Chapter 4 - The Truth in the Safe
Marco yanked his arm back, rubbing his wrist with a dark scowl, but he didn't dare argue further. He muttered an oath under his breath, grabbed his jacket, and stormed out of the suite followed by his guards.
The heavy oak door clicked shut, leaving just the two of us in the vast, silent penthouse.
I stood frozen beside the bar cart, my fingers digging into the edge of the tray. “Thank you, Mr. Costello. I’ll... I’ll take my leave now.”
“Wait, Eliza,” he said, walking over to his mahogany desk. He picked up a heavy, old-fashioned manila folder tied with a black ribbon. He didn't look like a crime boss in that moment; he looked like a man carrying the weight of a sin he had tried desperately to bury.
“Do you know why I stopped Vanessa from firing you tonight?” he asked, his dark eyes fixed on the folder.
“Because she was being unreasonable?”
“Because of your last name,” he said quietly. “Brennan. It’s not a common name in Port Alder anymore. Not since the dock riots twenty years ago.”
My breath hitched. My father had died in the Port Alder dock accidents when I was six years old. The official police report called it a tragic industrial fire. My mother had spent the rest of her life broken, poor, and terrified of the shadows.
“My father was David Brennan,” I whispered, the words feeling heavy on my tongue. “He worked the shipping cranes before the fire.”
Adriano opened the folder. Inside were yellowed newspaper clippings, police reports, and a photograph of a younger man with the same warm, tired eyes I saw in the mirror every morning—my father. Beside him in the photo was a much younger Adriano Costello, standing shoulder-to-shoulder like brothers.
“Your father didn’t die in an accident, Eliza,” Adriano said, his voice cracking slightly around the edges. “He was murdered. And the men who killed him—the men who stole his shipping shares to build the foundation of the Costello Syndicate—were my own uncles.”
The room seemed to spin on its axis. The crystal glasses on the bar blurred into bright streaks of light.
“What... what are you saying?” I gasped, backing away until my spine hit the cold glass of the balcony door.
“I’m saying that everything I own, everything this empire is built upon, was stolen from your family,” Adriano said, stepping closer, his expression raw with a grief I never expected to see on a criminal kingpin. “For ten years, I’ve looked for surviving family members to make it right. And tonight, when I read your badge... I realized the daughter of the man I failed to protect was standing right in front of me, scrubbing floors and begging for hospital money.”
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a checkbook, and placed a pen on the desk. “Name your price, Eliza. For your mother’s hospital bills, for your schooling, for the life my family took from yours. Take it all.”
I looked at the checkbook, then up at his scarred, haunted face. The anger that should have exploded inside me was drowned out by a cold, numbing realization.
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“You think a check can buy back my father’s life?” I whispered, my voice trembling with suppressed rage. “You think throwing money at me absolves you of what your family did?”
“No,” Adriano answered softly, stepping within arm's reach. “I don't. That’s why I’m not just offering you money, Eliza. I’m offering you power. Help me tear down what my uncles built, and take back what was always yours.”
