Chapter 5 - The Voice of a Dead ManThey listened to the cassette in Lorenzo’s study.
No one sat.
Clara stood beside the desk.
Lorenzo remained near the window.
Silas locked the doors.
Eddie had gone into protective custody with Maya.
The tape hissed.
Then John Vance’s voice filled the room.
Clara gripped the edge of the desk.
She had forgotten how warm her father sounded.
“If Clara ever hears this, sweetheart, I’m sorry.”
Her eyes filled immediately.
“I spent my life telling you honesty mattered while hiding the ugliest part of mine.”
Lorenzo looked away, giving her privacy without leaving.
John explained that he had once handled books for Anthony Moretti.
Anthony had inherited a criminal empire but had begun quietly moving legitimate companies away from it.
Victor Sanz opposed him.
Sanz made money through extortion, construction fraud and narcotics routes Anthony wanted closed.
Then John discovered payments connecting Sanz to someone inside the Moretti family.
The recording crackled.
“I copied everything.”
Clara whispered, “The ledger.”
John continued.
“Anthony told me to hide it. He said if anything happened to him, the records could destroy Sanz.”
Then came a pause.
“The night Anthony died, I was supposed to meet him at Pier 19.”
Lorenzo’s fists tightened.
“He never arrived.”
Clara looked at him.
Officially, Anthony Moretti had died in a car accident.
John’s next words destroyed that story.
“I saw the car afterward. Brake line was cut.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
“But Sanz wasn’t acting alone.”
The tape warped.
Static swallowed several seconds.
Then John’s voice returned.
“...the person who authorized it was—”
Click.
The tape ended.
“No.”
Lorenzo seized the recorder.
He rewound it.
Played it again.
Same result.
The crucial name was gone.
Silas examined the cassette.
“Physical damage.”
Clara wiped her eyes.
“My father knew.”
“He knew enough to get killed,” Lorenzo said.
The words sounded cruel, but his expression held grief.
Clara looked at him.
“My father died in a hit-and-run.”
Lorenzo turned.
Four years earlier, John Vance had been struck while crossing Atlantic Avenue.
The driver was never found.
Clara had accepted senseless tragedy because the alternative had never occurred to her.
Now it did.
“Victor killed him.”
“Possibly.”
“You still need more proof?”
“I need enough proof that Sanz cannot buy his way out.”
Clara understood.
Fear was not justice.
Rumor was not evidence.
They needed the ledger.
The next morning, Lorenzo took Clara back to Obsidian.
Not as a waitress.
As an owner’s wife.
She hated how differently people looked at her.
Mr. Henderson nearly bowed.
Julian did not.
He handed her a coffee.
“Married three days and already causing a mob war?”
“Apparently.”
“Busy week.”
She smiled for the first time in days.
Then Julian quietly added, “A man came asking about you.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Clara’s smile vanished.
“What did he want?”
“He asked whether your dad ever left anything here.”
“Here?”
Julian nodded.
“He specifically asked about table four.”
Clara turned.
The table she had been wiping when Lorenzo first entered.
Coincidence.
Except something in her memory shifted.
Her father had once brought her to Obsidian years before she worked there.
It had a different name then.
She was fourteen.
John had insisted they sit at a particular table.
Table four.
Clara walked toward it.
Lorenzo followed.
“What?”
“My father brought me here once.”
She crouched.
The mahogany tabletop had been replaced, but the cast-iron pedestal looked old.
Clara ran her fingers underneath.
Nothing.
Then she found a small indentation.
She pushed.
A metal plate opened.
Inside was a flash drive.
Lorenzo stared at it.
“Your father was better at hiding things than mine.”
Clara pulled it free.
They took it upstairs to the private office.
Silas used an isolated laptop.
The drive contained scanned financial records.
Hundreds.
Payments.
Accounts.
Names.
Judges.
Police officers.
Contractors.
And one repeated set of initials.
A.M.
Lorenzo stared.
“My mother.”
Clara felt cold.
Silas opened another folder.
Photographs appeared.
Alessandra meeting Victor Sanz.
Alessandra entering a hotel with him.
A transfer of three million dollars from a Moretti account two days before Anthony’s death.
Lorenzo stepped away from the screen.
Clara had never seen him look vulnerable.
Now he looked twelve.
“She killed him.”
“We don’t know that.”
“You saw the transfer.”
“I saw initials.”
He laughed bitterly.
“You’re defending my mother?”
“No. I’m stopping you from doing what everyone did to my father.”
That silenced him.
“They saw suspicious evidence,” Clara said. “They decided he was guilty. Nobody asked another question.”
Lorenzo stared at her.
She pointed toward the computer.
“We ask another question.”
Silas suddenly leaned closer.
“There’s an encrypted directory.”
“Can you open it?”
“Give me time.”
The office door opened.
Maya entered.
Clara spun.
“What are you doing here?”
“Your security guy brought me.”
She looked nervous.
“And I think I know the password.”
Everyone stared at her.
Maya swallowed.
“Dad used the same weird phrase for everything.”
Silas slid the keyboard toward her.
She typed.
THEGIRLSNEVERPAY.
The folder opened.
Clara’s throat tightened.
Inside was a single video file.
Silas clicked it.
Security footage appeared.
Pier 19.
The night Anthony Moretti died.
Anthony walked into frame.
Then Victor Sanz.
Then a third person.
Lorenzo moved closer.
Clara expected Alessandra.
May you like
It wasn’t her.
It was Silas’s father.
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