Chapter 21 - MY FATHER’S SAFEThe investigation should have belonged entirely to Lily.
Then Graham Shaw made it personal.
Police searched his office.
Inside they found a photograph.
My father.
Standing beside Graham’s father, Charles Shaw.
I had never heard the name.
Sofia had.
“Charles helped your brother.”
That surprised me.
Charles Shaw had been a young legal-aid attorney.
Luca approached him before his death.
The notebook Sofia gave us referenced him only as C.S.
Charles helped Luca create an emergency fund for women and children trying to escape criminal families.
Small.
Secret.
Legal.
After Luca died, Charles continued it.
Eventually that project evolved into Harbor Light.
I stared at the documents.
Poppy House and Harbor Light shared an ancestor.
Luca.
The irony was almost unbearable.
A program created from my brother’s desire to protect frightened families had become, decades later, a machine profiting from frightened children.
Clara looked at me.
“This isn’t Luca’s fault.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I thought about it.
“Yes.”
That was growth.
Then Sofia gave us one final item.
A key.
“My father gave this to Charles Shaw,” I said.
“How do you know?”
The Romano crest.
Old vault key.
We found the safe inside a closed Romano property scheduled for demolition.
Inside was no money.
No weapons.
Letters.
My father had discovered Luca’s escape fund after Luca died.
And secretly financed it for eleven years.
The man I had spent decades simplifying into a monster had done one decent thing.
Not enough to erase anything.
May you like
But real.
People were inconvenient that way.
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