Chapter 2 - The Men She Visited After Midnight
Roderick turned.
An old man stepped into the weak overhead light.
His left eye was clouded white.
Leo’s “man with the funny eye.”
Roderick’s guards immediately reached inside their jackets.
“Don’t,” Elena said.
The old man raised both hands.
“My name is Benjamin Ward.”
Roderick recognized it.
Benjamin Ward had once been an accountant for the Sabatini organization.
He had disappeared twenty years earlier.
Most people assumed he was dead.
“What are you doing here?”
Benjamin looked at Elena.
“Helping her finish what Samuel started.”
Roderick’s gaze moved across the wall.
His father.
Samuel.
Newspaper clippings.
Bank statements.
Photographs.
“What did Samuel start?”
“Keeping you alive.”
Roderick almost laughed.
“My father ran this family.”
Benjamin shook his head.
“That’s what you were taught.”
He pulled an envelope from his coat.
“Samuel Moretti discovered someone inside your father’s organization was selling information to the Morelli family. He collected names. Transactions. Meetings. Before he could expose them, he was killed.”
Roderick remembered the official story.
Samuel had died during an ambush intended for Roderick and his father.
Samuel had pushed nineteen-year-old Roderick behind a concrete barrier and taken two bullets.
Roderick had watched him die.
“You’re saying the ambush came from inside?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
Elena finally spoke.
“That’s why I visit those men.”
Thomas Mercer had been a driver.
Henry Cole had worked security.
Arthur Bell had been a bartender at a club once controlled by Roderick’s father.
Benjamin Ward had handled financial records.
Every one of them possessed a small piece of the same twenty-two-year-old puzzle.
Elena had spent years finding them.
“Why?” Roderick asked.
She looked at Samuel’s photograph.
“Because my father died with everyone believing he was just another soldier in your father’s war.”
“He saved me.”
“Yes.”
“So why hide this from me?”
Elena laughed bitterly.
“Walk into the home of a mafia boss and announce that someone in his inner circle helped murder my father?”
“You work in my house.”
“That was the only way I could learn who was still here.”
Roderick stared at her.
“You took the job deliberately.”
“Yes.”
His guards shifted.
Elena stepped backward.
Roderick should have been furious.
Instead, he felt something more uncomfortable.
Respect.
She had entered his home alone.
Not to steal.
Not to betray him.
To solve a murder everyone else had forgotten.
“What was at the hospital?”
Elena hesitated.
“Medical records.”
“Whose?”
“Your father’s.”
Roderick’s expression hardened.
“My father died eight years ago.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“Because Samuel wasn’t the only person poisoned by the betrayal.”
She opened one box.
Inside was a medical file.
His father had developed kidney failure before his death.
Doctors had blamed genetics and age.
But an old toxicology report contained traces of a chemical compound that should never have been in his bloodstream.
Someone had poisoned Vittorio Sabatini slowly.
For years.
Roderick sat down.
The concrete floor seemed to shift beneath him.
“My father was murdered.”
Benjamin nodded.
“Most likely.”
“By the same person?”
“We believe so.”
Roderick looked at Elena.
“You knew this?”
“I suspected.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I needed proof.”
He wanted to be angry.
But he understood proof.
In his world, accusations without evidence created funerals.
“Show me everything.”
They spent the next three hours opening boxes.
Samuel’s old notes.
Photographs.
Copies of bank transfers.
Names.
Some dead.
Some retired.
Some still close to Roderick.
That was the part that disturbed him.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Victor Dane.
Roderick’s current chief of security.
Victor had worked for the Sabatini family for thirty years.
He had taught Roderick how to shoot.
He had attended Vittorio’s funeral.
He had stood beside Roderick through every war and every negotiation.
“He’s not a traitor,” Roderick said.
Elena said nothing.
“You think he is.”
“I think his name appears too often.”
“That proves nothing.”
“Then why are you defending him before I accuse him?”
The question struck harder than Roderick expected.
He closed the folder.
“You’re tired.”
“That doesn’t make me wrong.”
“No.”
He stood.
“Come back to the house.”
Elena stiffened.
“Why?”
“Because if you’re right, you’re not safe.”
“I’ve survived this long.”
“Victor has access to employee records. He knows where you live.”
That silenced her.
“And Leo,” Roderick added.
Fear appeared instantly.
“Don’t bring my son into this.”
“I’m trying to keep him out.”
Roderick ordered his men to move every box to a secure location.
Elena resisted until Benjamin told her the storage unit was already compromised.
By sunrise, she and Leo were inside Roderick’s penthouse.
Not as maid and employee.
As protected guests.
Leo seemed delighted by the change.
“Do I still have to be quiet?”
Roderick looked at him.
“No.”
Elena frowned.
“Yes.”
Leo considered both answers.
“I’m listening to him.”
For the first time that night, Roderick smiled.
Elena noticed.
So did he.
It disappeared quickly.
Over breakfast, Leo asked Roderick if he was a king.
“No.”
“You have guards.”
“So do politicians.”
“Are you a politician?”
“Absolutely not.”
Elena nearly choked on her coffee.
Roderick looked at her.
She tried to hide her smile.
Something strange happened then.
For several seconds, the investigation disappeared.
There was only a tired woman.
A curious boy.
And a man who had forgotten what normal conversation sounded like.
Then Victor Dane entered.
Elena’s smile vanished.
Victor was fifty-eight, broad-shouldered, silver-haired, controlled.
He looked at Elena.
Then Leo.
Then Roderick.
“What happened?”
“Security issue.”
Victor’s gaze remained on Elena half a second too long.
“What kind?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
Victor looked back at Roderick.
That answer was unusual between them.
“I worry about everything involving your safety.”
“I know.”
Victor nodded.
Then he smiled at Leo.
“Good morning, young man.”
Leo moved closer to Elena.
Victor left twenty minutes later.
Roderick watched him go.
Elena whispered, “He knows.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He looked at me differently.”
“You’re expecting him to be guilty.”
“And you’re expecting him to be innocent.”
Neither spoke.
That afternoon, Roderick questioned Thomas Mercer privately.
Thomas confirmed Samuel had discovered a leak.
Henry Cole confirmed someone had changed guard schedules the night of the ambush.
Arthur Bell remembered Victor meeting secretly with a Morelli lieutenant three weeks beforehand.
Still circumstantial.
Still not enough.
Then Benjamin arrived with something new.
A bank ledger.
One payment had been made three days before Samuel’s death.
$50,000.
The recipient was hidden behind a numbered account.
Benjamin had finally traced it.
Roderick read the ownership record.
The account belonged to a shell company.
The company belonged to Victor Dane.
Elena watched his face.
“I’m sorry.”
Roderick closed the ledger.
“No.”
He stood.
“Not yet.”
He needed to hear Victor explain.
Needed thirty years of loyalty to mean something.
Victor was not in his office.
Not in the building.
His phone was turned off.
Roderick checked the security system.
Victor had left forty-seven minutes earlier.
Then Elena screamed from upstairs.
Roderick ran.
Leo’s room was empty.
The window stood open.
A stuffed bear lay on the floor.
Elena picked it up with shaking hands.
Something had been pinned to its chest.
A photograph.
Leo.
Sitting inside a black car.
On the back were six handwritten words.
BRING SAMUEL’S FILES. COME WITHOUT RODERICK.
Elena looked toward the hallway.
Her face went white.
Roderick followed her gaze.
The elevator doors were closing.
May you like
Victor Dane was standing inside.
And Leo was holding his hand.
