Chapter 2 - THE PAGE HER FATHER HIDEmma removed a sealed envelope from the bottom of the red folder.
Unlike the other documents, this one looked untouched by time. No yellow edges. No faded ink. Her name was written across the front in handwriting she had spent ten years trying to forget.
Emma.
She placed it on the table.
Dante stared at the handwriting.
“What is that?”
“My father’s last insurance policy.”
Vince moved.
It was barely noticeable—a shift of his right hand toward his jacket—but Dante saw it.
“Don’t.”
One word.
Vince froze.
Dante’s men had already repositioned themselves. Paulie was no longer watching Emma. He was watching Vince.
Sal Bianchi looked sick.
Emma opened the envelope.
“My father gave this to my mother three days before he died. She was told to give it to me if anyone from the Moretti family ever came looking for his records.”
Dante’s expression changed.
“My father went looking for those records.”
“I know.”
That answer hit him harder than Emma expected.
Dante rose slowly.
“How?”
“Because Jack wrote it down.”
She unfolded the letter.
Ten years earlier, Jack Caldwell had discovered that money was disappearing from several Moretti-controlled companies. At first, the amounts were small enough to hide inside legitimate transactions.
Then they grew.
Jack traced them to shell corporations.
Those corporations eventually connected to someone inside the Moretti family.
Vincent.
But Vince had not been stealing merely to get rich.
He had been paying someone.
A rival organization.
The DeLuca syndicate.
Dante read the name over Emma’s shoulder.
His face hardened.
The Morettis and DeLucas had nearly gone to war nine years earlier. Three men had died before Dante’s father negotiated an uneasy peace.
“Why would Vince pay DeLuca?” Dante asked.
Emma looked at Vince.
“Ask him.”
Vince laughed, but there was no humor left in it.
“You walk in here with old papers and suddenly you understand our family?”
“No,” Emma said. “I understand numbers.”
She pulled out another document.
“And numbers don’t get nervous.”
Sal suddenly spoke.
“Enough.”
Everyone turned.
The old man pushed himself slowly from his chair.
“I should have said something ten years ago.”
Vince’s eyes snapped toward him.
“Sal.”
“I’m eighty-one years old,” Sal said. “What are you going to do, Vincent? Ruin my retirement?”
Nobody laughed.
Sal looked at Dante.
“Jack came to me.”
“When?”
“Two nights before he died.”
Dante became absolutely still.
“He told me he’d found something inside the books. Something that could destroy the family.”
“And you told my father?”
Sal shook his head.
“I told Vincent.”
Emma closed her eyes for one second.
There it was.
The missing link.
Sal’s voice broke.
“I thought I was protecting your father. Vincent was family. Jack wasn’t. I believed Vincent would explain it.”
“What happened?” Dante asked.
“Jack died forty-eight hours later.”
Emma had spent ten years hearing the official story.
Her father had stolen from the Morettis.
He had fled when confronted.
His car had gone through a guardrail outside Albany.
Police called it an accident.
The Moretti family called it justice.
Emma’s mother called it murder until the day she died.
Dante turned toward Vince.
“Did you kill Jack Caldwell?”
“No.”
It came quickly.
Too quickly.
Emma watched him.
For the first time that night, she believed Vince.
Not because she trusted him.
Because fear looked different from guilt.
And Vince looked afraid.
“I framed him,” Vince admitted.
Sal sank back into his chair.
Vince swallowed.
“I moved money. Jack found it. I altered the ledger and made the transfers look like his.”
Emma’s nails pressed into her palms.
“But I didn’t kill him.”
“Then who did?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.” Vince looked directly at her. “But if I had killed your father, I’d have destroyed every copy of that ledger.”
Emma hated that the argument made sense.
Dante did too.
“Why were you paying DeLuca?”
Vince looked toward the windows.
“Because somebody told me to.”
Dante stepped closer.
“Who?”
Vince smiled bitterly.
“You really think I was the highest person in this?”
Something changed in Sal’s face.
Emma noticed.
So did Dante.
Before either could speak, the lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Someone shouted.
Glass shattered.
Then came a muffled gunshot.
Dante grabbed Emma and pulled her behind the heavy table.
Another shot punched through the wall.
Men overturned chairs.
“Stay down,” Dante ordered.
“I wasn’t planning to dance.”
Emergency lights flickered red.
Emma looked across the floor.
Vince was gone.
The back door stood open.
Rain blew inside.
Dante’s men rushed after him.
Emma started to rise.
Dante caught her wrist.
“No.”
“He has answers.”
“And somebody outside has a rifle.”
She stared at him.
He was shielding her with his own body.
That realization disturbed her more than the gunfire.
Then Sal groaned.
Emma crawled toward him.
Blood covered his shoulder.
“Sal?”
His fingers caught hers.
“There’s something Jack never knew.”
“What?”
Sal looked toward Dante.
Then back at Emma.
“Vincent wasn’t protecting himself.”
Emma leaned closer.
“Who was he protecting?”
Sal whispered two words.
“Dante’s father.”
Dante heard him.
His face emptied.
Carlo Moretti had been dead for six years.
And according to everything Dante believed, his father had spent his life defending the Moretti family.
Emma looked down at her father’s letter.
At the very bottom was a sentence she had overlooked.
If Carlo discovers I know, Emma will never be safe.
Her blood turned cold.
Dante read it too.
May you like
Outside, tires screamed away into the rain.
And for the first time that night, Emma realized Vince might not be the most dangerous Moretti whose secrets had survived.
Related Stories
