Chapter 2 - Before the Coffee Shop
Lorenzo looked at the computer.
Then at Meline.
Neither spoke.
Meline slowly stood.
"How long?"
Lorenzo's jaw tightened.
"Step away from the computer."
"How long were you watching me?"
"Meline."
"Answer me."
"Not here."
She laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
"Not here? This is your house. Your computer. Your surveillance photographs. Where exactly would you prefer we discuss the years you apparently spent watching me?"
Lorenzo moved toward her.
Meline stepped backward.
He stopped immediately.
The reaction hurt more than if he'd continued.
He knew she feared him.
And he hated it.
Good, she thought.
"January 2021," she said. "What happened?"
Lorenzo looked at the screen.
"Close the folder."
"No."
"Meline, there are things in those files that can put you in danger."
"They already have."
"You don't understand."
"Then make me understand."
Silence stretched between them.
Finally Lorenzo said, "Your father wasn't the man you thought he was."
Meline froze.
"My father sold insurance."
"No."
"He told you he sold insurance."
Her father, Michael Hayes, had died when Meline was seventeen.
A highway accident.
A rainy night.
A truck crossed the median.
That was what she'd always known.
Lorenzo continued.
"Michael Hayes was a forensic accountant."
Meline stared at him.
"He worked with federal investigators and private financial institutions. He found hidden money."
"You're lying."
"I wish I were."
"He died in an accident."
Lorenzo's face changed.
"No, Mel."
Two words.
Her world shifted.
She gripped the desk.
"What are you saying?"
"Your father's death wasn't an accident."
Meline's knees weakened.
Lorenzo stepped toward her.
She raised a hand.
"Don't."
He stopped.
"Why were you watching me?"
"Because someone else was."
The photograph on the screen seemed suddenly colder.
Lorenzo pointed toward the blurred man from her old party photograph.
"That emblem you found belongs to Vale Meridian."
"What's that?"
"A private security and intelligence company."
"And?"
"And its founder knew your father."
"Who?"
Lorenzo hesitated.
"Adrian Vale."
The name meant nothing.
Yet.
"Why would he care about me?"
"Because before your father died, he discovered something."
"What?"
"Accounts."
"Whose?"
Lorenzo's eyes held hers.
"Mine."
Meline stopped.
There it was.
The truth she had feared.
"You knew my father."
"No."
"But he investigated you."
"My family."
"Same difference."
"It isn't."
"To me it is."
Lorenzo lowered his voice.
"When I inherited Moretti Imports, I discovered parts of the company had been used for things I wanted nothing to do with. Your father found the same network years earlier."
"And you watched his daughter?"
"To keep you alive."
"Without telling me."
"Yes."
"You arranged our meeting."
Lorenzo said nothing.
That silence answered her.
The coffee shop.
The spilled drink.
His embarrassed smile.
The first joke.
The second coffee.
Every cherished detail rearranged itself into something ugly.
"You planned it."
"At first."
Meline flinched.
Lorenzo's voice became rougher.
"I was supposed to meet you once. Determine whether you knew anything your father had left behind. That was all."
"And then?"
"I came back."
"Because you needed information."
"No."
"Because you loved me?"
"Eventually."
She stared at him.
"Eventually."
He closed his eyes.
Wrong word.
Too late.
Meline walked past him.
Lorenzo didn't stop her.
She packed one suitcase.
At dawn, she walked downstairs.
Marco, Lorenzo's longtime security chief, waited near the front entrance.
"Mrs. Moretti—"
"Open the door."
Marco looked toward Lorenzo.
Meline turned.
Her husband stood halfway down the staircase.
He looked exhausted.
"Let her go," Lorenzo said.
Marco opened the door.
Meline walked outside.
No one followed.
She drove to a small hotel in Manhattan under her maiden name.
Meline Hayes.
For the first time in three years, she wrote it on a registration form.
It felt strange.
But it felt hers.
By afternoon she had contacted a lawyer.
By evening, she'd begun searching everything she could find about her father.
Almost nothing existed online.
At 8:43 p.m., someone slid an envelope beneath her hotel-room door.
Meline stared at it.
No footsteps followed.
She waited.
Then picked it up.
Inside was a photograph.
Her father.
Alive.
Standing beside a younger Lorenzo.
Meline's blood went cold.
The photograph was dated four years after Michael Hayes had supposedly died.
On the back, someone had written six words.
ASK LORENZO WHERE YOUR FATHER WENT.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
Meline answered.
A man's voice said quietly:
"Mrs. Moretti, your husband told you half the truth."
"Who is this?"
A pause.
Then:
"Adrian Vale."
Meline stood completely still.
"What do you want?"
"To give you the other half."
"Why should I trust you?"
"You shouldn't."
At least he answered honestly.
"But tomorrow morning, ask Lorenzo one question."
"What question?"
Adrian's voice lowered.
"Ask him why your father was still alive in 2009."
The call ended.
Meline looked at the photograph again.
Then someone knocked three times on her hotel door.
A familiar voice came from the hallway.
"Meline, don't open that door."
May you like
It was Lorenzo.
But another man's shadow was already visible beneath it.
