Chapter 5 - THE DEAD MAN'S ROOM
Salvatore Moretti had been dead for nine years.
There had been a funeral.
Newspapers printed photographs of Adrian standing beside the coffin.
Politicians attended.
Businessmen attended.
Federal agents attended.
So when Tommy demanded to speak to him, my first thought was drugs.
My second was fear.
My third was that in Adrian Moretti's world, death apparently required verification.
Tommy lay in a guarded hospital room with a broken nose, two cracked ribs, and bruises around his throat.
When I entered with Detective Harris, he looked smaller than I remembered.
For years, my fear had enlarged him.
It was strange seeing the actual dimensions.
“Claire.”
I stopped six feet from the bed.
“No closer,” Harris said.
“I wasn't planning to.”
Tommy smiled weakly.
“You look good.”
My split lip was still swollen.
I almost laughed.
“What happened to Calvin Reese?”
His smile disappeared.
“I didn't kill him.”
“Why was his blood in your trunk?”
“Because Vincent put him there.”
Adrian, standing behind the observation window, stiffened.
Tommy noticed him.
“Moretti.”
“Answer her,” Adrian said through the open door.
Tommy swallowed.
“I did jobs for Vincent.”
“What jobs?” I asked.
“Deliveries. Cars. Cash.”
“And the thirty thousand?”
“He paid me to keep quiet after the building collapse.”
“You saw something.”
“I saw them remove support beams before the inspection.”
My stomach turned.
“Why?”
“To accelerate demolition. Insurance deadline. Something like that.”
“Someone died.”
“I didn't know that would happen.”
“You knew it was dangerous.”
Tommy looked away.
That was answer enough.
“And my mother?”
His face changed.
That frightened me more than everything else.
“What about her?”
“Don't.”
“Thomas.”
He hated his full name.
Good.
“You had her death certificate.”
He stared at the blanket.
“Vincent wanted it.”
“Why?”
Tommy said nothing.
Adrian stepped into the room.
“Because Elaine Bennett was listed as an authorized beneficiary on an old holding trust.”
Everyone looked at him.
I frowned.
“What trust?”
“My father's.”
Tommy laughed softly.
“Tell her the rest.”
Adrian's expression hardened.
“What rest?”
Tommy looked at me.
“Your mother owned part of the company.”
Silence.
I thought I had misheard him.
“What?”
“Not the whole thing. A stake. Old man Moretti gave her shares when she helped restructure some projects.”
I turned to Adrian.
“Is that true?”
“I didn't know.”
“Convenient.”
“It is.”
“Don't.”
Tommy chuckled.
Adrian ignored him.
“Claire, I can verify it.”
“Why would Vincent care after seventeen years?”
Tommy smiled.
“Because when Elaine died, her shares didn't go back to Moretti.”
My chest tightened.
“They went to you.”
Nobody moved.
I laughed once.
It sounded wrong.
“I wait tables for eleven dollars an hour.”
Tommy's eyes were ugly with bitterness.
“And you're worth roughly forty-two million dollars.”
The room blurred.
Detective Harris muttered something.
Adrian stared at Tommy.
“Where did you hear that number?”
“Vincent.”
“And Vincent learned?”
“Your father told him.”
I looked at Adrian.
“Your dead father?”
Tommy's smile returned.
“He ain't dead.”
Harris leaned forward.
“Explain.”
Tommy licked blood from his lip.
“Vincent meets him twice a year.”
Adrian's face became unreadable.
“No.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“My father died in Manhattan Presbyterian.”
“Body was cremated, wasn't it?”
Adrian went silent.
I suddenly remembered newspaper photographs.
Closed coffin.
Private final rites.
“You're lying,” Adrian said.
Tommy shrugged and winced.
“Ask your aunt.”
Something passed across Adrian's expression.
Aunt Teresa.
The Moretti family matriarch.
“She arranged everything,” Tommy continued. “Hospital. Funeral. Death papers.”
“Why fake his death?”
Tommy looked at me.
“Because somebody tried to kill him.”
My skin went cold.
“Vincent?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Tommy's eyes moved to Adrian.
“Your father thought it was you.”
The silence afterward was unbearable.
Adrian did not move.
For the first time since I'd known him, he looked wounded.
Not angry.
Wounded.
“That is impossible.”
Tommy smiled.
“Families, man.”
Then alarms suddenly shrieked.
The lights flickered.
A nurse shouted in the hallway.
Harris turned.
Smoke rolled beneath the door at the far end of the corridor.
“Fire!”
Everything happened at once.
Sprinklers activated.
Hospital staff began evacuating patients.
Two officers ran toward the smoke.
Adrian grabbed the wheelchair beside Tommy's bed.
Then a man in medical scrubs entered.
Something about him felt wrong.
Maybe it was his shoes.
Black dress shoes beneath blue scrubs.
I saw his hand move toward his waistband.
“Adrian!”
Adrian turned.
The man's gun came up.
I slammed the metal IV pole into his arm.
The shot exploded into the ceiling.
Harris tackled him.
Adrian dragged me backward.
Two seconds later it was over.
The attacker lay facedown.
Smoke continued filling the corridor.
Tommy stared at me.
“You just saved Moretti.”
“I saved myself.”
Adrian looked at me.
I realized his arm was bleeding.
The bullet had grazed him.
“You're hit.”
“It's nothing.”
“That's my line.”
Despite the chaos, he almost smiled.
Then Tommy began choking.
Not from smoke.
Something else.
His monitor screamed.
A doctor rushed toward him.
Tommy convulsed.
“What happened?” I shouted.
The nurse checked the IV.
Her face changed.
“Something's wrong with the medication.”
Poison.
Someone had used the fire as distraction.
Tommy's eyes rolled toward me.
He grabbed my wrist.
“Claire.”
I leaned closer despite Harris's warning.
“Where is Salvatore?”
Tommy struggled for breath.
“St. Agnes.”
“What is that?”
“Not… what.”
His fingers tightened.
“Who.”
Then his hand fell.
Doctors pushed us out.
They worked on him for twelve minutes.
Thomas Rourke died at 2:47 a.m.
I stood in the hallway listening to the flatline.
I expected relief.
Instead I felt grief for the life he might have lived if he'd chosen differently.
Grief for the person I had been while loving him.
Grief did not mean forgiveness.
That distinction mattered.
Adrian stood beside me with blood soaking through his sleeve.
“Claire.”
“I’m okay.”
“No, you're standing.”
I looked at him.
He remembered.
Something inside me softened.
Then Harris approached.
“The attacker won't talk.”
“Vincent?” Adrian asked.
“Maybe.”
“What about St. Agnes?”
Harris frowned.
“We found something.”
He held up his phone.
A photograph showed an elderly woman outside a private nursing facility in Connecticut.
The caption beneath it read:
DR. AGNES MORETTI FOUNDATION CENTER.
Adrian stared.
“Agnes was my grandmother.”
Harris swiped to another image.
A patient registry.
One name had been circled.
SAMUEL MORTON.
Age seventy-one.
The attached photograph showed a thin gray-haired man sitting beside a window.
Adrian stopped breathing.
“My father.”
May you like
Salvatore Moretti was alive.
And if Tommy had told the truth, he had spent nine years hiding because he believed his own son had tried to murder him.
