Chapter 4 - A Dead Woman's Secret
Sarah didn't remember leaving the Obsidian.
She remembered the rain, the cold air, and Lorenzo walking beside her while two black SUVs followed at a distance.
She remembered refusing to get into his car.
She remembered him saying, “You can hate me from the passenger seat.”
And she remembered answering, “I'd rather hate you on the sidewalk.”
He had opened the passenger door anyway.
She had climbed in because the men watching the building had started moving toward them.
Now, inside the car, Sarah stared at the city lights.
“My mother died when I was nine.”
Lorenzo sat beside her, silent.
“House fire in Indiana. That's what Grandma told me. I remember the smoke. I remember waking up in a hospital. I remember my mother being gone.”
“Your grandmother may have been protecting you.”
“From what?”
“That's what we're going to find out.”
Sarah turned toward him.
“You don't get to decide that.”
“No. But someone has spent years making sure you never learned the truth.”
He handed her the flash drive's printed photograph.
“Your mother met Ricky two days before he died. Whatever he was doing, it was connected to her.”
“Then why did you kill him?”
Lorenzo looked away.
For a moment, the ruthless crime boss seemed less like a king and more like a man confronting something he'd rather not remember.
“Because I believed he sold out my family.”
“And now?”
“Now I believe somebody wanted me to kill him before he could tell me the truth.”
The car stopped outside Eleanor's apartment building.
Sarah got out without thanking him.
Inside, her grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of untouched tea between her hands.
She looked at Sarah.
Then at Lorenzo.
And the cup slipped from her fingers.
“You brought him here?”
Sarah froze.
“You know him?”
Eleanor stood, gripping the edge of the table.
“Get out of my house, Lorenzo Valenti.”
Lorenzo didn't argue.
Instead, he removed a photograph from his jacket and placed it on the table.
Eleanor stared at it.
Her face lost all color.
“Where did you get that?”
“From a dead man's belongings.”
Eleanor pressed one hand over her mouth.
Sarah picked up the photograph.
It showed a younger Lorenzo standing beside a woman with Sarah's eyes.
Behind them was a brick building marked with the name of a Chicago hospital.
The woman was unmistakably Rebecca.
Sarah's mother.
Lorenzo spoke quietly.
“Rebecca worked for my father. She discovered that someone inside our organization was selling names to a federal task force. She disappeared before she could tell us who.”
“My mother was a nurse,” Sarah said.
“She was many things.”
Eleanor sat down heavily.
“I told Rebecca to leave Chicago. I begged her.”
“Why didn't you tell me?” Sarah demanded.
“Because the people who wanted your mother dead would have come for you, too.”
“Who?”
Eleanor began to cry.
“Your father.”
The room went silent.
Sarah had never known his identity. Rebecca had raised her alone, and Eleanor had always said the man had died before Sarah was born.
Lorenzo's jaw tightened.
“What's his name?”
Eleanor looked at him with naked hatred.
“You know his name.”
He didn't move.
She whispered it anyway.
“Anthony Valenti.”
Sarah stared at Lorenzo.
Anthony Valenti was Lorenzo's father, the founder of the Chicago organization, a man who had supposedly died in prison twelve years earlier.
“That isn't possible,” Sarah said.
Lorenzo's voice was almost inaudible.
“My father died in prison.”
Eleanor shook her head.
“That's what they wanted everyone to believe.”
She walked to the bedroom and returned with a small wooden box.
Inside lay a hospital bracelet, a faded photograph, and a sealed envelope addressed to Sarah.
The handwriting was her mother's.
Sarah opened the envelope with shaking fingers.
Inside was a single sentence.
If Lorenzo ever finds you, don't trust the man who stands beside him.
Sarah slowly raised her eyes.
Lorenzo stood near the doorway.
Behind him, Giovanni's face appeared in the hall.
May you like
The old consigliere had followed them.
And when Sarah looked from her mother's warning to Giovanni's expression, she realized the man who had stood beside Lorenzo for twenty years might be the very person her mother had died trying to expose.
