Chapter 8 - Three Shots
Ronaldo didn't speak.
The voice continued.
“You always were good at silence.”
His hand tightened around the phone.
His father, Matteo Falcone, had supposedly died after heart surgery twelve years earlier.
Ronaldo had seen a coffin.
He had attended the burial.
He had not seen the body.
Matteo had demanded a closed casket.
Ronaldo had never questioned it.
“Where are you?”
A laugh.
Older.
Weak.
But unmistakable.
“Still impatient.”
“Where are you?”
“Ask Beverly.”
The call ended.
Lights returned.
Sal looked at Ronaldo.
“You know that voice?”
“Yes.”
One hour later, Beverly sat across from him.
She cried before he asked anything.
“I'm sorry.”
“Is my father alive?”
“Yes.”
The word rearranged twelve years of Ronaldo's life.
Bev explained.
Matteo had disappeared because federal investigators were closing in on an older network. He staged his death and built new companies through intermediaries.
Victor became one.
Niko eventually discovered it.
Daniel Vance discovered it too.
When Daniel threatened exposure, Matteo staged Daniel's death.
The system survived.
Until Elsa found the numbers.
“Why hire Elsa?” Ronaldo asked.
Bev wiped her eyes.
“I didn't choose her randomly.”
Ronaldo's face hardened.
Bev admitted Daniel had contacted her secretly years earlier.
He believed Matteo was alive.
He needed someone brilliant enough to notice the financial pattern but unknown enough not to attract attention.
Elsa's résumé came across Bev's desk.
Her ability with numbers made her perfect.
“But she knew nothing,” Bev insisted.
“You used her.”
“Yes.”
Ronaldo stood.
Bev flinched.
He didn't raise his voice.
That was worse.
“You put a woman with $141,000 in debt into this building because you knew she couldn't afford to walk away.”
Bev lowered her eyes.
“Yes.”
“And then she nearly died protecting me.”
“I never wanted that.”
“Neither did she.”
Ronaldo left.
At the hospital, Elsa was awake.
He told her everything.
She listened.
When he finished, she said, “So your father is alive.”
“Yes.”
“And he did this?”
“It appears so.”
“No.”
Ronaldo looked at her.
Elsa's brow tightened.
“The numbers don't fit.”
Even wounded, she was calculating.
“If Matteo built the network eleven years ago, why did money begin disappearing three months before his supposed death?”
Ronaldo froze.
She was right.
The earliest transfers predated Matteo's disappearance.
Someone else had started them.
Matteo had taken control later.
“Victor,” Ronaldo said.
Elsa shook her head.
“Victor doesn't build systems. He maintains them.”
“Then who?”
Elsa closed her eyes.
Think.
Ronaldo had seen her do it hundreds of times.
Then she opened them.
“The federal trial.”
“What?”
“Who benefited most from keeping you alive through the trial?”
Ronaldo understood.
His attorney.
The same man standing beside Elsa and her mother in the old hospital photograph.
Thomas Keane.
Keane had represented Ronaldo for eleven months.
He had known every account.
Every asset.
Every vulnerability.
And before Elsa worked for Ronaldo, Keane's charitable foundation had quietly paid half her mother's medical debt.
Elsa hadn't known.
She had been selected years before she ever walked into Ronaldo's office.
Ronaldo called Claire.
No answer.
He called again.
Nothing.
Then Elsa's hospital television changed.
The screen went black.
A live video appeared.
Claire sat in a chair somewhere dark.
Behind her stood Thomas Keane.
He looked into the camera.
“Ronaldo.”
Elsa reached for Ronaldo's hand.
Keane smiled.
“You've spent your entire life remembering everything.”
He lifted the original ledger.
“Let's see whether you remember where your father taught you to bury the things nobody was supposed to find.”
Ronaldo's face changed.
He knew exactly where Keane was.
And beside him, Elsa whispered:
“Don't go. That's what he wants.”
May you like
Then Ronaldo's phone displayed another live image.
His father was sitting in the room beside Claire.
