Chapter 8 - The Woman Who Fell From the Yacht
Sienna turned.
Mateo stood there.
He saw her coat.
Then the laptop.
“Going somewhere?”
She remembered their agreement.
No heroic secrets.
Sienna rotated the screen toward him.
He read Camille’s message.
His face emptied.
“I’m coming.”
“She said alone.”
“She’s been dead to me for two years. I’m not sitting here while you meet her.”
They compromised.
Sienna went inside alone.
Mateo remained nearby with Lorenzo’s people.
The address led to an abandoned church in South Boston.
Sienna entered.
“Camille?”
A woman stepped from behind the altar.
Thin.
Pale.
Alive.
Sienna recognized her instantly.
Camille DeLuca.
“You look like your mother,” Camille said.
“You knew her?”
“No. But I knew her work.”
Sienna stayed several feet away.
“Mateo thinks you’re dead.”
“I know.”
“You let him.”
Tears filled Camille’s eyes.
“It kept him alive.”
“You don’t know what it did to him.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You don’t.”
Camille accepted the rebuke.
Then she explained.
After falling from the yacht, she had been pulled from the water by a harbor worker secretly helping Harrison.
Harrison moved her before Dominic’s men reached the hospital.
She intended to return.
Then she discovered Mateo was the legal center of Dominic’s succession structure.
If Dominic knew she survived, Mateo would become leverage.
“So you disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“And destroyed him.”
“Yes.”
No excuses.
That made Sienna listen.
“Why contact me?”
“Because Vale changed the plan.”
“Vale works for Dominic.”
“Dominic is dead.”
Sienna froze.
“When?”
“Eight months ago.”
“Then who is running the network?”
Camille looked terrified.
“Someone inside the Costa family.”
Sienna thought of Adrian.
“Not Adrian,” Camille said.
“How do you know what I was thinking?”
“Because Adrian helped me stay hidden.”
Then footsteps sounded behind Sienna.
Mateo.
He had ignored the plan.
Camille saw him.
Neither moved.
Mateo looked as though the entire world had stopped.
“Camille.”
She began crying.
He did not cross the room.
“You’re alive.”
“Yes.”
“Two years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You watched what happened to me?”
“No.”
“But you knew.”
“Yes.”
Mateo’s eyes closed.
When he opened them again, something had hardened.
“I loved you.”
“I loved you too.”
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
“You don’t get to use that word to make this easier.”
Sienna quietly moved away.
This was theirs.
Camille told him everything.
Mateo listened.
He did not forgive her.
Not then.
But he believed her.
That was enough.
Camille handed Sienna a folder.
Inside was the complete ownership map.
At the top of Dominic’s network sat a holding company.
Its authorized representative was hidden behind attorney privilege.
Camille had finally discovered the signature authorization.
She showed Sienna.
Sienna stared.
“No.”
Mateo looked.
His face changed.
The signature belonged to someone they trusted.
Someone who had been beside Lorenzo from the beginning.
Adrian.
Camille shook her head.
“Look underneath.”
Sienna lifted the page toward the light.
Adrian’s signature had been traced.
Beneath it was another signature.
The original.
Harrison Mercer.
Sienna stopped breathing.
“My father?”
Camille shook her head again.
“That isn’t Harrison’s signature.”
“It looks exactly like it.”
“It was supposed to.”
She placed a second document beside it.
A handwriting comparison.
The forged signature had been written by Charles Vale.
But Vale had signed one internal authorization with his real principal’s initials.
L.C.
Mateo whispered, “Lorenzo?”
Camille looked at him.
“No.”
“There’s only one Lorenzo Costa.”
“L.C. doesn’t stand for Lorenzo Costa.”
The church door opened.
Lorenzo entered with his gun drawn.
Camille stared at him.
Then whispered the name nobody expected.
“Lucia Costa.”
Mateo’s face went white.
May you like
Because Lucia Costa was their mother.
And she had been buried seventeen years ago.
