UNDERSTAND WHY I CHOSE MERCY.
She looked up.
“Mercy for who?”
Vincent gave a bitter smile.
“That question has bothered me for ten years.”
Claire handed it back.
“You didn’t like your father much.”
“I loved him.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
Vincent considered her.
“No.”
He closed his hand around the watch.
“I didn’t always like him.”
That was the first truly human thing Claire had heard him say about Carlo.
The radar beeped.
Owen leaned forward.
“Vessel ahead.”
Through the morning fog, a dark hull appeared.
Old.
Long.
Beautiful.
Its current name had been painted over.
Beneath newer paint, another word remained faintly visible.
MARINER.
Claire stopped breathing.
Her father had stood on that deck.
Her mother had known it.
Carlo had hidden it.
And Audrey was already aboard.
The Bellini thirty-two-footer floated beside the larger yacht.
No one guarded the deck.
Vincent boarded first.
Owen followed.
Claire came last, carefully protecting her knee.
The yacht smelled of salt, old wood, and diesel.
Cabin Three was below deck.
The door stood open.
Inside, sections of the floor had already been pulled away.
Audrey was kneeling beside the opening.
Malcolm Reeves sat against the wall, breathing heavily.
Blood darkened one sleeve.
Vincent reached inside his jacket.
Audrey turned.
“Don’t.”
Her face looked nothing like the woman who had sipped champagne while Claire bled on the dining-room floor.
She looked terrified.
“Vincent, if you touch that floor, we all lose.”
Claire stepped past him.
“Where is my father’s locker?”
Audrey’s eyes went to the brass key around Claire’s neck.
Her expression collapsed.
“So Walter kept it.”
Claire moved closer.
“What did you do to my father?”
Audrey stood.
“Nothing.”
“Walter said—”
“Walter believed what Carlo wanted him to believe.”
Vincent said quietly, “Then tell us what happened.”
Audrey looked at Malcolm.
The elderly attorney shook his head.
“No more lies.”
Audrey’s eyes filled, but her voice stayed controlled.
“Daniel Dawson did not die because of us.”
Claire’s heart hammered.
“Then why was his name on your boat?”
“Because he was the one man Carlo trusted to build the compartment beneath this room.”
Claire looked at the open floor.
“What’s inside?”
Audrey swallowed.
“Proof.”
“Of what?”
Malcolm Reeves answered.
“Of why Vincent’s father spent the last years of his life trying to dismantle the Bellini empire from the inside.”
Vincent went motionless.
Malcolm reached inside his coat.
He withdrew a folded child’s drawing.
A yellow house.
Blue water.
Four stick figures.
At the bottom, written in a child’s uneven handwriting:
CLAIRE’S HOUSE.
Claire stared at it.
She remembered drawing it.
She had been eight.
Her mother had kept it on the refrigerator.
Malcolm turned it over.
Carlo Bellini had written on the back:
If Daniel refuses the money, put the Harbor Point property in Claire’s name anyway.
Claire looked at Vincent.
Then at Audrey.
Audrey’s next words changed the mystery completely.
“Your father wasn’t working for the Bellinis, Claire.”
May you like
She pointed beneath the floor.
“The Bellinis were working for him.”
