Chapter 4 - THE DRIVER WHO DISAPPEARED
Peter Walsh was found before sunrise.
Not in Cicero.
Not at the address in his employment file.
He was hiding in a motel outside Joliet under a name that belonged to a dead man.
Daniel's team located him after tracing a payment made through a company connected to Richard Sterling. Peter had been receiving money for four years.
When Dominic arrived, Peter was sitting on the edge of a bed, fully dressed, with a duffel bag beside him.
He didn't look surprised.
“You took your time, Mr. Moretti.”
Dominic shut the door.
“You came to my daughter's window.”
“I needed to know whether she was safe.”
“You could have knocked on the front door.”
Peter gave a humorless laugh.
“Would your guards have let me in?”
“Not after you disappeared.”
Peter looked down.
“I didn't disappear. I was told to leave.”
“By whom?”
Peter hesitated.
“Vanessa.”
Dominic's jaw tightened.
“Why?”
“Because I saw something I shouldn't have.”
Dominic sat across from him.
“Start talking.”
Peter rubbed his hands together.
“The night Mrs. Moretti died, I was assigned to drive her to a private clinic. She said she needed to meet someone. She wouldn't tell me who.”
“Did you take her?”
“No. A car blocked the service entrance. Mrs. Moretti got out and spoke to a man for a few minutes. I stayed behind the wheel.”
“Who was the man?”
Peter looked at him.
“Richard Sterling.”
Dominic went still.
“What happened next?”
“She returned to the car. She was shaking. She told me to drive to the greenhouse, but before we got there, she received a phone call.”
“From whom?”
“I don't know. She answered, listened, and said, ‘You promised me he would be safe.’ Then she hung up.”
Dominic felt a cold weight settle in his chest.
“Who was ‘he’?”
“I thought she meant you.”
Peter swallowed.
“But when we reached the greenhouse, she told me to wait outside. She went in alone. About fifteen minutes later, a second car arrived.”
“Whose?”
“I couldn't see the driver. But I saw someone enter the greenhouse.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“Was it Michael?”
Peter shook his head.
“I thought so at first. Same height, same coat. But when the person came back out, they walked differently.”
“Who was it?”
Peter looked toward the window.
“I don't know.”
Dominic's voice turned dangerous.
“You're telling me you watched someone enter the greenhouse on the night my wife died, and you never told the police?”
“I tried to tell the police.”
Peter's voice broke.
“The next morning, two men came to my apartment. They showed me photographs of my daughter leaving school. They told me if I spoke, she'd disappear.”
Dominic stared.
“You have a daughter?”
“Her name is Lily. She's twelve now.”
“Where is she?”
Peter swallowed.
“Her mother took her to Oregon. I haven't seen her in four years.”
Dominic's anger faltered.
“You let them separate you from your child?”
“I let them keep her alive.”
For a moment, neither man spoke.
Then Peter reached into his duffel bag and removed a small envelope.
“I kept this because I thought one day someone would ask the right questions.”
Inside was a photograph of Elena standing in the greenhouse. Beside her was a woman Dominic didn't recognize, holding a small bundle wrapped in a yellow blanket.
On the back, Elena had written:
If anything happens to me, find the woman who carried the child out.
Dominic stared at the photograph.
“What child?”
Peter shook his head.
“I don't know. I never saw the baby clearly.”
Dominic's hands tightened around the picture.
“Sophie was six months old when Elena died.”
“I know.”
“Then what baby?”
Peter looked up.
“That's why I came back.”
Dominic felt the room close around him.
“Explain.”
Peter took a shaky breath.
“Three days before Mrs. Moretti died, she asked me to drive her to a hospital across town. She came out carrying a small paper bag and crying. She said she needed to protect a child.”
“What child?”
“I never found out.”
Dominic stared at the photograph again.
The woman holding the bundle had a distinctive crescent-shaped birthmark near her wrist.
He knew that mark.
Not from the mansion.
From a photograph in his father's private archive.
The woman was Margaret Bell, a former nurse who had worked at the hospital where Antonio Moretti died.
Dominic stood.
“Where is she?”
Peter shook his head.
“I don't know. She left the hospital the same week Elena died.”
Dominic turned to Daniel.
“Find Margaret Bell.”
Daniel nodded.
Peter caught Dominic's sleeve.
“There's something else.”
Dominic stopped.
“Richard wasn't the only one paying me.”
“Who else?”
Peter hesitated.
Then he said, “A woman.”
“Name?”
“She never gave me one. She sent instructions through a lawyer. She said she was trying to protect Mrs. Moretti.”
Dominic's expression hardened.
“Then why did you run?”
“Because the last message she sent me said, ‘The child must never be returned to the Morettis.’”
Dominic froze.
“Returned?”
Peter looked terrified.
“That's all I know.”
Dominic stepped back.
His phone rang.
Daniel answered it, listened, then turned pale.
“Sir, we've located Margaret Bell.”
“Where?”
Daniel swallowed.
“She died two years ago.”
Dominic stared at him.
“Then find her records.”
Daniel's voice dropped.
“We already did.”
He handed Dominic a printed report.
Margaret Bell had worked at the hospital for twenty-three years. She had resigned suddenly, changed her name, and moved to a small town in Wisconsin.
Two years later, she died in a single-car accident.
But the report included one more detail.
A surviving relative.
A daughter.
Evelyn Bell, currently employed as a private nurse in Chicago.
Dominic looked at the photograph again.
The woman holding the bundle might have been Margaret.
But the handwriting on the back belonged to Elena.
And if Elena had been trying to protect a child, then someone had been hiding that child for years.
Dominic's phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
A message appeared.
Stop looking for Margaret's daughter. She knows what happened to Elena, and she will never forgive you for it.
Dominic stared at the screen.
Then he looked at Peter.
“Did you ever see the woman who paid you?”
Peter nodded slowly.
“Once.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“Who was she?”
Peter's face drained of color.
He whispered a name.
“Your mother.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
May you like
His mother had died when he was seventeen.
Or so he had always believed.
