Chapter 6 - THE MAN SEBASTIAN TRUSTED MOST
Sebastian moved first.
He stepped between Mateo and the women.
“Take your hand out.”
Mateo stared at him.
Then slowly withdrew it.
He was holding his reading glasses.
Nothing else.
“You really think I carried a gun into your foundation auditorium?”
Sebastian’s expression did not change.
“I think your name was hidden for twenty-five years.”
Mateo looked at Anna.
“Where did you get that card?”
“My father.”
“Then your father never told you what it meant.”
Anna’s chin lifted.
“You worked for the men who killed him.”
“No.”
Mateo put his glasses on the table.
“I worked for your father.”
Silence.
Anna laughed bitterly.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect Sebastian to.”
He looked at Sebastian.
“Ask what my first job for Vittorio was.”
Sebastian frowned.
“You handled warehouse security.”
“Officially.”
Mateo took off his jacket slowly and placed it on a chair.
On his upper arm was an old scar.
A long, puckered line.
“Unofficially, I pulled Anthony Bell out of Lake Michigan after someone put two bullets in him.”
Anna stopped breathing.
Sebastian stared.
“You never told me.”
“Your father ordered me not to.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever betrayed Bell was close enough to know every person helping him.”
Mateo pointed at the business card.
“That card didn’t identify me as the enemy.”
“It identified me as the person Anna was supposed to find if both Vittorio and Nathan were gone.”
Anna’s face changed.
“Nathan is not gone.”
Mateo looked at her.
“Are you sure?”
A terrible quiet followed.
Pierce’s abandoned house suddenly felt different.
Cold coffee.
Car in the garage.
Rosary on the table.
Mateo continued.
“He knew somebody was closing in. He called me yesterday afternoon.”
Sebastian’s voice hardened.
“And you didn't tell me.”
“He asked me not to.”
“I’m getting tired of people deciding what I’m allowed to know.”
Mateo nodded.
“You should be.”
It was not defiance.
It sounded like regret.
He reached into his shirt pocket.
This time Sebastian watched carefully.
Mateo produced a folded restaurant receipt.
On the back, Nathan Pierce had written:
IF I MISS THURSDAY DINNER, CHECK CATHERINE’S WATCH.
Lauren frowned.
“My mother’s watch?”
Anna shook her head.
“Catherine gave Nathan a watch years ago. He kept it in his office.”
They hurried upstairs.
Pierce’s office had already been searched.
But not for a watch.
Lauren found it in the top drawer beneath a stack of donor invitations.
A simple gold woman’s wristwatch.
The back was engraved:
C.W. — TIME TELLS WHAT PEOPLE WON’T.
Emma almost smiled.
“Your mother liked messages.”
Lauren’s eyes filled.
“She liked puzzles.”
Sebastian watched her carefully.
For years he had known Lauren as brilliant, polished, controlled.
Now she looked seventeen again.
A daughter trying to remember a mother who had left too early.
Mateo opened the watch case.
Inside was a microfilm strip.
Old-fashioned.
Deliberately offline.
They used a document scanner.
The images were copies of handwritten accounting sheets from twenty years earlier.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Not trafficking payments.
Bribes.
Money paid to officials who had helped conceal the network.
Sebastian recognized several names.
Most were dead.
One was not.
EDWARD WHITFIELD.
Lauren’s father.
She stepped backward.
“No.”
The ledger showed six payments to Edward.
Her father had been an insurance attorney before his death nine years earlier.
He had told Lauren that her mother’s medical debt destroyed them.
But the accounts showed money flowing the other direction.
Edward Whitfield had received nearly $300,000.
Lauren sat down.
“My father worked for them.”
Emma looked at her.
Now Lauren’s behavior made painful sense.
She had spent six weeks discovering that the institutions she trusted might have been funded by crimes connected to her own family.
Sebastian crouched in front of her.
“You didn't know.”
“Don't.”
“Lauren.”
“Don't make it smaller because you love me.”
He went silent.
She stared at her father’s name.
“I spent my entire career fixing medical access because I thought illness destroyed my family.”
Her voice broke.
“What if it wasn't illness?”
Anna answered quietly.
“It wasn't your mother.”
Lauren looked at her.
Anna pointed at the ledger.
“Catherine helped my father.”
Sebastian frowned.
“How?”
“She discovered Edward was washing payments through medical insurance settlements.”
Lauren covered her mouth.
“That’s why she knew Vittorio.”
Anna nodded.
“Catherine brought the evidence to him.”
The photograph at the lake.
Vittorio.
Pierce.
Catherine.
And the scratched-out fourth person.
“Anthony Bell,” Emma said.
Anna nodded.
Lauren looked at the photograph again.
Her mother had not been standing beside criminals.
She had been standing beside people trying to expose them.
A reversal so complete that she began to cry.
Not loudly.
Just two tears she did not wipe away.
Sebastian reached for her hand.
She let him take it.
Then Emma noticed something on the scanned ledger.
A recurring set of initials beside Edward’s payments.
R.R.
“Who's R.R.?”
Sebastian’s expression changed.
Mateo looked away.
Lauren noticed.
“You know.”
Sebastian answered.
“My uncle.”
“Your father’s brother?”
“Rocco Rinaldi.”
Lauren stared at him.
“I thought he died.”
“He did. Six years ago.”
Mateo shook his head.
“No.”
Sebastian turned sharply.
“What?”
“Rocco didn't die six years ago.”
Mateo’s voice was quiet.
“He died three months ago.”
Sebastian stood.
“I attended his funeral.”
“You attended somebody’s funeral.”
The room went cold.
Sebastian’s anger finally broke through.
“You knew?”
“For nineteen years.”
“Why?”
“Because Vittorio sent Rocco away after discovering he was taking money from the Bell network.”
Sebastian stared at him.
“So the scratched-out man—”
“Rocco.”
Mateo nodded.
“Your father gave him a choice. Testify or disappear.”
“He disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“And three months ago he died.”
“Yes.”
“What changed three months ago?”
Mateo looked toward Emma.
“Someone found what he left behind.”
Emma’s chest tightened.
“What?”
“A list of everyone who inherited the old network.”
Lauren whispered, “Where is it?”
Mateo looked at the crushed remains of Emma’s hearing aid in the evidence pouch.
“It was never in the blue ledger.”
He pointed at the tiny surviving battery compartment.
“It’s in there.”
Emma stared.
Mateo carefully opened the compartment.
A wafer-thin memory card slid into his palm.
Anna whispered, “Nathan put it there.”
Mateo inserted it into the computer.
One file appeared.
Password protected.
The filename was a date.
Sebastian recognized it.
His upcoming wedding day.
Lauren stared at the screen.
“Why would Rocco name the file after our wedding?”
Emma looked at her.
Then at Sebastian.
Because the answer had become terrifyingly obvious.
“Maybe the wedding isn't when this ends.”
May you like
She swallowed.
“Maybe it’s when they planned to start again.”
