Chapter 3 - THE ENVELOPE HER MOTHER LEFT BEHIND
Mave refused to stay in her room.
Leo ordered her upstairs twice.
She ignored him twice.
On the third attempt, she stared at him across the kitchen island and said, “If you tell me to go upstairs again, I am going to clean your gun safe with furniture polish.”
Leo stopped.
Carmine, sitting at the far end of the kitchen eating a sandwich he had absolutely not been invited to make, whispered, “That would be catastrophic.”
Leo looked at him.
“Why are you here?”
“Security lockdown.”
“You have an entire guard room.”
“The bread’s better here.”
Mave pointed at him.
“He stays.”
Leo stared at both of them.
“This is my house.”
“Then learn where the bread is.”
Mave sat.
Somehow, in the middle of a kidnapping, betrayal, and potential family war, Leo found himself outnumbered in his own kitchen.
He hated how much he liked it.
Giani entered with a transparent evidence sleeve.
“We recovered this from Mave’s dead phone case.”
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
Mave frowned.
“I’ve never seen that.”
Giani placed it on the island.
“Back panel had been opened and resealed.”
Mave’s face changed.
“Tessa.”
Leo looked at her.
“She handled your phone?”
“At the diner. Mine was dying. She tried to restart it.”
“Open it.”
Mave unfolded the note.
The handwriting stopped her.
“No.”
Leo moved beside her.
“What?”
“That’s my mother’s writing.”
The paper shook in Mave’s fingers.
She read aloud.
Maeve—if this reaches you, then somebody found the wrong file before they found the right one. Do not trust anyone who says the Castiglions killed your father. The truth is worse. Ask Leo about Warehouse 9.
Leo went completely still.
Mave noticed.
“You know it.”
“Yes.”
“What is Warehouse 9?”
“Nothing anymore.”
“That was a terrible answer.”
Leo looked toward Giani and Carmine.
“Leave.”
Carmine pointed at his sandwich.
“Can I—”
“Take it.”
He did.
Giani hesitated.
“Boss?”
“Outside.”
The door closed.
Mave remained seated.
Leo walked to the bar.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“What?”
“You always pour Scotch when you don’t want to answer questions.”
Leo slowly lowered his hand.
“I find your observational skills increasingly inconvenient.”
“Warehouse 9.”
He turned.
“It was one of my father’s properties at the old north shipyard.”
“What happened there?”
“It burned.”
“When?”
“Sixteen years ago.”
Mave calculated.
“The year your father died.”
“Yes.”
“The same fire?”
“No.”
Leo leaned against the counter.
“My father died in a car bombing three months later.”
Mave stared.
“And Warehouse 9?”
“A storage fire.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because nothing stored there was supposed to burn that hot.”
Mave’s expression tightened.
“What was stored there?”
“Shipping manifests.”
“Illegal ones?”
“All manifests become illegal if the government looks closely enough.”
She glared.
Leo sighed.
“Yes.”
“What kind of shipments?”
“I was twenty-two. My father kept me away from certain operations.”
“So you don’t know.”
“I know weapons moved through there.”
Mave’s face hardened.
“People?”
Leo did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
“Oh, God.”
“My father denied it.”
“You believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
Mave looked down at her mother’s note.
“What did my mother have to do with this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew her.”
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
“She told me to ask you.”
“She may have known my family. That doesn’t mean I knew her.”
Mave looked toward the rain.
“My mother was an accountant before she got sick.”
Leo frowned.
“You told me she worked payroll.”
“At a shipping company.”
His stomach tightened.
“Which one?”
“She never said much about it.”
“Mave.”
“She called it Harbor Atlantic.”
Leo closed his eyes.
“What?”
“That was ours.”
Silence.
Mave stared at him.
“Your family owned the company my mother worked for?”
“A subsidiary.”
“You never told me.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You ran a background check before hiring me.”
“Yes.”
“You knew where she worked.”
“The report listed payroll administration. I didn’t recognize every defunct subsidiary my father owned.”
Mave stood.
“This gets worse every five minutes.”
“That is generally how family history works.”
She almost laughed.
Almost.
Then a knock came.
Giani entered.
“We found Tessa’s abandoned car.”
Mave turned.
“Where?”
“Warehouse district.”
“Blood?”
“No.”
“Anything?”
Giani held up a brass key.
“Inside the glove box.”
A number was stamped into it.
909.
Leo stared.
“Bank key.”
Giani nodded.
“First Union Safe Depository.”
Mave whispered, “My mother banked there.”
Two hours later, Leo wanted to send Giani.
Mave refused.
Leo wanted to send Carmine.
Mave refused more emphatically.
“Carmine thinks subtlety means using a smaller gun.”
“That was one time,” Carmine protested.
They compromised.
Leo went with Mave.
Giani accompanied them.
Carmine followed in a second car despite not being invited.
At the bank, an elderly manager examined the key.
“Box 909.”
Mave signed paperwork.
Then the manager looked at Leo.
“Only Ms. Bennett is authorized.”
Leo’s expression darkened.
Mave smiled.
“You can brood in the hallway.”
“I don’t brood.”
The bank manager glanced at him.
Mave raised an eyebrow.
“Independent confirmation.”
Leo waited.
He hated it.
Seven minutes passed.
Then ten.
At twelve, he entered the vault corridor.
The manager hurried after him.
“Sir!”
Leo ignored him.
“Mave?”
No answer.
He reached the private viewing room.
Empty.
The safe-deposit box sat open.
A second door at the back was ajar.
Service corridor.
Leo’s blood turned cold.
He drew his weapon.
“Mave!”
A crash sounded downstairs.
He ran.
He found her in the archive corridor struggling with a man in a maintenance uniform.
Mave swung a metal document case into his face.
The man stumbled.
Leo hit him once.
The man collapsed.
Mave stared.
“You could have warned me.”
“You hit him with a file box.”
“It was available.”
Leo grabbed her shoulders.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Did he touch you?”
“He tried.”
Leo looked toward the unconscious attacker.
Mave recognized the expression.
“No.”
“What?”
“You are not killing a man in a bank basement.”
“He kidnapped you.”
“He attempted to.”
“Important distinction?”
“Legally? Very.”
Giani arrived.
Behind him came Carmine carrying a fire extinguisher.
Everyone stared.
Carmine shrugged.
“I heard crash. Seemed versatile.”
Mave started laughing.
Even Leo’s mouth twitched.
Then Mave remembered the case.
She opened it.
Inside were three objects.
A ledger.
A cassette tape.
And a photograph.
Mave picked up the photograph first.
Her mother stood outside Warehouse 9.
Beside her was Leo’s father, Luca Castiglion.
They were not smiling.
Between them stood another man.
Renato.
On the back, Mave’s mother had written:
Luca tried to stop it. Renato did not.
Leo read it twice.
His jaw tightened.
Mave opened the ledger.
Columns of shipping numbers filled every page.
Beside several were names.
Girls’ names.
Ages.
Fifteen.
Seventeen.
Nineteen.
Twenty-one.
Mave’s stomach turned.
“These were people.”
Leo’s face went blank.
“My father said he shut it down.”
“Maybe he did.”
She turned pages.
The final entries stopped three months before Luca’s murder.
Then, at the bottom, another line appeared.
If Luca dies, follow R.C. Do not trust the police.
Mave whispered, “Renato Castiglion.”
Leo looked at the initials.
Maybe.
But something bothered him.
His uncle’s middle name was Alessandro.
Not C.
Before he could say it, Giani returned from checking the attacker.
“He’s carrying Castiglion security identification.”
Leo turned.
“Who?”
Giani held up the badge.
Mave stared.
The photograph belonged to one of the mansion guards.
A man Leo had personally hired seven years earlier.
Then Giani said the part that changed everything.
“Boss, this ID says he reports directly to me.”
Silence.
Leo slowly looked at his security chief.
Giani’s face drained.
“I did not send him.”
Leo’s weapon rose.
Mave stepped between them.
“Leo.”
“Move.”
“No.”
“Mave.”
“If Giani wanted me dead, why would he help us find the bank?”
Leo did not lower the gun.
Giani remained motionless.
Then Carmine quietly said, “There’s something else.”
Everybody turned.
He looked deeply unhappy.
“I checked the internal logs.”
Leo’s expression hardened.
“And?”
“The authorization that admitted Renato’s plane crew into the city warehouse yesterday…”
Carmine swallowed.
“It came from your personal office.”
Leo stared.
“Impossible.”
“No.”
Carmine looked at him.
“It used your private access code.”
Only three people knew that code.
Leo.
Giani.
And the man who had helped raise Leo after his father died.
His uncle Renato.
Mave looked at Leo.
“So Renato is inside your system.”
Leo shook his head slowly.
“No.”
He looked back at the ledger.
“Someone wants me to think he is.”
Because the initials in Mave’s mother’s handwriting were not R.A.C.
They were R.C.
And Leo suddenly remembered one man whose full name matched perfectly.
Raffaele Carmine.
The father of the loyal, sandwich-stealing idiot standing five feet away.
Carmine went pale.
“My father died twelve years ago.”
May you like
Leo looked at him.
“That’s what we were told.”
