Chapter 3 - The Safe House
Dante’s safe house was not what Emma expected.
There were no gold statues, armed men smoking cigars, or velvet curtains hiding secret meetings.
It was a restored brownstone in Brooklyn Heights.
Quiet.
Elegant.
Almost normal.
That made Emma more suspicious.
Dante led her upstairs.
“You’ll stay here tonight.”
“No.”
He stopped.
She pointed toward the door.
“I’m going home.”
“Your apartment was searched twenty minutes ago.”
Emma went still.
“What?”
Marco held out his phone.
Security photographs showed Emma’s apartment door damaged near the lock.
Drawers emptied.
Mattress overturned.
Her grandmother’s china shattered across the floor.
Emma’s anger came fast.
“They destroyed everything.”
“They were looking for something.”
“I don’t have anything.”
Dante watched her carefully.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“What did Isabella leave you?”
“A few clothes. Photographs. Jewelry.”
“Documents?”
“No.”
“Letters?”
Emma paused.
Dante noticed.
“What?”
“My mother wrote me birthday letters.”
“How many?”
“One for every year until I turned thirty.”
Dante’s eyes sharpened.
Emma had been sixteen when Isabella died.
After the funeral, Daniel Carter gave Emma a wooden box filled with sealed envelopes labeled by age.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
Nineteen.
All the way to thirty.
Emma opened one every birthday.
The letters were loving but ordinary.
Advice about relationships.
Career.
Money.
Courage.
“Where are they?”
“At my apartment.”
Marco immediately made a call.
Emma shook her head.
“They’re just letters.”
Dante’s gaze remained steady.
“Your mother planned messages fourteen years into the future before dying unexpectedly.”
The word unexpectedly hung between them.
Emma felt cold.
“You think she knew.”
“I think Isabella rarely did anything without a reason.”
Emma looked at the Saint Michael medal.
“What was she really like?”
Dante leaned against the doorway.
“You remember her.”
“As my mother.”
“That was probably the version she wanted you to have.”
“And you knew another version?”
“I was twelve when she left Sicily.”
“You knew her?”
“Barely.”
Dante looked toward the window.
“But everyone knew of her.”
Emma almost laughed.
“My mother worked in a bakery.”
“Your mother could read six languages.”
Emma stared.
“She never told me that.”
“She studied accounting in Palermo and understood financial structures better than men twice her age.”
“What did she do for your family?”
Dante hesitated.
“Records.”
Emma’s voice dropped.
“She kept Mafia books?”
“She reorganized legitimate holdings.”
“That sounds carefully phrased.”
“It is.”
Emma walked away.
Every answer created another version of Isabella.
A woman Emma did not know.
An hour later Marco returned carrying a fireproof document case.
He placed it on the dining table.
“Letters survived.”
Emma immediately opened the case.
Fourteen envelopes remained.
Twenty-six through thirty were still sealed.
Dante noticed.
“Your birthday?”
“February.”
“Open twenty-six.”
“No.”
“Emma.”
“They’re mine.”
“Someone just fired bullets at your car because they believe those letters contain something.”
Emma clenched the envelope.
Finally, she broke the seal.
Inside was a handwritten letter.
My beautiful Emma,
If you are reading this, you are twenty-six.
I hope by now you have learned that being kind does not require becoming obedient.
Emma swallowed.
That sounded like her mother.
She continued.
There may come a day when someone with the name Romano enters your life. If that happens, do not trust him merely because he knows me.
Dante raised an eyebrow.
Emma looked up.
“Well.”
“Continue.”
She did.
But do not fear him merely because of his name either.
Judge the man standing before you, not the stories surrounding him.
Dante said nothing.
At the bottom was one strange sentence.
When the lion remembers the church bell, look beneath the saint who carries the sword.
Emma frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Dante took the Saint Michael medal.
“Saint Michael carries a sword.”
He inspected it.
Nothing.
Then Marco said, “Church bell.”
Dante’s face changed.
He walked toward a bookshelf, removed a large history volume, and opened it to a map of Palermo.
“Santa Lucia.”
Emma approached.
“What?”
“There’s a small church near the neighborhood where your mother grew up. Santa Lucia.”
“Lion?”
“Stone lion above the side entrance.”
Emma stared at him.
“You think she hid something there?”
Dante looked at the remaining letters.
“I think she spent fourteen years making sure nobody could solve this before you were old enough.”
Emma felt a strange pressure behind her eyes.
Her mother had known.
She had known something could happen.
“Why not tell the police?”
Dante’s expression answered first.
“Because someone in law enforcement was working with Vale.”
Emma dropped into a chair.
“This is too much.”
Dante sat opposite her.
For once, he did not look like the terrifying man from the hotel.
He simply looked tired.
“My father spent fifteen years trying to learn who betrayed your parents.”
“Why?”
“Because Salvatore Russo was his best friend.”
Emma looked up.
“And my mother?”
Dante’s eyes shifted.
“My father loved her.”
“You said that.”
“He never stopped.”
Emma frowned.
“Then why did she leave?”
Dante hesitated.
That hesitation frightened her more than any answer.
“Because she discovered my father had ordered Salvatore’s death.”
Emma stopped breathing.
“What?”
“He denied it until the day he died.”
“But you believe him?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma stood so fast the chair scraped the floor.
“You brought me here and conveniently forgot that part?”
“I brought you here because people were trying to kill you.”
“Your father may have murdered mine!”
“Yes.”
“And you expect me to trust you?”
“No.”
That stopped her.
Dante rose.
“I expect you to stay alive long enough to decide whether you hate me.”
They faced one another across the table.
Emma hated that his answer affected her.
A buzzer sounded.
Marco touched his earpiece.
His expression changed.
“We have a problem.”
“What?”
“The man who searched Emma’s apartment.”
Dante waited.
Marco looked at Emma.
“He wasn’t one of Vale’s people.”
“Then who?”
Marco turned the phone around.
The photograph showed a man leaving Emma’s building.
Gray hair.
Heavy coat.
Older than Emma remembered.
But unmistakable.
Emma’s knees nearly gave out.
“No.”
Dante stared at the screen.
Emma whispered the name.
“Daniel.”
Her stepfather.
The man who had raised her.
The man who had told her Isabella died instantly.
The man Emma had believed was living quietly in Florida.
Dante’s voice was barely audible.
“Your stepfather knows.”
And suddenly Emma understood the cruelest possibility of all.
May you like
Daniel Carter had not merely survived her mother’s secrets.
He had been part of them.
