Chapter 2 - THE APARTMENT WITH THE BROKEN LOCK
I spent the next hour listening for my phone to ring.
Hospitals never truly sleep. Wheels rolled over linoleum. Doors opened on quiet hinges. Somewhere a machine chimed three cheerful notes that sounded almost cruel. Beyond my window the city lights reflected off the wet pavement, and I kept imagining my father inside his little apartment, unable to reach the telephone.
At 1:16 a.m., Detective Alvarez returned. “Your father's alive,” she told me. “He wasn't home when someone forced the door.”
I pressed my hand against my bandaged chest. “Where is he?”
“He went to a pharmacy on Belmont. Officers have located him. He'll be brought here if he agrees.”
I almost laughed from relief. “Of course he'll agree. He's spent his whole life telling me to keep him informed.”
But the relief didn't last. Someone had gone to our home looking for something, and they had chosen a night when I was trapped beneath hospital lights.
Luca stood near the window with his arms crossed. He had been on the phone with his attorney and the head of his security team, but he was quiet when my father arrived twenty minutes later. Dad walked slowly, leaning on a cane. His gray sweater was buttoned crookedly, and a paper pharmacy bag dangled from one hand.
“Emma.” He stopped when he saw the dressing above my collarbone. “My God.”
“I'm okay.”
“People only say that when they've got something awful to explain.”
He hugged me gently, careful of the monitors, then noticed Luca. His expression closed.
“Moretti,” Dad said.
It wasn't a greeting. It sounded like a verdict.
Luca stood. “Mr. Reed.”
“Your father promised me this would never reach my daughter.”
The room went silent.
I stared at him. “Dad. What are you talking about?”
He lowered himself into the chair Luca had vacated. For a moment I could see how much he had aged in the last year. His hands were spotted; his breath came shallowly after the short walk. Still, his eyes were sharp.
“Nine years ago,” he began, “Anthony Moretti came to the Ledger with evidence that the company he built had been used to move stolen medical supplies and launder public-contract money. He wasn't innocent. He had looked away for years. But he wanted to get out, and he believed Victor Sloane was preparing to frame him.”
Luca's mouth tightened. “My father never told me that.”
“He had good reason to be ashamed.” Dad looked up. “And good reason to be afraid for you.”
He described meetings in diners where neither man finished his coffee. Anthony had brought copies of shipping manifests, invoices, and recorded conversations. Dad had prepared a series of articles. Then an attorney threatened the newspaper with a ruinous lawsuit, and the editor killed the story.
“What happened to the records?” Luca asked.
“Anthony took most of them back. I kept notes, but after the explosion someone broke into our old house and stole my files.” Dad glanced at me. “That's when your mother was still alive.”
I remembered that break-in. I'd been eighteen, frightened by the sight of our drawers spilled across the floor. Dad had said it was ordinary theft. He was telling me now that he had lied to protect me.
“Victor Sloane died in the warehouse,” Luca said.
“Did anyone show you his body?” Dad asked.
Luca didn't answer.
“I covered the explosion,” Dad continued. “Two sets of remains were recovered, but one identification depended on a watch and a ring. A technician told me the dental records were incomplete. The technician lost his job two weeks later.”
I swallowed. “Why didn't you publish that?”
“I tried. Nobody would touch it. Anthony was dead, I was being threatened, and your mother was ill. I chose you over another headline.”
Luca lowered his gaze. “I don't blame you.”
“That's not why I'm telling you.” Dad pointed a finger toward him. “I'm telling you because the photograph sent to Emma means somebody has found out what Anthony left behind.”
Detective Alvarez entered at that moment, carrying a folder. She listened without interrupting while Dad repeated the most important parts. Then she asked for the names of the editor and the technician. Dad supplied both. I watched him hesitate before giving the second name.
“Elaine Mercer,” he said. “She worked in the county medical examiner's office.”
Luca looked up sharply. “Mercer?”
“You know her?”
“Her son, Julian, is on the board of one of my charities.”
“Then you may want to ask what his mother knows.”
Alvarez told all of us the apartment break-in was now being investigated alongside the suspected poisoning and the attempted removal of Luca's archive. “I need you to understand something,” she said to Luca. “If evidence implicates your family or your businesses, we will follow it.”
“Follow it,” he replied. “I want the truth.”
She studied him for a beat. “Then make sure every record stays intact.”
After she left, Luca walked to my bedside. “Your father can stay somewhere secure while his apartment is repaired.”
Dad gave a dry laugh. “I don't take favors from Morettis.”
“Then take the help from me,” I said. “Please. It's my family they're threatening.”
That changed him. He looked at my bruised hands, then nodded once. “A hotel. Near the hospital. No private estate.”
“Agreed,” Luca said.
I expected an argument, but instead Luca had his attorney arrange a hotel through the police victim-support liaison, with costs documented and no secrecy. Dad approved of that more than he wanted to admit.
By morning my condition had stabilized. The toxicology laboratory had detected an unidentified sedating compound in the wine sample, but further analysis was required. Dr. Patel told me I might have swallowed a dangerous amount even though my vital signs had improved. I had to remain under care, and the wound across my chest would need follow-up appointments.
“You need rest,” she said. “Not detective work.”
I promised to try. I didn't promise to stop thinking.
At ten, Daniel Rizzo arrived carrying news about Union Station. Officers had opened locker 118 under a warrant. Inside was an old portable tape recorder, two cassettes, and an envelope addressed to Anthony Moretti in handwriting Dad recognized instantly.
“It's mine,” Dad whispered when Daniel showed him a photograph of the envelope. “I mailed it the week before the fire.”
“What's in it?” I asked.
“A warning.” His face had gone gray. “I told Anthony Sloane's assistant had been asking questions about his son.”
Luca stared at my father. “About me?”
“Yes. Someone planned to use you to make Anthony sign away the business.”
I thought of Vanessa's practiced smile, the auction stickers on the wine bottles, and the way she had insisted the archives leave before midnight. Nothing in her plan seemed hurried. It had been assembled piece by piece, while the household went about its ordinary work.
“Why would someone keep your warning in a station locker for nine years?” I asked.
“Maybe they didn't,” Dad said. “Maybe someone put it there this week.”
The realization sat between us.
The police brought the recorder to a forensic lab rather than allowing us to play it ourselves. But Daniel had one more detail. A recent receipt had been tucked behind the machine's battery cover, dated only two days earlier.
It listed a storage facility outside the city: Lakepoint Records, Unit 204.
Luca read the address. “Vanessa has a property manager there.”
Dad shook his head. “Then whoever set this up wants you to go.”
Luca folded the paper. “I'll give the address to Alvarez.”
“That is the first sensible thing I've heard from your family in nine years,” Dad said.
I almost smiled.
Then my father reached into the pharmacy bag he'd carried into the hospital. Beneath his medicine was a faded newspaper clipping. A young Anthony Moretti stood beside another man at the opening of a neighborhood clinic. The man wore a charcoal suit and a silver watch.
“That's Victor Sloane,” Dad said.
“No,” Luca whispered. “I know that face.”
He took the clipping and traced the man's features with one finger.
“That's the man Vanessa introduced to me last month as Dr. Vincent Shaw. He said he was financing a new hospital wing.”
Outside my room, the hall telephone began ringing. Inside, nobody moved. The dead man had not merely survived. He had been sitting across from Luca at breakfast, smiling at the son of the partner he'd supposedly died beside.
Luca showed me a photograph on his phone from the charity luncheon. I recognized the silver-haired gentleman standing beside Vanessa, his hand resting on the back of her chair. I had carried coffee to him that day. He had asked whether the household kept a key inventory and laughed when I said the house manager handled it.
“He was polite,” I murmured. “He gave me a twenty-dollar tip.”
“People can be polite while planning terrible things,” Dad said.
Luca tapped the image. In the background, almost hidden behind a floral arrangement, stood Thomas Keller, the wine broker. He wasn't smiling. He was watching Luca as though measuring the distance between them.
“There,” I said. “They knew each other before the wine shipment.”
May you like
Luca sent the image to Alvarez. This time there was no talk of revenge, no order to bring someone to him. His message was short: Photograph from last month's luncheon. Possible identification of Victor Sloane using the name Vincent Shaw. Keller appears in background. Preserve and investigate.
I had never thought of evidence as something fragile. It could be damaged by carelessness as easily as by fire. Watching Luca choose to preserve it rather than punish someone made me wonder how much of the man I worked for I had mistaken for the reputation surrounding him.
