Chapter 3 - The Photograph in the Wall
Leo moved Tessa and Connor to a private medical facility before sunrise.
Connor needed surgery on two fingers.
Tessa refused to leave him until anesthesia took effect.
Leo waited outside.
She found him sitting alone at the end of the corridor, jacket off, tie gone, staring at a vending machine as though it had personally offended him.
“You knew my father.”
Leo looked up.
“I knew of him.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
Tessa sat opposite him.
“Then start talking.”
Nobody spoke to Leo Rossi like that.
Apparently Tessa Mercer did.
Daniel Moretti had once been one of Carlo Rossi’s most trusted financial advisers.
Carlo was Leo’s father.
In the early 2000s, the Rossi organization had begun moving legitimate money into construction, shipping and commercial property.
Daniel managed the books.
Then he discovered something.
Millions were disappearing.
Not into criminal businesses.
Out of them.
Someone inside the organization was quietly stealing from Carlo.
Daniel gathered evidence.
Before he could present it, three men connected to the investigation died.
Daniel vanished.
Months later, Carlo received a photograph of Daniel living under another name.
Daniel Mercer.
He had a wife.
And a little girl.
Tessa.
“Why didn’t your father kill him?”
Leo’s eyes hardened.
“Because Daniel saved his life.”
Tessa said nothing.
“Years earlier, somebody tried to shoot my father outside a restaurant. Daniel pushed him down and took the bullet.”
“So your father let him disappear.”
“Yes.”
“Then why is someone looking for whatever he left me?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
Tessa stood.
“We intend.”
“No.”
She stared at him.
“My brother was tortured.”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t get to hide me in a room while you solve my life.”
“I get to keep you alive.”
“I’ve been keeping myself alive since I was eight.”
Leo rose.
He towered over her, but Tessa did not move.
“That worked when the people hunting you didn’t know who you were.”
“And now?”
“Now they do.”
The elevator doors opened.
Marco approached carrying a sealed evidence bag.
Inside was a photograph.
An old photograph.
Daniel Mercer stood beside Carlo Rossi outside a restaurant.
Tessa’s father looked twenty years younger.
Beside him stood another man.
Leo’s uncle, Vittorio Rossi.
Tessa stared.
“Where did you get this?”
“Your apartment.”
Her head snapped up.
“You went into my apartment?”
“Someone else got there first.”
Her stomach dropped.
The apartment had been torn apart.
Drawers emptied.
Mattress cut open.
Floorboards lifted.
But the intruder had missed something.
A loose panel behind the kitchen radiator.
Marco found it because the dust pattern was wrong.
Behind it was the photograph.
And a key.
Small.
Brass.
Stamped with four numbers.
Tessa stared at it.
“April seventeenth.”
Leo looked at her.
“Your birthday.”
She nodded.
The key belonged to a safe-deposit box.
By noon, they were standing inside a private bank downtown.
The box had been untouched for eighteen years.
Inside was no money.
No jewelry.
Only a cassette tape, an old ledger and an envelope with Tessa’s name.
Her hands trembled as she opened it.
The letter was from her father.
Tessa,
If you are reading this, then I failed to keep the past away from you.
She stopped.
Leo said nothing.
She continued.
Daniel wrote that he had discovered a financial operation hidden inside Rossi businesses.
Someone had been stealing millions, but the money was only part of it.
The stolen funds financed a network of judges, police officers, contractors and political fixers.
Daniel had copied the records.
He planned to expose the person responsible.
Then he learned the truth.
The thief was Vittorio Rossi.
Leo’s uncle.
Tessa slowly raised her eyes.
Leo’s expression did not change.
But Marco swore under his breath.
Daniel had confronted Vittorio.
Vittorio threatened Tessa.
So Daniel ran.
Years later, Daniel believed Vittorio had finally found him.
The “car accident” that killed him had never been an accident.
Tessa reached the final paragraph.
There is one person in the Rossi family I believed might become better than the men who raised him.
Leo.
She looked at him.
Leo looked equally stunned.
If Carlo’s son ever becomes the man I hoped he could be, trust him with the ledger.
But only after you ask him one question.
Tessa read the last line twice.
Leo waited.
“What question?”
She swallowed.
“Ask Leo Rossi what happened on November ninth, 2008.”
Leo went completely still.
Marco looked at him.
Tessa saw something she had never seen on Leo’s face.
Fear.
Not fear of a gun.
Not fear of death.
Fear of memory.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Leo looked at the old ledger in her hands.
Then at Daniel’s photograph.
Finally he said, “That was the night I killed my first man.”
Tessa’s breath caught.
May you like
Leo continued.
“And the man I killed was sent to murder your father.”
