Chapter 4 - What Lydia Buried With Her Father
Daniel Mercer looked twenty years older than Lydia remembered.
But he was alive.
He raised both hands when he saw Lorenzo's weapon.
“Don't shoot.”
Lydia stared.
“You're dead.”
“That's what kept me alive.”
Mercer looked at Lorenzo.
“You're Antonio Moretti's son.”
“Yes.”
“Then we're running out of time.”
They moved deeper into the storage unit.
Mercer explained everything.
Six years earlier, he had discovered a network laundering money through municipal construction contracts, private clinics, security firms, and shell corporations.
Roland Blackwood had built the network.
But he hadn't built it alone.
Alderman Charles Vane protected the political side.
Dr. Adrian Cole manipulated medical records.
Vincent Rizzo supplied security information.
And Lydia's father, Frank Coppola, had accidentally discovered one of their vehicles after repairing it.
“He found blood beneath the rear carpeting,” Mercer said.
Lydia closed her eyes.
“Dad told me once a customer had threatened him.”
“That was Vincent.”
Lorenzo's expression hardened.
Mercer continued.
“Frank copied documents he found in the car. He contacted me. We were going to expose them.”
“What happened?”
“I was shot.”
Lydia remembered the blood beneath her hands.
“And Dad?”
“He hid the remaining evidence.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
Her voice cracked.
“They burned his shop.”
Mercer nodded.
“I think they were searching for it.”
Lydia looked away.
For years she had believed her father died broken by debt and stress.
Now she understood the fire had been deliberate.
“Why destroy my career?”
“Because you treated me. They thought I'd told you something.”
“I knew nothing.”
“They couldn't risk that.”
Lorenzo asked the question Lydia feared.
“Mateo?”
Mercer's face changed.
“His ambush wasn't about your organization.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“What was it about?”
“Mateo found one of Blackwood's financial routes.”
Lorenzo went silent.
“He never told me.”
“He tried.”
Mercer looked almost pitying.
“Someone intercepted everything.”
Vincent.
The name hung between them.
Mercer opened another box.
Inside was a small recorder.
“Frank left this with me.”
Lydia pressed play.
Her father's voice filled the room.
“Lyd, if you're hearing this, I'm sorry.”
She sat down.
“I wanted to keep you away from this. Maybe that was wrong. You always were too stubborn to stay away from trouble anyway.”
A broken laugh escaped her.
That sounded like him.
Frank described copying Vincent's documents.
He described Mercer.
Then he said something that changed everything.
“There's one person I trust with the original ledger. Mateo Moretti.”
Lorenzo stared at the recorder.
Mateo.
Two years before his ambush, Mateo had known Lydia's father.
The connection had been there all along.
Lydia suddenly remembered Mateo's reaction the first day she'd introduced herself.
Coppola.
His eyes had widened.
She had thought nothing of it.
He recognized her name.
“Mateo knew who I was.”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said.
“And couldn't tell me.”
The cruelty of it made her chest ache.
Mercer handed Lydia an envelope.
Her name was written across it in her father's handwriting.
She opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
Lydia at twenty-three, standing beside her father.
On the back:
If anything happens, trust the brother who cannot speak.
Lydia laughed through tears.
“That sounds like Dad.”
Lorenzo watched her carefully.
He wanted to touch her.
She could see it.
He didn't.
That mattered more.
They returned to the estate after dark.
Mateo was awake.
Lydia entered alone.
She placed the photograph beside him.
“You knew my father.”
Mateo's eyes filled.
One blink.
“You knew who I was when I came here.”
One blink.
“Why didn't you find some way to tell me?”
His gaze moved toward the camera.
Lydia understood.
Because he never knew who was watching.
She sat beside him.
“My dad trusted you.”
Mateo blinked rapidly.
Then looked toward his wheelchair.
A new eye-controlled communication tablet had arrived that morning.
Lydia positioned it.
Mateo slowly selected letters.
F.
R.
A.
N.
K.
Then:
SAVED.
ME.
Lydia stopped breathing.
“When?”
Mateo typed again.
NIGHT.
OF.
AMBUSH.
Then:
HE.
HID.
LEDGER.
Lydia leaned closer.
“Where?”
Mateo began typing.
The bedroom lights went out.
The tablet died.
A generator should have activated instantly.
It didn't.
Lydia stood.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Slow.
Measured.
Then someone slid a photograph beneath Mateo's locked bedroom door.
Lydia picked it up.
It showed her entering the Moretti estate two weeks earlier.
Written across her face in red ink were four words:
May you like
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED GONE.
The door handle began to turn.
