Chapter 5 - The Name on the Photograph
Matteo's men raised their weapons before Salvatore reached the front steps.
The seventy-year-old attorney didn't seem concerned.
He adjusted his coat and looked directly into the security camera.
Then he lifted one hand.
He was holding a phone.
Matteo's phone rang.
“Why are you here?” Matteo asked.
Salvatore smiled through the camera.
“To prevent a misunderstanding.”
“You brought the man who sabotaged my car.”
“Daniel?”
Salvatore looked almost amused.
“He has an interesting story.”
Matteo glanced at Vincenzo.
“Let them in.”
Emma stared.
“Are you insane?”
“Possibly.”
“They tried to kill you.”
“If Salvatore wanted a gunfight, he wouldn't walk through my front gate.”
“That doesn't make him safe.”
“No.”
Matteo looked at her.
“It makes him arrogant.”
The front doors opened.
Salvatore entered with Daniel.
Six guards surrounded them.
Daniel was searched.
No weapon.
Salvatore carried only his phone.
Emma kept Lily upstairs with Mrs. Russo.
She wanted to stay with her.
Matteo refused.
“You need to hear this.”
“Why?”
“Because your father died for it.”
So Emma stood beside him.
Salvatore saw her.
For the first time, his composure cracked.
“Thomas's daughter.”
Emma's hands curled into fists.
“You knew my father.”
“I did.”
“You killed him.”
Salvatore sighed.
“Gabriel has been talking.”
“We have Thomas's recording.”
That changed things.
Salvatore's smile disappeared.
Daniel shifted beside him.
Matteo noticed.
“Why sabotage my car?”
Daniel looked toward Salvatore.
Salvatore didn't answer.
Matteo repeated the question.
Daniel finally spoke.
“It wasn't supposed to kill you.”
Emma stared.
“The remote override?”
“To force the vehicle off the road.”
“Why?”
“To stop you reaching court.”
Matteo nodded.
“So you admit it.”
Daniel smiled faintly.
“You don't have a recording.”
Matteo pointed toward the ceiling.
“You've been recorded since you entered.”
Daniel's smile vanished.
Salvatore closed his eyes.
“Idiot.”
The word changed everything.
Daniel turned toward him.
“You said—”
“I said keep your mouth shut.”
Matteo almost smiled.
“Continue.”
Daniel realized too late.
Salvatore looked at Matteo.
“You don't understand the position you're in.”
“Explain it.”
“Your father built an empire on compromises.”
“My father is dead.”
“And you're destroying everything he built.”
“By refusing to traffic weapons?”
“By pretending you're legitimate.”
Matteo stepped closer.
“I've spent eight years removing my father's worst businesses.”
“And making enemies every step.”
“Apparently.”
Salvatore's eyes shifted toward Emma.
“Thomas made the same mistake.”
Emma lunged forward.
Matteo caught her arm.
“Don't.”
“He killed my father.”
Salvatore looked offended.
“Your father got himself killed.”
Emma's face crumpled.
Matteo released her slowly.
“Tell her.”
Salvatore laughed.
“Why?”
“Because if you don't, Daniel will.”
Daniel looked startled.
Salvatore looked at him.
Matteo had found the fracture.
“You think he came here to protect you?” Matteo asked Daniel.
Daniel said nothing.
“He brought you here because you're the only person who can connect him to the car.”
Salvatore's expression hardened.
“Don't listen.”
Matteo continued.
“Once you walked inside, you weren't leaving.”
Daniel stepped away from Salvatore.
“You said we'd negotiate.”
Salvatore snapped.
“Shut up.”
Emma understood.
Matteo wasn't interrogating them.
He was turning them against each other.
Daniel looked around at the armed guards.
Then at Salvatore.
“He ordered it.”
Salvatore's face changed.
“Daniel.”
“The car. The cameras. The badge.”
“Stop talking.”
“He ordered all of it.”
Emma stepped forward.
“And the photograph of Lily?”
Daniel hesitated.
“No.”
“What?”
“I didn't take that.”
Salvatore looked confused too.
Emma realized.
Gabriel.
He had told her he photographed Lily to warn her.
One mystery solved.
“What about the note saying remove the woman and child?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Not mine.”
Salvatore said nothing.
Matteo looked at him.
“Yours?”
“No.”
That was unexpected.
“Then who?”
Salvatore smiled again.
“You still haven't figured it out.”
Matteo's eyes narrowed.
“Figured out what?”
“Why Emma was hired.”
Emma froze.
“What?”
Salvatore looked at her.
“You think it was coincidence that Thomas Bennett's daughter applied to work in this house?”
“I needed a job.”
“And your application happened to reach Mrs. Russo?”
Emma looked at the housekeeper.
Mrs. Russo appeared equally confused.
Salvatore continued.
“Someone arranged it.”
“Who?”
“Gabriel.”
Emma shook her head.
“No.”
“He has been watching you for years.”
“Why?”
“Because Thomas asked him to.”
The answer hit her hard.
Her father had known he might die.
He had asked Gabriel to protect his family.
Gabriel had stayed away but watched.
Then, years later, he had maneuvered Emma into the one place where Thomas's hidden evidence might still exist.
The Moretti estate.
Matteo understood.
“He wanted her inside.”
“Yes.”
“To find something.”
Salvatore's smile faded.
“A ledger.”
Vincenzo looked toward the archive.
“The missing ledger.”
Matteo's father had maintained records of every business transaction.
One volume had disappeared after his death.
Matteo had assumed Carlo destroyed it.
Apparently not.
“Where is it?” Matteo asked.
Salvatore laughed.
“If I knew, none of this would be happening.”
Emma remembered something.
Her father on the video.
Matteo inherited the only records that can prove what happened.
Maybe he hadn't meant Matteo personally.
Maybe he meant the estate.
Emma looked around.
“What if the ledger never left?”
Salvatore's face changed.
Tiny.
But enough.
Matteo saw it.
“You think it's here.”
Salvatore said nothing.
Emma thought of the photograph her father had taken outside the warehouse.
The dates.
The old house.
The rooms she cleaned every day.
Then she remembered something Mrs. Russo had told her months earlier.
Matteo's father had renovated almost the entire mansion shortly before his death.
Almost.
One room remained untouched.
The old nursery.
Nobody used it.
Emma looked at Matteo.
“Your childhood bedroom.”
He frowned.
“What?”
“Did your father renovate it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He never said.”
Emma began walking.
Matteo followed.
Salvatore shouted behind them.
“Stop.”
That confirmed it.
They climbed the stairs.
The old nursery was at the end of the west wing.
Matteo hadn't entered it in years.
Dust covered furniture beneath white sheets.
Emma searched.
Nothing.
Then she saw childish drawings scratched into an old wooden desk.
Matteo's drawings.
Cars.
Houses.
Stick figures.
Her eyes stopped.
A red stick figure.
A strange coincidence.
She ran her hand beneath the desk.
Something clicked.
A panel opened.
Inside was a leather-bound ledger.
Matteo stared.
Emma removed it.
“Your father hid it where nobody would look.”
Matteo opened the first page.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Salvatore DeLuca.
Gabriel Rizzo.
Thomas Bennett.
Everything.
Emma turned pages until she found her father's name.
One entry was circled.
T. BENNETT — TRANSFERRED TO SAFE LOCATION.
Emma stared.
“Transferred?”
Matteo read the date.
It was three days after Thomas's supposed murder.
Emma's heart began pounding.
“What does that mean?”
Matteo turned the page.
A location was written there.
Not a cemetery.
Not a morgue.
A private medical facility in Vermont.
Emma looked at him.
“My father wasn't killed that night.”
“No.”
Her knees nearly gave way.
“Then what happened to him?”
Before Matteo could answer, a gunshot echoed downstairs.
Then another.
Matteo grabbed Emma and pulled her behind the wall.
His radio exploded with voices.
“Boss! Daniel is down!”
“Salvatore?”
A pause.
Then the answer came.
“Gone.”
Matteo ran toward the stairs.
Emma followed.
When they reached the foyer, Daniel lay wounded but alive.
The front doors stood open.
Salvatore had disappeared.
One guard was dead.
Another pointed toward the driveway.
“He took the SUV.”
Matteo looked at the ledger in Emma's hands.
Then his phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
Salvatore's voice came through.
“You found the ledger.”
Matteo said nothing.
Salvatore continued.
“Now I'll trade you for it.”
“For what?”
There was a pause.
Then a second voice came through the phone.
Weak.
Old.
But Emma recognized it before the man finished speaking.
“Emmy?”
May you like
Emma dropped the ledger.
Her father was alive.
