Chapter 5 - ISABELLA MORETTIDante took the phone from Emma.
“Mother?”
Silence.
Then Isabella Moretti answered.
“Hello, darling.”
Dante looked as if someone had struck him.
Emma had never seen him lose control.
Not when bullets entered his conference room.
Not when Vince was exposed.
Not when he discovered Carlo’s betrayal.
But hearing his dead mother’s voice broke through every wall.
“You’re alive.”
“I am.”
“You let me bury you.”
“That was necessary.”
“I was seventeen.”
For the first time, Emma heard the boy beneath the man.
Isabella did not apologize.
Instead, she said, “Bring Emma to me.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what she has.”
“She has her father’s records.”
“She has something far more valuable.”
The call ended.
Dante stared at the phone.
Emma spoke gently.
“What does she mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Vince laughed weakly from the chair.
“Yes, you do.”
Dante turned.
Vince looked toward Emma’s red folder.
“Jack didn’t keep financial records because he cared about money.”
Emma frowned.
“What are you talking about?”
“He kept names.”
The original ledger contained coded initials beside certain transfers.
Emma had assumed they identified accounts.
They did not.
They identified people.
Judges.
Police officials.
Corporate executives.
Politicians.
Union leaders.
People Carlo had bribed or compromised over decades.
But one entry appeared repeatedly.
IM-17.
Isabella Moretti.
The ledger was not merely evidence of theft.
It was a map of an empire.
And whoever possessed it could dismantle that empire—or inherit it.
Emma suddenly understood.
“This is why everyone wants the folder.”
Dante nodded.
“Not because of Vince.”
“Because of Isabella.”
They returned to Manhattan before sunrise.
Emma should have been exhausted.
Instead, adrenaline kept her awake.
Dante gave her a guest room in his penthouse.
She refused.
“I have an apartment.”
“Which anyone can enter.”
“I have three locks.”
“Emma.”
“Fine.”
She accepted the room.
At six in the morning she found Dante standing alone in the kitchen.
No jacket.
Sleeves rolled up.
For the first time, he looked almost ordinary.
Almost.
He poured coffee.
“Twelve cups yesterday,” he said.
“Occupational hazard.”
“You brought twelve coffees into a room knowing you were about to accuse my cousin of treason.”
“I didn’t want anyone saying I was bad at my actual job.”
He looked at her.
Then laughed.
It surprised both of them.
Emma smiled despite herself.
The moment disappeared quickly.
“My father hated yours,” she said.
Dante looked down at his coffee.
“I’m beginning to understand why.”
“He might have hated you too.”
“Wouldn’t blame him.”
“I did.”
Dante raised his eyes.
“For years.”
“I know.”
“I took the job because I wanted access to you.”
“I know that too.”
“No, you didn’t.”
His mouth curved slightly.
“I investigated you the second week you worked downstairs.”
Emma blinked.
“You investigated me?”
“You corrected a $4.7 million discrepancy nobody else noticed.”
“It was obvious.”
“It was three cents per transaction spread across fourteen subsidiaries.”
“Like I said. Obvious.”
He stared at her.
“You scared my CFO.”
“He should be scared. His spreadsheets are terrible.”
Dante smiled again.
And something dangerous happened.
Emma forgot to hate him.
Only for a second.
Then Dante’s phone rang.
The hospital.
Sal Bianchi was awake.
They arrived thirty minutes later.
Sal looked twenty years older.
“I need to tell you what happened to Jack,” he whispered.
Emma sat beside him.
Sal revealed the final piece.
Jack had survived the crash.
Thomas helped him disappear.
But Jack had refused to stay hidden forever.
Three years earlier, he returned secretly to New York.
He intended to find Emma.
Before he could, Isabella’s people found him.
“Where?” Emma whispered.
Sal’s eyes filled with tears.
“Hudson Valley.”
“Did they kill him?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma stood.
“Where?”
Sal gave them an address.
An abandoned Moretti property two hours north.
Before leaving, Sal caught Dante’s arm.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“Your mother isn’t trying to protect the Moretti empire.”
Sal looked terrified.
“She wants to burn it down.”
That afternoon, Emma and Dante reached the abandoned estate.
Inside, dust covered everything.
Except one room.
Someone had been living there recently.
Emma entered.
A coffee cup sat on a desk.
Still warm.
Beside it was a photograph of Emma graduating college.
Another from her first job.
Another showing her entering the Moretti building eight months earlier.
Someone had been watching her for years.
Then Emma saw the wall.
Dozens of photographs.
Dante.
Vince.
Isabella.
Carlo.
Thomas.
And Emma herself.
Red lines connected them.
At the center was one photograph.
Jack Caldwell.
Under it were two handwritten words.
TRUST DANTE.
Emma heard a floorboard creak behind her.
She turned.
An older man stood in the doorway.
Gray hair.
Thin face.
Tears already in his eyes.
Emma stopped breathing.
The man whispered the name no one had called her since childhood.
“Little bird.”
May you like
Her knees nearly gave out.
“Dad?”
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