Chapter 5 - The Woman Everyone Blamed
Chaos filled the clinic.
Dante shoved Elena behind a concrete column while his men moved toward the stairwell.
Emergency lights flickered red.
Matteo disappeared through the hidden doorway.
Dante grabbed him.
“You move again, I shoot.”
Matteo looked at Dante’s hand around his coat.
“If I wanted your wife dead, she would never have made it to the hospital.”
Dante’s fist tightened.
“Wrong answer.”
“Dante!”
Elena’s voice stopped him.
Another gunshot sounded.
Vanessa screamed again.
Elena looked toward the stairs.
“She’s upstairs.”
Dante ordered two guards forward.
Seconds later came a shout.
“Clear!”
They found Vanessa beside the clinic archive room.
Blood covered her coat.
It wasn’t hers.
A masked gunman lay unconscious nearby, a metal fire extinguisher beside his head.
Vanessa was shaking.
“He came through the window.”
Dante removed the attacker’s mask.
Salvatore recoiled.
“Peter Lang.”
Elena recognized the name.
A security contractor employed by the Moretti organization.
Dante’s expression became lethal.
“Who hired you?”
Lang smiled through bloody teeth.
“Ask your wife.”
Dante punched him.
Once.
Hard enough that Elena heard bone.
“Dante!”
He stopped.
Lang laughed.
“She still doesn’t know, does she?”
Elena’s skin prickled.
“Know what?”
The man looked directly at her.
“Carter isn’t your father’s real name.”
Elena froze.
“My father has been dead twelve years.”
“Your father isn’t dead.”
Dante grabbed Lang again.
But Elena stepped closer.
“What are you talking about?”
Lang spat blood.
“Ask Rosa.”
Elena’s world narrowed to that name.
Rosa Carter.
Her mother’s older sister.
The woman who had raised Elena after her parents died.
The woman who had forced emergency cash into Elena’s hand years ago.
The woman who had knitted the yellow cap currently inside Elena’s suitcase.
Elena called her.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Maria checked the tracking system.
Rosa’s phone was at her small rowhouse in South Philadelphia.
Dante wanted Elena at the hospital.
Elena refused.
“I am done being protected from information.”
“Elena—”
“No. Every person in this room knows pieces of my life except me.”
Dante fell silent.
Twenty minutes later they reached Rosa’s house.
The front door was open.
Elena’s heart dropped.
“Rosa?”
She entered behind Maria.
The kitchen was empty.
A pot of tea remained warm.
Then Elena heard movement downstairs.
Dante opened the basement door.
“Rosa?”
A voice answered.
“Elena?”
They found her tied to a chair.
Alive.
Elena rushed forward.
Rosa sobbed when she saw her.
“My baby.”
“I’m okay.”
Dante cut the ropes.
Then Rosa saw Matteo.
Her face changed.
“You.”
Matteo stopped.
“You know me?” Elena asked.
Rosa began crying.
That was when Elena understood.
Not the details.
But the size of the lie.
“Tell me.”
Rosa shook her head.
“Tell me.”
“Elena, your mother made me promise.”
“My mother is dead.”
Rosa looked at Dante.
Then Matteo.
Finally, she looked at Elena.
“Your father was Daniel Carter. That part is true.”
Elena waited.
“But Daniel Carter wasn’t born Daniel Carter.”
Rosa took her hand.
“He was born Daniele Bellandi.”
Dante went rigid.
The Bellandi family.
The Morettis’ oldest enemy.
Elena pulled her hand away.
“No.”
“Your father left them before you were born. He changed his name. He met your mother. He wanted nothing to do with that world.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because he begged us never to.”
“Who is hunting me?”
Rosa looked terrified.
“Your grandfather.”
Elena stared.
“He’s alive?”
“Victor Bellandi is seventy-eight years old, and he has spent twenty years blaming the Morettis for destroying his family.”
Dante’s voice hardened.
“Victor disappeared in 2010.”
“No,” Rosa said. “He retired.”
Matteo laughed bitterly.
Everyone turned.
“He didn’t retire.”
Matteo removed his coat and rolled up his sleeve.
A series of scars crossed his forearm.
“He found me in Montreal. He told me Dante’s father had ordered Sofia’s death. He spent years feeding me evidence, turning me against my brother.”
“Why?” Dante asked.
“Because he wanted a Moretti willing to destroy the Morettis from inside.”
Matteo looked toward Elena.
“And then four years ago, he discovered who Elena was.”
Elena felt sick.
The emergency room.
The photograph.
“You took that picture.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was following Dante.”
Matteo’s voice softened.
“Then I watched you save him.”
Dante looked at his brother.
Matteo continued.
“You didn’t know his name. You didn’t know what family he belonged to. You just refused to let him die.”
Elena remembered blood covering her scrubs.
Dante’s hand gripping hers.
His barely audible words before anesthesia.
Don’t leave.
“I realized Victor had lied to me,” Matteo said. “The war he described wasn’t inheritance. It was poison.”
“Then why watch us for four years?”
“I was trying to identify his people.”
Dante looked furious.
“You could have come to me.”
“You thought I was dead.”
“You could have changed that with one phone call.”
Matteo had no answer.
Elena closed her eyes.
Every man in this family apparently believed secrecy was an act of love.
Then Rosa whispered, “There’s one more thing.”
Elena almost laughed from exhaustion.
“Of course.”
Rosa reached beneath her blouse and removed a small key hanging from a chain.
“Your father left something for you.”
“What?”
“A safe-deposit box.”
“Where?”
“Philadelphia National.”
“What’s inside?”
Rosa looked at Dante.
“Enough evidence to destroy Victor Bellandi.”
A phone rang.
Not Elena’s.
Not Dante’s.
Rosa’s landline.
Everyone stared at it.
Dante answered.
Nobody spoke at first.
Then an elderly male voice came through the speaker.
“Elena.”
Her blood turned cold.
“Grandfather?” she whispered.
The man laughed softly.
“Finally.”
Then his voice became gentle.
May you like
Almost affectionate.
“Come meet me, sweetheart. Or by sunset, Dante Moretti will be burying someone you love.”
