Chapter 8 - The Traitor at the Table
The handle turned.
Elena pulled Maeve behind the door.
It opened.
Luca entered.
Maeve stared.
Elena raised a knife.
"Luca."
He stopped.
"What the hell?"
"You've been helping Marco."
Luca's face hardened.
"No."
Elena showed Maeve a photograph.
Luca meeting Marco three weeks earlier.
Maeve's stomach dropped.
"Explain."
Luca slowly closed the door.
"I was investigating him."
"Without Dante?"
"Especially without Dante."
Luca revealed he'd suspected Marco for months.
He'd discovered unexplained transfers and secretly approached him pretending to want an alliance.
Marco believed Luca resented Dante's leadership.
"I needed him to trust me."
Elena lowered the knife slightly.
"Then why didn't you rescue me?"
"I didn't know he had you."
A sound came from the hallway.
Dante.
Luca swore.
"If Dante sees that photograph before I explain—"
Too late.
The door opened.
Dante saw the photograph.
His expression became lethal.
The brothers collided before Maeve could speak.
Dante slammed Luca against the wall.
Nico arrived seconds later.
Maeve stepped between them.
"Enough!"
Dante stared over her shoulder.
"He betrayed us."
"No," Maeve said. "He did something stupid."
Luca wiped blood from his lip.
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment."
Elena confirmed what she knew.
Marco had talked repeatedly about an insider.
But she'd never seen the person's face.
So Luca wasn't cleared completely.
Trust fractured.
Maeve watched three brothers who had survived everything together suddenly question one another.
That, she realized, was Marco's real weapon.
Not guns.
Doubt.
At breakfast the next morning, nobody spoke.
Maeve placed pancakes down.
Nobody touched them.
She put both hands on the counter.
"This is ridiculous."
Dante looked up.
"My brother may have betrayed me."
"And punching him solved that?"
Luca muttered, "I thought it was therapeutic."
Maeve ignored him.
"If Marco wants you suspicious, stop giving him exactly what he wants."
Nico looked at Dante.
Slowly, Dante picked up his fork.
Luca did too.
It wasn't forgiveness.
But it was a beginning.
Later that afternoon, the federal contact reviewing Kathleen's files called.
One piece of evidence was missing.
A recording proving Marco ordered Salvatore's warehouse attack.
Without it, Marco could argue the financial records were fabricated.
Kathleen remembered where she'd hidden the original recording.
Falcone Manor.
Twenty-two years earlier.
Inside the old servants' quarters.
The rooms had been sealed during renovations.
Maeve, Dante, and Nico opened the wall that evening.
Behind it was a narrow corridor.
Dust covered everything.
At the end stood a metal box.
Kathleen's initials were carved into it.
Maeve opened the lid.
A cassette recorder lay inside.
Beside it was a child's drawing.
Three boys.
A woman.
And a fourth figure with its face violently scratched away.
On the back, Kathleen had written:
Dante saw him.
Ask Dante what happened that night.
Maeve turned.
May you like
Dante had gone completely pale.
Then he whispered, "I remember."
