Chapter 5 - The Debt Between Our Families
I slapped Dante.
The sound cracked through his office.
Nico immediately looked away.
Dante did not move.
My palm burned.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“Your father killed my father?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew?”
“Not until tonight.”
“Convenient.”
“Clare—”
“Don’t.”
I backed away.
Everything suddenly looked poisonous.
The penthouse.
The guards.
Dante.
Even the shirt I wore belonged to him.
“Take me home.”
“Your apartment isn’t secure.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“I said take me home!”
Dante’s face tightened.
Then he nodded.
“Nico.”
“No.”
I looked at Dante.
“You take me.”
Twenty minutes later, we were alone in the back of the SUV.
Rain streaked the windows.
Neither of us spoke until Queens.
“Tell me,” I said.
Dante looked over.
“Everything.”
He exhaled slowly.
“My father, Salvatore Caruso, and Michael Moretti were partners.”
“In what?”
“Everything.”
“Crime.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
His eyes held mine.
“Extortion. Smuggling. Gambling. Corruption.”
I swallowed.
“And murder?”
“Yes.”
My father had stopped being an empty space.
He had become something worse.
“What happened?”
“Moretti wanted out.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
“You just said your father killed him.”
“I said my father was responsible. That does not mean I know why.”
Dante looked toward the window.
“I was nine.”
That stopped me.
“You were there?”
“No. But I remember what happened afterward. My father became paranoid. Moretti’s people disappeared. Businesses changed hands.”
“And my mother?”
“Vanished.”
“She was hiding.”
“Apparently.”
My anger shifted into something colder.
“Why would Sanzaro care now?”
“Because Moretti hid something before he died.”
“What?”
“No one knows.”
“Money?”
“Possibly.”
“Evidence?”
“Possibly.”
“That’s very helpful.”
Dante almost smiled but thought better of it.
When we reached my building, Nico checked the apartment first.
The broken window had been boarded up.
I entered.
Dante remained near the door.
“You can leave.”
He nodded.
But before he did, I asked, “Was your father a bad man?”
Dante turned.
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
“Are you?”
That took longer.
“I have done bad things.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one.”
I looked at him.
“Have you killed people?”
His eyes did not leave mine.
“Yes.”
The answer frightened me.
But the fact he did not lie mattered.
“Why?”
“Sometimes survival. Sometimes revenge. Sometimes because I believed it was necessary.”
“And now?”
“Now I spend most of my time trying to make sure the empire I inherited becomes something that doesn’t require more graves.”
I stared.
“You’re leaving?”
“Eventually.”
“The mafia?”
“The criminal parts.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“It is.”
“Dangerous?”
“Very.”
“Why?”
Dante looked around my tiny apartment.
Then at me.
“Because I’m tired of houses without photographs.”
The words followed me after he left.
At 4:13 that morning, I couldn’t sleep.
I opened the old metal box containing my mother’s documents.
Insurance forms.
Photographs.
Letters.
Then I noticed something I had seen a hundred times.
Her rosary.
The silver cross felt unusually heavy.
I turned it over.
A tiny seam ran along the side.
My fingernail caught it.
The cross opened.
Inside was a miniature key.
I stopped breathing.
Taped beneath it was a strip of paper.
One handwritten line.
Grand Central. 418.
By sunrise, I was standing outside Grand Central Terminal.
Alone.
I had not called Dante.
Maybe that was stupid.
Maybe I needed one thing in my life that belonged only to me.
Locker 418 was hidden among an old private storage section.
The key worked.
Inside was a leather folder.
A photograph.
A flash drive.
And a letter.
My hands shook as I opened it.
My darling Clare,
If you are reading this, then someone has finally connected you to your father.
I sat down hard.
Michael Moretti was not innocent. Neither was I. But before you were born, your father discovered that Salvatore Caruso and Victor Sanzaro were moving something worse than contraband through the docks.
My eyes moved faster.
Women. Girls. People who disappeared because powerful men considered them merchandise.
Nausea rose in my throat.
Michael decided to expose them.
Salvatore learned the truth.
Michael was killed.
But before he died, he copied the records.
I looked at the flash drive.
Footsteps echoed behind me.
I turned.
Dr. Warren stood twenty feet away.
The man who had treated my mother.
He looked older.
Tired.
Terrified.
“Clare.”
I stood.
“What are you doing here?”
“Your mother made me promise.”
“Promise what?”
“To protect you.”
I clutched the folder.
“From Sanzaro?”
He shook his head.
“From everyone.”
A shadow moved behind him.
Dr. Warren’s eyes widened.
“Run.”
The gunshot was deafening.
Warren fell.
I screamed.
A man rushed toward me.
Then another figure slammed into him.
Nico.
Two more Caruso guards appeared.
Chaos exploded through the corridor.
Someone grabbed my arm.
I fought.
“Clare!”
Dante.
He pulled me against him.
“You followed me?”
“Of course I followed you.”
For once, I had never been happier about his inability to respect boundaries.
Nico shouted that the attacker was down.
Dante looked at the folder.
“What did you find?”
I handed him my mother’s letter.
He read.
The color drained from his face.
When he reached the final paragraph, his hand tightened.
“What?”
He handed it back.
The final sentence read:
And Clare, if Dante Caruso ever finds you, remember this: he may carry his father’s name, but Salvatore feared his own son because Dante was the one person who might someday destroy everything Salvatore built.
I looked up.
Dante stared at me.
May you like
And for the first time, our fathers’ history no longer felt like the reason we had to stay apart.
It felt like the reason we had been brought together.
