Chapter 4 - THE DEAD BROTHERThe bullet struck the wall.
Alarms erupted.
Dante’s security team flooded the room while nurses screamed in the corridor.
Sonia crouched beside Emma.
Robert’s monitor raced.
“Move them!”
Dante’s command transformed the chaos into action.
Within minutes Robert was transferred to an interior intensive-care room. Emma refused to leave him.
Sonia stood in the corridor, trembling.
Dante approached.
There was blood on his cheek from shattered glass.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Glass.”
She reached toward him automatically, then stopped.
Dante noticed.
Something passed between them that neither addressed.
“My brother’s name was Luca,” he said.
Sonia waited.
“He died when I was twenty-six. Car explosion in Queens.”
“You saw the body?”
“I saw what remained.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
Dante looked through the ICU window at Robert.
“My father identified him.”
“Could your father have lied?”
“My father lied about almost everything.”
They returned to Lombardi’s before sunrise.
Vinnie was gone.
Not released.
Gone.
The basement chair where Dante’s men had left him was empty. One guard lay unconscious beside the stairs.
On the wall someone had drawn a black circle with a line through it.
Dante recognized the symbol immediately.
“The Hollow Crown.”
Sonia folded her arms.
“That sounds cheerful.”
“It was Luca’s.”
“You mean gang?”
“Crew. Six men who believed our father was destroying the family by becoming legitimate.”
“And you?”
“I believed the future wasn’t in street wars.”
“So your brother hated you.”
“Toward the end.”
Dante studied the symbol.
“But Luca wouldn’t poison an innocent man to send me a message.”
“You haven’t seen him for eleven years.”
“No.”
His answer was quiet.
“Maybe I don’t know what he would do anymore.”
Sonia found something beneath the chair.
A torn piece of paper.
Numbers.
Dante recognized them as safe-deposit references.
At 8:15 a.m., they entered a private bank on Madison Avenue.
The box belonged to Robert Mitchell.
Inside was no money.
Only an old ledger wrapped in plastic and a photograph.
Sonia picked up the photograph.
Her father stood on Pier 17, seventeen years younger.
Beside him was Dante’s father.
And behind them stood two teenage boys.
Dante.
Luca.
On the back, Robert had written:
IF THEY COME FOR ME, FOLLOW THE MONEY, NOT THE BLOOD.
The ledger documented millions in hidden transactions.
Dante turned pages.
Then stopped.
“What?”
“These accounts continued after Luca died.”
“So?”
“They use his authorization code.”
Sonia felt cold.
“Meaning?”
“Either someone stole his identity…”
Dante closed the ledger.
“…or my brother has been alive the entire time.”
The bank manager appeared at the door.
“Mr. Moretti? There’s something you should see.”
Security footage showed a man entering the vault corridor the previous afternoon.
Tall.
Dark coat.
He turned toward the camera.
Dante froze.
The face was older.
Scarred.
But unmistakable.
Luca Moretti.
Alive.
Sonia looked at Dante.
He seemed, for the first time, less like a feared criminal and more like a younger brother staring at a ghost.
Then Luca looked directly into the security camera.
He raised one finger.
And pointed toward Sonia’s father’s box.
As if he had known Dante would eventually watch.
The footage ended.
Dante’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
“Hello, little brother.”
Dante closed his eyes.
Luca.
“You should be dead.”
“I was, for a while.”
“Why Robert?”
“Wrong question.”
“What’s the right one?”
A soft laugh.
“Why Sonia?”
Dante looked at her.
Luca continued.
“You think she accidentally got a job at your restaurant?”
Sonia’s face drained of color.
“What is he saying?” she whispered.
Luca heard her.
“Hello, Sonia.”
She stared at the phone.
May you like
“I’ve been waiting seventeen years to meet you.”
Then he hung up.
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