Chapter 3 - Locker 317
I didn't go alone.
I also didn't tell Luca.
Those two decisions nearly got Nina killed.
The address from my father's letter led to an old storage facility near the North End, hidden between a bakery and a building that had been converted into luxury apartments.
Nina parked two blocks away.
“You realize,” she said, “that normal friends get invited to brunch.”
“You could've stayed home.”
“And miss whatever terrible decision you're about to make?”
She turned off the engine.
“No chance.”
Locker 317 was downstairs.
The brass key fit.
Inside were three things.
A cardboard box.
An old cassette recorder.
And a photograph of my father holding me as a baby.
I picked up the photograph first.
On the back:
Everything I did after you were born was to get home to you.
My throat tightened.
Nina touched my shoulder.
“Take your time.”
“I've had seventeen years.”
I opened the box.
Ledgers.
Hundreds of pages.
Company names.
Numbers.
Dates.
Some entries went back thirty years.
Others were newer.
Much newer.
“How is that possible?” Nina asked.
I found an entry dated six months ago.
My father couldn't have written it.
Someone had continued his records.
I reached for the cassette recorder.
A tape was already inside.
I pressed play.
Static.
Then my father's voice.
“Elena, if you're hearing this, I'm sorry.”
I stopped breathing.
Nina covered her mouth.
His voice was older than I remembered.
Calmer.
He explained that the records were never meant to become leverage.
They were evidence.
But evidence had value.
Value attracted dangerous people.
“If anything happens to me, there are two men who know enough to finish this. One is Salvatore Bellandi.”
Luca's father.
“The other…”
The tape clicked.
Stopped.
“What?” Nina said.
I turned the cassette over.
The ribbon had been cut.
Someone had removed the final name.
Footsteps sounded outside.
Nina and I looked at each other.
The locker door slammed shut.
Darkness.
Someone had locked us inside.
“Nina.”
“I know.”
She turned on her phone flashlight.
I called 911.
No signal.
Concrete basement.
Of course.
Then smoke appeared beneath the door.
“Oh, you've got to be kidding me,” Nina whispered.
Someone had started a fire.
We shouted.
Pounded.
Nothing.
Smoke thickened.
I searched the walls.
No windows.
No secondary door.
Nina started coughing.
I grabbed the ledger box.
“Forget the papers!”
“They killed Dad for these.”
“And they'll kill us too!”
She was right.
I dropped them.
Then the lock outside shattered.
The door opened.
Luca Bellandi stood in the smoke.
“Move!”
We ran.
His men led us upstairs.
Sprinklers activated.
Alarms screamed.
Outside, firefighters were arriving.
I doubled over coughing.
Luca approached.
“You don't follow instructions well.”
“You followed me?”
“I followed the people following you.”
I looked at Nina.
She was shaken but okay.
“Who?”
Luca pointed across the street.
A gray SUV accelerated away.
One of his men photographed the license plate.
“You know them?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“The records.”
“Gone.”
I turned toward the building.
“No.”
Luca grabbed my arm.
“Don't.”
“My father's evidence is in there.”
“Your father's evidence has survived seventeen years. It can survive another hour.”
I pulled free.
“You knew about the locker.”
“Yes.”
“You knew about the tape?”
His expression changed.
“No.”
I told him.
Especially the missing second name.
He became very still.
“My father was the first,” I said. “Who was the second?”
“I don't know.”
“You're lying.”
“Probably.”
I stared at him.
He almost smiled.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
His expression hardened.
“What?”
Silence.
“When?”
Another pause.
“I'm coming.”
He hung up.
“What happened?”
“Nothing involving you.”
“Which means it definitely involves me.”
His jaw tightened.
“My father is missing.”
Salvatore Bellandi was seventy-one.
Retired, supposedly.
He lived outside Boston with enough security to protect a senator.
Someone had entered his house without triggering an alarm.
No struggle.
No broken doors.
His phone remained on his desk.
On his kitchen table was another silver coin.
The same mark.
M.
Luca showed it to me three hours later.
“This isn't your father's coin?”
“No.”
“How many were there?”
“My father made five.”
“Who got them?”
“He never told me.”
Luca paced.
Nina had gone home under police protection after giving a statement about the storage fire.
I stayed because leaving felt more dangerous.
“Your father saved me when I was nineteen,” Luca said finally.
“Mom told me.”
“He didn't just save me.”
He looked toward the window.
“He stopped a war.”
The Bellandis had been preparing retaliation after Luca's older brother was murdered.
Michael discovered evidence showing the murder had been staged by someone inside their own circle.
If Salvatore had retaliated, dozens could have died.
Michael stopped him.
“Who killed your brother?”
“We never proved it.”
“Maybe Dad did.”
Luca looked at me.
“That's what I'm starting to think.”
His phone vibrated.
A photograph arrived.
Salvatore Bellandi sat in a chair.
Alive.
A newspaper lay across his knees.
Today's date.
Beside him stood someone cropped from the photograph.
Only one hand was visible.
On that hand was a distinctive gold ring.
Luca enlarged it.
His face changed.
“You recognize it.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Before he answered, my own phone vibrated.
A message from my mother.
ELENA, SOMEONE IS IN THE HOUSE.
Then another.
DON'T COME HERE.
Then a third.
A photograph.
My mother was sitting at her kitchen table.
Behind her stood the man from my father's old photograph.
The man whose face had been scratched away.
This time, his face was perfectly visible.
May you like
And Luca whispered his name.
“Carlo.”
