Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
Norah locked the door and backed away from it.
Her hands shook so badly that the photograph slipped from her fingers.
She picked it up again, staring at her mother's younger face.
The woman in the picture looked nothing like the exhausted Evelyn who had raised her in a cramped apartment outside Boston. This Evelyn wore a silk dress and a diamond bracelet. Her posture was confident. Her smile suggested she had never once worried about paying the electricity bill.
Norah barely recognized her.
A heavy impact rattled the door.
"Miss Hale!" a man shouted. "Open up!"
She backed toward the bathroom.
The handle turned.
A second later, a gunshot cracked through the wood.
Norah screamed and dropped to the floor.
The door burst inward.
Vincent stood in the doorway with a pistol in his right hand and blood running down his left sleeve.
"Come with me."
"What happened to Teresa?"
"She's alive. Move."
He grabbed Norah's hand and pulled her into the corridor.
They hurried down a narrow staircase, passing two guards carrying an injured man toward the kitchen.
Vincent opened a concealed door behind a wall of wine cabinets.
Inside was a small security room filled with monitors.
"Sit down."
Norah refused.
"Tell me what's happening!"
Vincent turned toward her.
"Someone got inside the estate. They knew the layout, the security rotation, and exactly where you were sleeping."
"Why me?"
"Because they think you know something."
"I don't know anything!"
"Maybe you don't. But your mother might have."
He pulled a chair toward the desk and opened a drawer.
Inside lay a photograph of Evelyn standing beside Carmine in front of a fishing boat.
On the back, someone had written: The last clean day.
Vincent studied Norah's expression.
"You've seen her before."
"She's my mother."
"Not the woman I remember."
He placed the picture beside hers.
"Twenty years ago, my father ran a smuggling operation through the old Belladonna docks. He claimed it was untouchable. Then thirty men died in a warehouse fire, and the money vanished."
"Thirty men?"
"My father blamed a rival family. He ordered revenge. The violence lasted almost a year."
"And my mother?"
Vincent hesitated.
"She worked for the family as a pianist. But she wasn't just a pianist. She kept the books for my father's legitimate businesses. She was the only person he trusted to move money without drawing attention."
Norah stared at him.
"My mother was an accountant?"
"An exceptionally good one. According to my father, she discovered that someone inside the family was stealing from him."
"Who?"
"Nobody ever admitted knowing."
Vincent looked toward the monitors.
"Then Evelyn disappeared. The warehouse burned three weeks later. Thirty men were declared dead, including my father's closest adviser."
"And he thought my mother died too?"
"He believed she'd betrayed him."
Norah felt sick.
"My mother never mentioned any of this."
"Maybe she was trying to protect you."
A warning alarm suddenly flashed across one of the monitors.
Vincent leaned forward.
The east gate camera had come back online.
A black sedan sat outside the perimeter fence.
Its headlights were off.
A man stepped out holding something small in his hand.
The camera zoomed in.
It was a photograph.
Vincent's face went rigid.
Norah recognized the man standing beside the car.
She had seen him once before, eight years earlier, at her mother's funeral.
He had stood at the back of the church wearing a dark overcoat. He hadn't spoken to anyone. When Norah approached him afterward, he had told her he was an old family friend.
Then he had disappeared before she could ask his name.
"Who is that?" she whispered.
Vincent didn't answer.
He picked up the desk phone.
"Get me Daniel Cross. Tell him the past just walked through our front gate."
Outside, the man raised the photograph toward the camera.
Then he held up three fingers.
Vincent swore under his breath.
"What does that mean?" Norah asked.
"It means he knows we have three days."
"Three days until what?"
Vincent looked at her.
"Until my father dies, if the doctors are right."
He paused.
"And if Daniel Cross is here, someone has already decided that Carmine Marino won't survive the night."
A loud bang shook the outer security door.
The lights flickered.
On the monitor, the sedan's driver vanished into the rain.
A moment later, a message appeared on the screen.
ASK CARMINE WHO ORDERED THE FIRE.
Vincent read it twice.
Then he turned toward Norah.
"Whatever your mother left behind, your father might be the only person who can tell us where it is."
Norah went cold.
"My father?"
Vincent looked at the photograph in her hand.
"Your mother didn't raise you alone by accident, Norah."
He reached into the drawer and pulled out a sealed envelope.
Inside was a birth certificate.
The father's name had been blacked out in thick ink.
But beneath it, barely visible through the paper, were two handwritten words.
May you like
Vincent Marino.
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