Chapter 2 - The Name Matteo Remembered
Glass exploded across the alley.
Matteo moved before Tessa understood what had happened.
He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her behind the brick corner as Frank drew his weapon.
A second shot struck the metal door.
“Stay down.”
“I am down!”
“Stay more down.”
“That isn’t grammatically possible.”
Matteo stared at her.
Even with gunfire outside, she had corrected him.
Frank fired twice.
Tires screamed.
The sedan vanished.
For several seconds nobody moved.
Then Matteo looked at Tessa.
“You’re bleeding.”
A thin cut crossed her cheek.
“It’s glass.”
“Frank.”
“I’m fine.”
Frank touched his earpiece and moved toward the street.
Tessa stood.
Matteo caught her wrist.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Someone just shot at you.”
“They shot at you.”
“No.”
His certainty frightened her more than the bullets.
“They waited until you came outside.”
Tessa looked toward the street.
“Why?”
Matteo glanced at the photograph in her hand.
“Because somebody knows who your mother was.”
Ten minutes later, Tessa found herself in the back seat of Matteo’s armored sedan.
She had refused three times.
Then Frank had shown her the bullet lodged in the restaurant wall exactly where her head had been.
She stopped refusing.
Matteo sat opposite her.
“Anna Bell wasn’t her real name.”
Tessa stared at him.
“You don’t know anything about my mother.”
“I know Anna Bell didn’t exist before 1998.”
Tessa laughed once.
“My mother was a nurse.”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“Before that, she worked for my father.”
“As what?”
Matteo hesitated.
“A translator.”
Tessa felt something cold move through her.
“My mother never spoke Italian around me.”
“She spoke five languages.”
“No.”
“She studied in Florence.”
Tessa’s fingers closed around her pendant.
Just like Tessa.
Coincidence suddenly felt expensive.
“What did she translate?”
“Shipping records.”
“Your legal shipping records?”
Matteo did not answer.
Tessa understood.
She looked out the window.
Philadelphia moved past in streaks of yellow light.
“My mother hated criminals.”
“She had reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“My father.”
The sedan stopped outside Tessa’s apartment.
Matteo looked at the building.
The front door was open.
Tessa frowned.
“It locks automatically.”
Frank exited first.
Matteo followed.
“Tessa, stay here.”
She ignored him.
Her apartment was on the third floor.
The door stood open.
Inside, drawers had been emptied.
Books covered the floor.
Her mother’s photographs had been torn from their frames.
Tessa rushed toward the bedroom.
The cardboard box was gone.
“No.”
Matteo entered behind her.
“What?”
“My mother left me something.”
“What?”
“A letter.”
“Where?”
“In a box.”
Matteo scanned the room.
“They knew.”
“How?”
“Someone knew you had it.”
Tessa turned toward him.
“Someone who?”
Before he could answer, her phone vibrated.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
A photograph appeared.
It showed Tessa entering Matteo’s car twenty minutes earlier.
Another message followed.
YOUR MOTHER MADE THE SAME MISTAKE.
Tessa showed Matteo.
His jaw tightened.
Then another message arrived.
ASK MATTEO WHAT HAPPENED TO SOFIA MORETTI.
Tessa looked up.
“Who’s Sofia?”
Matteo went completely still.
Frank entered the room.
“Boss.”
Matteo did not respond.
“Who is Sofia Moretti?”
“My sister.”
Tessa waited.
Matteo looked toward the broken photograph frames.
“She died twenty-three years ago.”
“How?”
Matteo’s voice dropped.
“A car went into the Delaware.”
“And my mother?”
“She was driving.”
Tessa stepped backward.
“No.”
“There was never a body.”
“Whose?”
Matteo looked at her.
“Either of them.”
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Frank drew his weapon.
Matteo raised one hand for silence.
Three slow footsteps approached the apartment.
Then stopped.
A white envelope slid beneath the door.
May you like
Tessa stared at her name written across it.
The handwriting belonged to her mother.
