Chapter 5
Luca did not touch the page for a long time.
Neither did I.
Rain tapped against the high station windows.
Somewhere beyond the brick walls, a train screamed along wet tracks.
The sound seemed to come from another world.
A normal world.
One where a man could learn something terrible about his father and simply go home.
Not this world.
Not the Moretti world.
Vanessa broke the silence first.
“I told you.”
Luca looked at her.
She regretted the sentence immediately.
“You told me half of something,” he said.
“I told you enough to keep you from walking into this blind.”
“You kept my aunt drugged in my house.”
“To keep Dominic from finding her.”
“You shut down my cameras.”
“To keep him from seeing who came through the east wing.”
“You lied to my face for four years.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Because your father built a system where truth gets people killed.”
“My father is dead.”
“The system isn’t.”
Marco glanced down the corridor.
“We should move.”
Luca closed the ledger.
“No.”
Marco frowned.
“Boss.”
“We need pictures of every page before we leave.”
“Here?”
“If Dominic comes back, he’s not getting the only copy.”
Marco pulled out his phone.
Vanessa looked toward the entrance.
“He won’t come back himself.”
Luca’s gaze sharpened.
“You know how he works?”
“I know how men like him survive.”
“You were raised by one.”
The sentence hit her.
She didn’t deny it.
“My father worked for Antonio,” she said. “That does not mean he agreed with everything Antonio did.”
“Then why keep the records?”
“Insurance.”
“Against my family?”
“Against everybody.”
I watched them.
This wasn’t just an argument between two engaged people.
It was the collision of two childhoods built on men who taught loyalty like religion and used fear like currency.
I understood none of that world.
Maybe that was why Sofia trusted me.
I had no family interest to protect.
No reputation.
No empire.
I was just the maid who opened the wrong door.
Marco photographed page after page.
Names repeated.
Judges.
Police officers.
Contractors.
Doctors.
Politicians.
Some were dead.
Some were not.
Then I saw a name I knew.
“Wait.”
Marco paused.
I pointed.
ELIZABETH COLE.
My mother.
For a second I thought I had misread it.
I leaned closer.
No.
ELIZABETH COLE – COUNTY RECORDS – 2011.
My hands went numb.
Luca noticed.
“What?”
I pointed.
“That’s my mother.”
He looked at me.
“What did she do?”
“She worked for the county clerk.”
Vanessa stepped closer.
“What year did she leave?”
“2012.”
“Why?”
“She said the office downsized.”
Vanessa exchanged a look with Luca.
I hated that look.
“What?”
Luca spoke carefully.
“Rachel, was your mother ever threatened?”
“No.”
Then I remembered.
A broken kitchen window when I was twelve.
A dead phone line.
My mother making us stay with my aunt for a week.
She had called it neighborhood trouble.
I had believed her.
I looked down at the ledger again.
Beside my mother’s name was a notation.
FILE 8C REMOVED.
PAYMENT REFUSED.
STATUS: WATCH.
My mouth went dry.
“She refused them.”
Luca’s expression changed.
“Looks that way.”
“What file?”
“I don’t know.”
Vanessa stared at the line.
“2011.”
“So?”
“That was the year Sofia escaped the first facility.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“She was gone for eleven days.”
“Where did she go?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“No one knew.”
My heartbeat got louder.
“Maybe my mother did.”
Luca closed the ledger again.
“We’re going to ask her.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
I surprised myself with how quickly the word came out.
“No one goes near my mother until I know why her name is in that book.”
“Rachel—”
“You have armed men around you all day. She has a yellow house and a dog that barks at delivery trucks.”
“I’m not going to endanger her.”
“Your family already did.”
Silence.
I regretted the words as soon as I said them.
But Luca didn’t get angry.
He looked down at his father’s name.
“You’re right.”
Vanessa watched him.
It was the first apology I had ever heard him make without actually saying sorry.
Marco’s phone buzzed.
He checked it.
“Daniel.”
He answered.
“What’s wrong?”
His face hardened.
“Say that again.”
Luca moved closer.
Marco put the call on speaker.
Daniel’s voice filled the station.
“We found the tunnel exit. Dominic used it. But that’s not the problem.”
“What is?” Luca asked.
“Two guests are missing.”
“Who?”
“Judge Halpern and Dr. Reeves.”
Vanessa swore.
I recognized both names from the ledger.
Judge Halpern appeared beside several old payments.
Dr. Reeves was the doctor who had signed Sofia’s death certificate twenty-two years earlier.
Luca’s face went blank.
“They were at my table.”
“Not anymore.”
“Lock the estate down harder.”
“I already did.”
“Check their cars.”
“Cars are still here.”
“Phones?”
“Still in the tray.”
Vanessa said, “Dominic had an extraction route prepared.”
Daniel heard her.
“Why are we still listening to her?”
“Because she’s been right too often tonight,” Luca said.
Vanessa looked at him but didn’t smile.
Daniel continued. “There’s something else. We searched Dominic’s coat before he disappeared.”
“And?”
“Found a matchbook from Orchard House.”
Luca’s eyes moved to Sofia’s words in my memory.
The orchard has no trees.
“Address?”
“None. Just a logo.”
“Describe it.”
“Black apple inside a white circle.”
Vanessa went pale.
Luca saw it.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Vanessa.”
“My father had that symbol on a file box.”
“What file?”
“I don’t know. He never let me open it.”
“Where is it?”
“Gone.”
“Convenient again.”
“I was twenty-four when he died, Luca. I did not inherit a perfectly indexed confession. I inherited a house full of locked cabinets and men who started calling before the funeral flowers died.”
Daniel’s voice came through the speaker.
“I’ll photograph the matchbook.”
“Send it.”
The call ended.
Marco finished photographing the ledger.
Luca wrapped it again.
“We leave now.”
A metallic sound echoed behind us.
Not a train.
A door.
Marco drew his weapon.
Luca pushed me behind one of the brick columns.
Vanessa moved to the opposite side.
Footsteps approached.
Slow.
Measured.
“Who’s there?” Marco called.
No answer.
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the terminal.
I heard Vanessa inhale sharply.
Then a shot cracked.
Brick exploded near Luca’s head.
Marco fired back.
I dropped to the floor.
My injured leg screamed.
Another shot.
Then another.
The station lights flickered emergency red.
I saw a figure moving between pillars.
Black coat.
Gray hair.
Dominic.
He wasn’t running.
He was walking toward us like he owned the building.
“Luca,” he called.
His voice echoed through the old terminal.
“You don’t understand what you’re holding.”
Luca stepped from cover.
Marco grabbed his sleeve.
Luca shook him off.
“You tried to kill Sofia.”
Dominic stopped twenty yards away.
“No.”
“You attacked Nico.”
“I stopped him from opening something that should have stayed buried.”
“You paid people the night my mother died.”
Dominic’s face tightened.
“I cleaned up your father’s disaster.”
Luca raised the ledger.
“My father authorized it.”
“Yes.”
The answer landed harder than a denial.
“Why?”
Dominic looked tired.
Not guilty.
Tired.
“Because your mother was leaving him.”
Luca froze.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Dominic continued.
“She knew too much. She was taking you with her. Your father panicked.”
“Did he kill her?”
“No.”
“Then who was driving?”
Dominic looked past Luca.
Directly at Vanessa.
“Her father.”
The world seemed to tilt.
Vanessa whispered, “That’s a lie.”
Dominic smiled sadly.
“Ask Sofia.”
Then he lifted his gun.
Not toward Luca.
Toward Vanessa.
I saw it before anyone else.
“Down!”
I shoved her.
The shot exploded.
Vanessa fell with me.
Marco fired.
Dominic disappeared behind a pillar.
And the black ledger slid from Luca’s hand across the wet station floor.
Straight into the darkness.
For one second, instinct told me to crawl after it.
Then another bullet struck the stone floor inches from the ledger’s path.
I flattened myself behind the column.
Vanessa grabbed the back of my dress and pulled me farther into cover.
“Do not die for bookkeeping.”
“It’s more than bookkeeping.”
“So are you.”
I looked at her.
She seemed surprised by her own words.
Another shot cracked through the station.
Luca shouted to Marco.
Footsteps pounded across the upper walkway.
Dominic had not come alone.
Two shadows appeared above us.
Marco fired once and both vanished behind the railing.
The red emergency lights made everyone look unreal.
Like figures in an old photograph.
Luca dropped beside us.
“Are either of you hit?”
“No,” Vanessa said.
I shook my head.
He looked at the torn shoulder of Vanessa’s gown where the bullet had passed close enough to cut fabric.
His face went cold.
She saw it.
“Don’t turn this into chivalry.”
“I’m turning it into attempted murder.”
“Good. Much more useful.”
Then the side door slammed, and Dominic’s footsteps disappeared into the rain.
Luca crouched behind the column and looked toward the darkness where Dominic had vanished.
“He knew exactly where we were standing.”
Marco nodded.
“Which means he knew the station layout better than we did.”
Vanessa pressed one hand to her torn dress.
“He grew up around Antonio. Of course he did.”
I looked at the black doorway.
“Then he also knows how to get out.”
May you like
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“And how to get back in.”
