Chapter 4 - THE WATCH THAT STOPPED
Thomas Bellandi arrived at the Duca house just before midnight.
Not because anyone summoned him.
Because Thursdays were the nights he visited his nieces.
That fact complicated everything.
He entered carrying three paper bags from a bakery in Yonkers.
Chocolate cookies for Gia.
Lemon for Mia.
Plain sugar for Lila.
He knew exactly which child preferred which.
When the girls saw him, they did not hide.
Gia ran toward him.
Mia followed.
Lila hesitated only a second before wrapping herself around his leg.
Valentino watched from the staircase.
Becca stood beside him.
“That doesn’t look like fear,” she whispered.
“No.”
Thomas kissed the tops of three heads.
Then noticed Valentino’s face.
“What happened?”
Valentino descended.
“Gia, Mia, Lila spoke tonight.”
The bakery bags slipped in Thomas’s hands.
He looked at the girls.
“You spoke?”
Gia nodded.
Thomas covered his mouth.
Tears filled his eyes.
There was nothing performative about them.
He knelt and the children climbed over him.
Becca found herself looking away.
Villains were supposed to be easier.
Valentino waited.
Eventually Thomas stood.
“What did they say?”
“Snake.”
Thomas became still.
There.
Not guilt exactly.
Recognition.
“You know what it means,” Valentino said.
Thomas glanced at the children.
“Not here.”
Valentino’s voice sharpened.
“They’ve spent two years trapped inside whatever happened. Nothing gets discussed around them as though they aren’t in the room anymore.”
Thomas swallowed.
“Fair.”
He sat across from them in the family room.
The girls stayed close to Becca now, sharing one couch.
Thomas removed his watch and placed it on the table.
An old silver watch with a cracked leather band.
Gia stared at it.
“You remember this?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Your mother gave it to me.”
Valentino frowned.
“Elena gave you Dad’s watch?”
Thomas nodded.
Their father’s.
An heirloom.
“Elena borrowed it the week she died. Then returned it the afternoon of the crash.”
“Why?”
Thomas turned the watch over.
The case was engraved with three tiny initials.
G. M. L.
“She had something put inside.”
He pressed the winding stem.
The rear plate popped open.
Beneath the mechanism sat a micro-SD card.
Valentino’s fury was immediate.
“You had this for two years?”
“I didn’t know.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I knew she wanted the engraving repaired. I never knew about a card.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Thomas stood.
“Believe whatever you want. I lost my sister too.”
The girls flinched.
Becca raised one hand.
“Sit down.”
Both men looked at her.
Thomas almost laughed.
Valentino did not.
She pointed at the girls.
“You’re doing it again.”
Thomas slowly sat.
Marco brought a laptop without a network connection.
The card contained twelve photographs.
Invoices.
Vehicle schedules.
Pictures of cargo manifests.
And one thirty-eight-second video.
Elena appeared on screen.
Alive.
Nervous.
Whispering.
“If this gets to Tommy, he’ll know what to do.”
Thomas broke.
He bent forward.
Valentino remained rigid.
Elena continued.
“Someone is using Val’s security routes. Not for money. For leverage. Employees’ families. Private schedules. Medical information. School pickups.”
Becca felt cold.
“This isn’t smuggling,” she said.
Thomas shook his head.
“No. It’s control.”
On screen, Elena glanced over her shoulder.
“I thought it was Adrian. It isn’t.”
Valentino’s jaw tightened.
“Then who?”
The video Elena did not answer him.
She simply held up a photograph of the triangular symbol.
“The people involved call this the Trident. Snake is one person inside it. I don’t know his real name.”
Thomas stared at the paused screen.
“That’s why the girls said Tommy Snake.”
Valentino looked at him.
“What?”
Thomas pointed toward Lila.
“Your girls never called me that.”
Lila shook her head.
“Tommy. Snake.”
Two separate words.
Becca understood first.
“She wasn’t naming you.”
Thomas nodded.
“She was saying Tommy and Snake.”
The girls had remembered two people.
Not one.
Another wrong assumption.
Valentino rubbed both hands over his face.
“Why were they afraid of Adrian’s shoes?”
Thomas looked at the photograph from Elena’s coat.
“Because they weren’t Adrian’s shoes.”
Everyone turned.
Thomas enlarged the image.
Adrian stood beside Elena.
At the bottom edge, gray shoes appeared near them.
But Adrian himself wore black loafers.
The gray shoes belonged to the photographer’s shadow.
Someone else had been watching.
Gia pointed at them.
“Snake.”
Valentino became very quiet.
“So Snake took the photograph.”
“Or someone standing beside him did,” Becca said.
They reviewed the card.
One photograph showed Elena entering the abandoned Belvedere.
Another showed Thomas’s vehicle.
Another showed Adrian outside a warehouse.
Someone had been documenting all of them.
But the most disturbing photograph showed three small girls leaving kindergarten with their nanny.
Taken from across the street.
Valentino’s hands trembled.
Thomas looked sick.
“Elena discovered someone was tracking them.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She tried.”
Thomas’s answer came too quickly.
Valentino turned.
Thomas reached for his watch.
It had stopped.
The hands showed 11:18.
“The night she died,” Thomas said, “Elena called me from your house at 11:16.”
Valentino stared.
“The crash was logged at 11:41.”
“She said she had finally found Snake.”
Thomas swallowed.
“She told me to meet her at the Belvedere.”
“Did you?”
“I got there at 11:32.”
“And?”
“She never came.”
Valentino stood.
“Because she crashed.”
Thomas looked up.
“No.”
He took something from his wallet.
A faded parking receipt.
11:37 p.m.
“I saw Elena’s car leave the Belvedere garage five minutes after I arrived.”
Valentino’s expression emptied.
“You just said she never came.”
“She didn’t.”
Thomas slid the receipt across the table.
“Someone else was driving her car.”
Gia suddenly crawled down from the couch.
She went to the child’s art desk and pulled out a sheet of paper.
Three stick girls.
A woman in a cream coat.
A black car.
And a tall figure beside it.
The figure had no face.
Only a red line around one wrist.
Becca pointed.
“What’s that?”
Lila whispered, “Bracelet.”
Valentino looked sharply at Thomas.
Thomas wore no bracelet.
Neither did Adrian.
But Marco, standing near the door, slowly lowered his hands.
Around his right wrist was a thin red cord.
Valentino stared at the man who had guarded his family for eleven years.
Marco looked down at it.
Then at the children.
May you like
And whispered—
“Oh, God.”
