Chapter 16 - Marina’s Second BetrayalMarina was gone when they returned to the estate.
Her bedroom had been emptied.
Her phone rested on the bed.
Dante stared at it for a long time.
Rosa knew what he was thinking.
Not again.
Carmela’s route.
Victor.
Marina’s confession.
The years it had taken Dante to allow her back into his life.
Now this.
Sophia appeared at the bedroom door.
“Where’s Marina?”
Nobody answered quickly enough.
Sophia looked at the empty closet.
“Did she leave?”
Rosa crouched.
“She had to go somewhere.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
Sophia looked at Dante.
“Did you grumpy her?”
Dante closed his eyes.
“No.”
“Is she coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
Sophia frowned.
Adults, she had learned, used those words when the truth frightened them.
She walked away.
Dante punched the wall.
Rosa jumped.
“Dante.”
“I trusted her.”
“I know.”
“Twice.”
“We don’t know what happened.”
“The payment is real.”
“So was the photograph saying Carmela survived.”
He looked at her.
Rosa stepped closer.
“We learned this already. Evidence can tell the truth and still tell the wrong story.”
Dante exhaled.
Matteo entered.
“We found something.”
Marina had taken a train north.
Her credit card showed a ticket to Albany.
Security footage showed her alone.
Then Daniel noticed the destination.
“There’s a federal prison outside Albany.”
Dante looked at him.
Victor.
They reached the prison the following morning.
Marina was in the visitor parking lot.
She did not run.
Dante got out of the car.
Rosa followed.
Marina looked exhausted.
“You found me.”
Dante’s voice was flat.
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“I can explain.”
“I have developed an intense dislike for that sentence.”
Marina almost smiled.
Then tears filled her eyes.
“Voss paid me to betray you.”
Dante’s face hardened.
Rosa waited.
Marina continued.
“So I let him believe I would.”
Dante frowned.
“What?”
“Two months ago, he contacted me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you would have locked me inside the estate.”
“Yes.”
“Exactly.”
Marina wiped her eyes.
“He thought I still hated you for Carmela. He thought guilt had turned into resentment.”
“And the money?”
“I took it.”
Dante stared.
“Why?”
“To make him trust me.”
“Where is it?”
“Federal evidence account.”
Daniel blinked.
“You went to the FBI?”
Marina nodded.
“I’ve been cooperating for seven weeks.”
Dante looked almost offended.
“Everyone in my family appears to enjoy secretly cooperating with federal investigators.”
Rosa covered a laugh.
Marina continued.
“Voss told me Victor knew where the final records were.”
Dante looked toward the prison.
“That’s why you came.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see him?”
Marina nodded.
“He gave me something.”
She reached into her coat.
A small envelope.
Inside was a key.
No number.
No label.
Only a small engraved symbol.
A falcon.
Dante recognized it.
His father’s private office in the original Falcone house.
The house had been abandoned for twenty years.
They drove there immediately.
Dust covered the rooms.
Sophia would have called it a haunted house.
Dante called it childhood.
He entered Antonio’s office.
The key opened a hidden compartment inside the desk.
There was no ledger.
No money.
Only an audio cassette.
Daniel stared.
“Does anyone own a cassette player?”
Rosa raised one eyebrow.
“You people had millions of dollars and apparently no modern technology.”
They found an old player in the basement.
Antonio Falcone’s voice filled the room.
Dante had not heard it in twenty-three years.
His face changed.
“If you are hearing this,” Antonio said, “Elias has finally turned against the family.”
Dante sat.
The recording continued.
Antonio admitted everything.
He and Elias had created the network together.
But eventually Elias began trafficking weapons through neighborhoods Antonio considered off-limits.
Then people.
Young women.
Migrants.
Children.
Antonio wanted out.
Thomas Voss helped him gather evidence.
Elias discovered the betrayal.
Antonio died six months later in what Dante had always believed was a heart attack.
Rosa stared at him.
“Our fathers were working together.”
Dante nodded slowly.
Antonio’s final words came through static.
“If I fail, Thomas has the list.”
Rosa leaned forward.
“What list?”
Antonio answered as though he had heard her.
“The names of every person Elias owns.”
The recording clicked off.
Silence.
Then Daniel remembered something.
“The blue box.”
Rosa turned.
“What?”
“The first blue box. Daniel’s—my old one.”
He corrected himself.
“The letters inside it. Thomas may have hidden something in them.”
The box was still at the estate.
They opened it on the library table.
Three letters.
Rosa had read them dozens of times.
This time Dante held one toward the light.
Tiny holes had been punched beneath certain letters.
A code.
They decoded it at 2:00 a.m.
The message contained an address.
Rosa recognized it immediately.
Her childhood home.
The house she had not entered since her mother died.
Sophia wandered sleepily into the library.
“You’re doing secrets again.”
Rosa lifted her.
“Last one.”
Sophia yawned.
“You always say that.”
May you like
Dante looked at the address.
He had a feeling Sophia was right.
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