Chapter 2 - The Secret My Father Left Behind
“Mom?”
Lia ran.
Dante caught up before she reached the foyer but did not stop her.
Margaret Evans stood between two guards.
Her coat was buttoned incorrectly.
Her gray-blonde hair was loose around her face.
She looked terrified.
Then she saw the ring.
Her expression collapsed.
“No.”
Lia slowed.
“Mom?”
Margaret stared at Lia’s left hand.
“You married him.”
Dante stopped several feet away.
“You knew me?”
Margaret looked at him with unmistakable hatred.
“I knew your father.”
Silence.
Lia turned.
Dante’s face revealed nothing.
“My father died twelve years ago.”
“I know.”
Margaret's voice shook.
“I was there.”
Lia felt the floor disappear beneath her.
“What?”
Margaret reached for her.
Lia stepped back.
“Tell me.”
“Not here.”
“Here.”
“Lia—”
“Dad left me something for my twenty-first birthday. Someone took Sophie. Evan might be alive. I woke up married to a man I don't remember marrying. So you're going to tell me here.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Dante dismissed the guards.
Only Marco remained.
Margaret looked at him.
“He leaves too.”
“He stays,” Dante said.
“Then I say nothing.”
Dante nodded once.
Marco left.
Margaret sat.
Twenty-two years earlier, she explained, Lia’s father had not been the modest accountant Lia remembered.
Thomas Evans had been a forensic auditor.
One of the best in New York.
He had spent years tracing money through shell companies.
Eventually, he discovered a financial network connecting legitimate corporations to organized crime.
The Moretti organization was part of it.
But not the way Margaret had believed.
Thomas had discovered someone was stealing from the Morettis while using their accounts to finance something darker.
Weapons.
Political bribery.
Human trafficking.
Dante's expression hardened.
“My father prohibited trafficking.”
Margaret looked at him.
“That was why Thomas went to him.”
Dante leaned forward.
“My father worked with Thomas Evans?”
“For almost two years.”
Lia stared between them.
“And nobody told me?”
“You were a child.”
“What happened?”
Margaret looked toward the envelope.
“Your father discovered who was behind it.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“You're lying.”
“I never knew the name.”
Thomas had divided his evidence.
One portion went into a secure vault.
Another was encrypted.
The final piece was something only he could locate.
Before he could expose the network, the Evans home burned.
Thomas died.
Or so everyone believed.
“Evan blamed the Morettis,” Margaret whispered.
Lia remembered her brother changing after the funeral.
His anger.
His obsession.
His disappearance.
“Did Evan join them?”
“I think he spent years trying to destroy them.”
Dante's phone vibrated.
He ignored it.
Lia looked at the envelope.
“Why twenty-one?”
Margaret swallowed.
“Because Thomas believed that if he failed, the people responsible would eventually come looking for you.”
“Why me?”
“He put something in your name.”
“What?”
“I don't know.”
Lia laughed once.
A broken sound.
“You don't know anything.”
“I knew enough to keep you away from New York.”
“But I came anyway.”
“Yes.”
“And you never warned me.”
“I wanted you to have a normal life.”
“You gave me an uninformed life.”
Margaret flinched.
Lia picked up the envelope.
Inside was a letter.
My Lia,
If you're reading this, I failed to give you the ordinary life I wanted for you.
Trust evidence, not fear.
Trust your own judgment, not my enemies.
And if the Moretti heir is standing beside you, ask him about Saint Michael.
There was no signature.
Only a series of numbers.
Dante went pale.
“What is Saint Michael?”
He stood.
“My father's church.”
They drove there with security.
Lia insisted Margaret remain behind.
Dante objected to Lia going.
She refused.
“You said I'm your wife.”
“I did.”
“Then apparently you married someone stubborn.”
For the first time, the corner of his mouth almost moved.
“Apparently.”
Saint Michael's was closed.
Dante unlocked a side entrance.
They descended into the crypt.
Behind his father's memorial was a metal compartment.
The numbers in Thomas's letter opened it.
Inside sat a flash drive.
And another photograph.
Thomas Evans and Alessandro Moretti.
Together.
Friends.
On the back, Thomas had written:
IF OUR CHILDREN EVER FIND THIS, WE FAILED THEM BOTH.
Lia looked at Dante.
“What happened between our fathers?”
“I don't know.”
A floorboard creaked above.
Dante extinguished his flashlight.
Footsteps entered the church.
Several men.
Dante drew a pistol.
Lia's pulse exploded.
He placed a finger to his lips.
The basement door opened.
Gunfire shattered the silence.
Dante pushed Lia behind stone.
Marco and the security team returned fire.
The exchange lasted seconds.
Then silence.
One attacker remained alive.
Marco dragged him downstairs.
Dante crouched.
“Who sent you?”
The man smiled through blood.
“Your wife did.”
Lia stared.
“What?”
He laughed.
“Not that wife.”
Dante's face changed.
Lia saw it.
Something personal.
Something painful.
“Who?” she demanded.
The attacker looked at Dante.
“You never told her?”
Then he bit down.
Marco grabbed him.
Too late.
Poison.
Within seconds, he stopped moving.
Lia turned to Dante.
“What wife?”
Dante holstered his gun.
“Not here.”
“You were married?”
“No.”
“Then what did he mean?”
Dante looked at the flash drive.
“My father arranged a marriage for me years ago.”
“To whom?”
“It never happened.”
“To whom?”
His silence answered before his mouth did.
“Isabella Romano.”
Lia knew that surname.
Everyone in New York did.
Romano International owned casinos, hotels, shipping terminals.
She stared.
“You almost married another mafia family?”
“Yes.”
“What stopped it?”
“She disappeared.”
“When?”
“Five years ago.”
Five years.
The same year Evan disappeared.
Lia's phone rang.
Sophie.
She answered instantly.
“Sophie?”
Breathing.
Then a whisper.
“Lia?”
“Where are you?”
“I don't know.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Who has you?”
Sophie started crying.
“Your brother.”
Lia closed her eyes.
“Let me talk to Evan.”
“He isn't here.”
“Who is?”
Sophie whispered something.
“What?”
“She says she wants to speak to Dante.”
A woman's voice replaced Sophie's.
Smooth.
Controlled.
“Hello, Lia.”
“Who are you?”
Dante's face went rigid.
The woman laughed softly.
“You're wearing my ring.”
Lia looked at him.
The voice continued.
“Ask your husband why he married you before midnight.”
The call ended.
Lia lowered the phone.
Dante said nothing.
She looked at the marriage certificate.
11:47 P.M.
Thirteen minutes before her birthday officially ended.
“Why before midnight?”
Dante looked toward his father's photograph.
“Because your father wasn't only protecting evidence.”
“What else?”
“He left you an inheritance.”
“What inheritance?”
Dante's phone buzzed.
A banking notification.
Then Marco's.
Then Lia's.
A news alert appeared.
MORETTI HOLDINGS OWNERSHIP DISPUTE TRIGGERED BY SECRET MARRIAGE.
Lia read the first paragraph.
Her blood went cold.
Under an agreement signed twenty-one years earlier, controlling voting rights in a hidden trust transferred when Thomas Evans's daughter reached twenty-one and legally joined the Moretti family.
Lia looked at Dante.
“You didn't marry me to protect me.”
He stepped toward her.
“Lia—”
“You married me for a company.”
“No.”
“Then why didn't you tell me?”
“Because last night you already knew.”
“I don't remember last night!”
“I know.”
She slapped the marriage certificate against his chest.
“Then make me remember.”
Dante looked at her for a long moment.
Finally, he reached into his jacket.
He removed a small memory card.
“Your father recorded everything.”
“Everything what?”
“The night he died.”
Lia stared at the card.
“Play it.”
Dante hesitated.
“Play it.”
Marco inserted it into a secure laptop.
Static appeared.
Then Thomas Evans filled the screen.
Older than Lia remembered.
Terrified.
He looked directly into the camera.
“If Lia is watching this, Alessandro and I are probably dead.”
Lia stopped breathing.
Thomas continued.
“And if Dante Moretti is beside her, there is one person neither of you can trust.”
He leaned toward the camera.
He began to say a name.
The screen went black.
The file had been cut.
But another file appeared beneath it.
Its timestamp was from last night.
Someone had accessed the recording at 11:52 P.M.
May you like
Five minutes after Lia signed the marriage certificate.
And the login belonged to someone standing inside Dante's penthouse.
