Chapter 3 - A Photograph from Florence
Tessa reached for the envelope.
Matteo stopped her.
“Don’t.”
“It’s my mother’s handwriting.”
“That doesn’t mean she put it there.”
Frank checked the hallway.
Empty.
Tessa opened the envelope.
Inside was a photograph from Florence.
She recognized Piazza Santo Spirito.
Her mother stood beside a younger man.
Matteo’s father.
Salvatore Moretti.
Behind them was another woman.
Sofia.
On the back Anna had written:
There were two ledgers. I stole only one.
Matteo read it twice.
“What ledger?”
“I was about to ask you.”
His phone rang.
Luca.
Matteo answered.
His expression changed almost immediately.
“What do you mean it’s missing?”
He listened.
“When?”
Another pause.
“Lock the building.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?” Tessa asked.
“My father kept a private safe.”
“And?”
“Someone emptied it tonight.”
Tessa held up the photograph.
“Looking for the second ledger?”
“Maybe.”
“What was in it?”
Matteo looked at her.
“The names of people my father paid.”
“Politicians?”
“Some.”
“Police?”
“Yes.”
“Judges?”
“Yes.”
Tessa swallowed.
“And the first ledger?”
“Disappeared the night Sofia died.”
Her mother had stolen it.
Or claimed she had.
Tessa walked toward the window.
For eleven months she had believed Anna Bell had died as an ordinary woman carrying extraordinary medical bills.
Now every memory felt altered.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Probably because she wanted you alive.”
Tessa turned.
“Don’t pretend you understand her.”
“I understand secrets.”
“That isn’t something to be proud of.”
“No.”
His answer surprised her.
There was no defense in it.
Only fatigue.
Matteo arranged for Tessa to stay in a secure apartment owned by the Moretti family.
She hated the idea.
She hated needing him more.
But someone had entered her home, fired at her, and produced handwriting belonging to a dead woman.
Pride could wait.
At two in the morning, she sat at the kitchen counter while Matteo examined the Florence photograph.
“You knew Sofia?” Tessa asked.
“She was eleven years older than me.”
“You were a child.”
“Eleven.”
“What do you remember?”
Matteo stared at the photograph.
“She fought with my father constantly.”
“About?”
“His business. The docks. The people around him.”
“She wanted out?”
“She wanted him out.”
Tessa studied him.
“And you?”
“I inherited everything.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Matteo met her eyes.
For the first time, the feared man from Bellaforte looked less like a boss than a son who had spent twenty years carrying somebody else’s decisions.
“I’m still deciding.”
At sunrise, Tessa examined the photograph again.
Something bothered her.
She held it toward the window.
There was writing beneath the original message.
Faint pencil.
Italian.
She translated aloud.
“Where Dante sleeps, truth waits beneath him.”
Matteo frowned.
“Dante?”
“My mother loved Dante.”
“The poet?”
“She wrote her graduate thesis about him.”
Tessa suddenly remembered.
Her mother had owned an antique edition of The Divine Comedy.
It had disappeared from her apartment.
“No,” Tessa whispered.
“What?”
“The book wasn’t stolen.”
She grabbed her coat.
“I gave it away.”
“To whom?”
“A used bookstore. After Mom died.”
Matteo was already standing.
They reached the shop forty minutes later.
The owner remembered the book.
He had sold it three months ago.
“Who bought it?” Matteo asked.
The owner checked his computer.
Then frowned.
“Cash purchase. But I wrote down the name because he asked me to call if anything else came from the same estate.”
“What name?”
The owner turned the monitor.
Tessa read it.
DAVID MERCER.
Her manager.
Her phone vibrated.
A message from Jenna.
TESSA, DAVID JUST LOCKED THE RESTAURANT. I’M STILL INSIDE.
Another message arrived.
HE HAS A GUN.
May you like
Then a third.
HE KEEPS ASKING WHERE YOUR MOTHER’S BOOK IS.
