Chapter 4 - MICHAEL'S ELEVEN-YEAR LIE
Emily stared at the gun.
Adrian didn't move.
Michael's weapon hung low at his side rather than pointing directly at either of them.
But that didn't make Emily feel much better.
Adrian's voice was calm.
“Put it down.”
Michael closed the door behind him.
“I can't.”
“Then tell me whether I'm supposed to consider you an enemy.”
Michael's eyes shifted toward the Polaroid in Emily's hand.
“You found Evelyn's book.”
“You know about it?”
“I helped her hide it.”
Emily looked between the two men.
“Then why are you holding a gun?”
“Because somebody followed me.”
Adrian's posture changed.
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
Michael removed his phone and placed it on the floor.
The screen was cracked.
“My car was hit twice coming through Chestnut Hill. They weren't trying to kill me. They were trying to push me somewhere.”
“Why didn't you call?”
“My phone stopped connecting.”
Adrian picked it up.
“No signal.”
Michael nodded.
“Jammer.”
Adrian looked toward the hallway.
“Marco!”
No answer.
He tried his own phone.
Dead.
The mansion's electricity flickered.
Then vanished.
Emergency lights glowed red.
Michael raised the gun.
Emily whispered, “Is this them?”
Adrian pulled her behind a stone wall beside the doorway.
“Stay low.”
Footsteps sounded somewhere in the service corridor.
Not rushed.
Controlled.
Several people.
Adrian opened a drawer built into an antique cabinet.
Emily stared when he removed a pistol.
“Does every piece of furniture in this house have a weapon?”
“Only the expensive ones.”
Even Michael almost smiled.
The first man entered through the laundry corridor wearing black tactical clothing.
He never fired.
Adrian struck him with the pistol and drove him against the wall.
Michael covered the second entrance.
Two more footsteps retreated.
Then glass shattered downstairs.
Marco's voice finally shouted.
“Clear!”
The lights returned sixty seconds later.
Security swept the mansion.
Three intruders had entered through the same carriage-house tunnel Vanessa used.
One had been caught.
Two escaped.
The captured man carried another silver Vesper coin.
Adrian turned toward Michael.
“Library.”
Ten minutes later, Michael sat opposite his nephew with the gun removed and three guards outside.
Emily remained.
Michael looked at her.
“You deserve the truth.”
“That would be a refreshing change.”
Michael winced.
“Your mother would have said that.”
Emily's throat tightened.
“You knew her well?”
“Yes.”
“How well?”
Michael looked away.
Adrian saw it.
“Michael.”
His uncle sighed.
“I loved her.”
Emily stared.
Michael leaned back.
“Not romantically by the end. But when we were younger…”
He shook his head.
“Evelyn was the first decent person who ever believed I could become something other than my brother's enforcer.”
Adrian's father.
Salvatore.
Michael continued.
“Lucia found out what Salvatore was doing with the Vesper Circle. She came to me because she didn't know who else to trust.”
“What exactly was the Circle?” Emily asked.
“Not a gang. Not formally.”
Michael rubbed his face.
“It was a protection network. Powerful families pooled information. Judges protected corporations. Corporations financed politicians. Criminal organizations handled problems nobody wanted connected to respectable names.”
Adrian's eyes hardened.
“And my father?”
“Philadelphia representative.”
“Representative to whom?”
Michael shook his head.
“The Circle never had one leader. That was the point.”
Emily placed the blue book on the desk.
“My mother wrote that you knew who ordered it.”
Michael looked at the message.
“Lucia's murder.”
Adrian's voice turned cold.
“You knew she was murdered.”
“Yes.”
“And you watched me bury her believing she died from heart failure.”
Michael looked ashamed.
“If I'd told you then, you would have gone after everyone involved.”
“Yes.”
“You were thirty.”
“I was not a child.”
“No. You were a grieving son with an army and no patience.”
Adrian stood.
“You don't get to use my temper as an excuse.”
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“By letting her killer walk?”
Michael slammed both palms against the desk.
“Because the order came from inside our own house!”
Silence.
Adrian slowly sat.
“Who?”
Michael's eyes filled with something Emily hadn't expected.
Fear.
“Salvatore left contingency orders before he died.”
Adrian's father had died three years before Lucia.
“What kind?”
“If Lucia ever tried to release the private ledger, she was to be stopped.”
“By whom?”
Michael hesitated.
“Anthony's father.”
Adrian's cousin Anthony.
The same man whose speech downstairs had triggered the delayed applause.
Anthony's father, Carlo Romano, had died six years earlier.
Adrian's face went still.
“Uncle Carlo killed my mother?”
“No.”
Michael shook his head.
“He arranged the operation. But something went wrong.”
“What?”
“Lucia wasn't supposed to die.”
Emily frowned.
“What was supposed to happen?”
“They planned to frighten her. Take the ledger. Move her somewhere controlled.”
Adrian's voice dropped.
“And instead?”
“She reached the hospital poisoned.”
“Poisoned with what?”
“No one told me.”
Emily remembered Vanessa.
“Vanessa said Lucia was admitted under another name two days before she supposedly collapsed.”
Michael stared.
“She knows that?”
“Yes.”
“Then Vanessa knows far more than I thought.”
Adrian leaned forward.
“Why?”
Michael's expression darkened.
“Because Vanessa Cross's father was Carlo's attorney.”
Emily felt another piece lock into place.
“Her father helped cover it up.”
“Probably.”
Adrian shook his head.
“Vanessa was nineteen.”
“Which doesn't make her innocent today.”
Michael pointed toward the ceiling.
“She restarted Lucia's archive. Copied your security codes. Recreated the engagement party upstairs.”
“Why?”
“To find something.”
“The ledger?”
Michael nodded.
“But if she had access for six weeks, why hasn't she found it?”
“Because Lucia didn't hide information in obvious places.”
Emily picked up the brass key.
“317.”
Michael stared at it.
Then his face changed.
“Oh, hell.”
“What?”
“Thirty-seventeen wasn't a room.”
“Then what?”
“Safe-deposit vault.”
Adrian stood.
“Where?”
Michael looked at Emily.
“First Commonwealth Bank. Downtown Philadelphia.”
The bank opened at nine.
They arrived at nine twelve.
Adrian used no influence.
No threats.
The key and archived records were enough.
Vault 317 had been rented by Evelyn Parker twenty-three years earlier under an inactive trust.
Inside was a narrow metal box.
Emily opened it.
No ledger.
Instead, there were eight cassette tapes.
A passport under her mother's name.
Twenty thousand dollars in old cash.
And a handwritten letter addressed to Emily.
Her hands shook.
Adrian moved away to give her privacy.
Emily opened the letter.
My sweet girl,
If you're reading this, then I failed to come home when I promised myself I would.
There are truths I kept from you because children should not inherit their parents' fear.
Emily swallowed hard.
She continued.
Lucia saved my life when I was nineteen. Years later, I tried to save hers.
I failed.
But I saved something else.
A recording.
Not of the murder.
Of the people who decided afterward how the truth would be buried.
Do not trust anyone simply because they loved Lucia.
People can love someone and still betray them.
Especially Michael.
Emily looked up.
Michael's face drained as she read the sentence aloud.
Adrian slowly turned toward him.
Michael whispered, “Keep reading.”
Emily did.
Michael betrayed Lucia once.
Then he spent eleven years trying to undo it.
If he is still alive when you read this, ask him about the Rose Room.
Adrian stared.
“What is the Rose Room?”
Michael closed his eyes.
“The place where the Vesper Circle met.”
“Where?”
Michael shook his head.
“It moved.”
Emily reached the final paragraph.
There is one more person you must find.
The only person Lucia trusted with the complete ledger.
His name is—
The page had been torn.
Emily stared.
Someone had removed the lower half.
Adrian examined the box.
“Who accessed this vault?”
The bank manager checked archived logs.
His face became uneasy.
“There was access yesterday.”
Emily froze.
“Yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
The manager rotated the monitor.
Security footage showed a woman entering the vault.
Baseball cap.
Large sunglasses.
Gray coat.
She removed part of the letter.
Before leaving, she briefly looked directly toward the camera.
Emily's knees weakened.
It was Evelyn Parker.
Her mother.
Alive.
Adrian watched the footage twice.
Emily whispered, “She knew I was coming.”
Michael shook his head.
“Or someone made her come.”
The bank manager cleared his throat.
“There's something else.”
“What?”
“She left an item inside the vault after accessing it.”
The manager handed Emily a sealed plastic evidence envelope.
Inside was a motel key card.
Written on it in black marker:
ROOM 214. COME ALONE, EMILY.
Adrian immediately said, “You're not going alone.”
Emily looked at him.
“If it really is my mother, I am.”
“No.”
“You don't get to decide that.”
“Someone tried to kill your father six hours ago.”
“And someone has been hiding my mother for four years.”
Adrian's jaw tightened.
Emily stepped closer.
“If she won't come out while your men are surrounding me, then I need one chance to hear her.”
Adrian hated it.
She could see that.
But eventually he nodded.
“One condition.”
“What?”
“I'll be close enough to reach you.”
At eleven forty-three that morning, Emily opened Room 214 of a roadside motel outside Philadelphia.
The curtains were closed.
One lamp burned beside the bed.
A woman stood with her back toward the door.
Emily stopped breathing.
“Mom?”
The woman slowly turned.
Four years disappeared.
Evelyn Parker looked older.
Tired.
Terrified.
But alive.
Emily's mouth trembled.
Evelyn whispered, “Oh, baby.”
Emily crossed the room and fell into her mother's arms.
For ten seconds, nothing else existed.
Then Evelyn pulled away.
Her eyes moved toward the door.
“You shouldn't have brought Adrian.”
Emily froze.
“He isn't inside.”
“I know.”
Evelyn's face filled with fear.
“That's worse.”
“What are you talking about?”
Evelyn gripped her shoulders.
“Emily, listen to me carefully.”
“What?”
“Adrian Romano isn't the man you need to fear.”
Emily stared.
Evelyn looked toward the thin motel wall.
“It's the person standing beside him right now.”
Outside, Adrian waited near the stairwell.
Michael stood ten feet away.
Then Michael's phone vibrated.
May you like
He looked at the screen.
And pointed a gun directly at Adrian's back.
