Chapter 4 - The Man Behind the Broken CrownElena hadn't heard her father's voice in seven years.
But when the telephone rang at 11:43 that night, she recognized it before he finished saying her name.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
Her blood turned cold.
She stood in Lorenzo's study with the phone pressed against her ear.
“Dad?”
A low chuckle answered.
“Still remember your old man?”
Lorenzo looked up from the desk.
He immediately noticed her expression.
Elena gripped the phone harder.
“What do you want?”
“That's no way to greet family.”
“You stopped being my family when I left Nevada.”
“Funny. I remember you running away after stealing money from me.”
“I took eighty dollars.”
“You took something more important.”
Elena frowned.
“What?”
Her father ignored the question.
“Listen carefully. The man you're staying with is dangerous.”
“I know.”
“No, sweetheart. You don't.”
Lorenzo stood.
Elena held up one hand, silently asking him not to interrupt.
Her father continued.
“Lorenzo Moretti thinks he's hunting the people who tried to kill him. What he doesn't understand is that somebody has been preparing this for years.”
“Who?”
“You'll find out.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“Because I want you alive.”
Elena nearly laughed.
“You've never cared whether I lived.”
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then his voice hardened.
“Your mother made the same mistake. She thought she could walk away.”
Elena's breath caught.
“What did you do to her?”
The line went silent.
“Dad?”
A faint scraping sound came through the receiver.
Then he spoke again.
“Ask Moretti what happened at Blackwater Ridge.”
The call ended.
Elena remained frozen.
Lorenzo approached.
“What did he say?”
She repeated the conversation.
At the mention of Blackwater Ridge, Lorenzo's expression changed.
He crossed the study and opened a locked drawer.
Inside was a thin folder marked with an old company logo.
A mountain.
A crown.
And the initials B.R.
“Blackwater Ridge was a private training facility in Nevada,” he explained. “My father invested in it twenty years ago.”
“What kind of training?”
“Security contractors. Former soldiers. Private protection.”
Elena remembered the men visiting her childhood home.
Their quiet voices.
Their expensive watches.
The strange metal cases they carried.
“My father worked there,” she whispered.
Lorenzo nodded.
“Possibly.”
She looked at him.
“Why would your father know my mother?”
“I don't know.”
“Then find out.”
There was no fear in her voice now.
Only determination.
Lorenzo had heard that tone before.
From Matteo.
And for reasons he couldn't explain, it frightened him.
The next morning, Dante returned with information about Blackwater Ridge.
The facility had officially closed eighteen years earlier.
Its property had been sold through several shell companies.
The final owner was a corporation called Meridian Holdings.
Lorenzo recognized the name.
Meridian had been used to purchase warehouses, office buildings, and transportation contracts across the East Coast.
Several of those companies had once belonged to the Moretti family.
“Who controls Meridian now?” Lorenzo asked.
Dante placed a document on the desk.
“That's the problem. The ownership is hidden behind offshore trusts.”
“Find the beneficiaries.”
“We're trying.”
Elena studied the paperwork.
Then noticed a familiar name.
“Wait.”
She pointed.
“Silver Creek Construction.”
Dante frowned.
“What about it?”
“My father worked there.”
Lorenzo leaned closer.
Silver Creek Construction had received more than four million dollars from Meridian over seventeen years.
The payments were labeled consulting fees.
But Silver Creek had dissolved a decade earlier.
Someone had continued paying a company that no longer existed.
“That's how he survived,” Elena whispered.
Lorenzo looked at her.
“What?”
“My father always had money. He pretended we were poor, but sometimes he came home with thousands of dollars in cash.”
“Where did he keep it?”
“In a locked metal cabinet behind our trailer.”
“Did you ever open it?”
“Once.”
“What was inside?”
Elena hesitated.
“Passports. Different names. Photographs. And a little black notebook.”
Lorenzo went still.
“What notebook?”
“It had numbers and dates. I didn't understand them.”
“Where is it now?”
She looked away.
“Elena.”
“I took it when I ran.”
The silence was immediate.
Dante stepped forward.
“You have it?”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“I gave it to someone.”
“Who?”
Elena swallowed.
“A woman who helped me escape Nevada. Her name was Margaret Ellis.”
Lorenzo exchanged a glance with Dante.
Margaret Ellis was a former federal investigator who had disappeared from public records three years earlier.
Dante searched her name.
The results were disturbing.
Her last known address was in Vermont.
Her driver's license had expired.
Her bank accounts were inactive.
And a missing-person report had been filed by her sister.
Lorenzo looked at Elena.
“When did you last speak to her?”
“Two years ago.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me to stop asking about my mother.”
“Anything else?”
Elena nodded slowly.
“She said the notebook wasn't just evidence.”
“What was it?”
“A list of people who were supposed to be dead.”
At that moment, Dante's phone vibrated.
He read the message.
His expression darkened.
“Boss, we found a current address for Elena's father.”
“Where?”
Dante hesitated.
“Long Island.”
Lorenzo stared.
“How close?”
Dante turned the screen toward him.
The address belonged to a small guest cottage less than three miles from the Moretti estate.
May you like
And according to the property records, it had been purchased six months earlier.
By Dante himself.
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