Chapter 5 - The Brother Who Came Back From the Dead
We reached the ICU in four minutes.
Cora’s bed was empty.
One monitor lead remained on the floor.
Bishop stood beside the doorway with blood running from his temple.
Sloan hit him.
Once.
Hard.
Bishop did not defend himself.
“Where is she?”
“Two men came dressed as transport.”
“You checked them?”
“They had hospital credentials.”
“You checked their faces?”
Bishop’s silence answered.
Sloan grabbed his jacket.
“Where is my sister?”
“They sedated me.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Sloan.”
I stepped between them.
He looked at me.
“Punching Bishop won’t find Cora.”
His chest rose once.
Then he released him.
“Cameras,” he said.
Marco was already at the workstation.
“Gone.”
“What?”
“Someone looped twelve minutes.”
“Garage?”
“Same.”
Sloan turned toward Daniel.
“You said Victor wanted her alive.”
“I said the medication was meant to suppress memory.”
“So where would he take her?”
Daniel shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
I remembered Cora’s broken words.
Bag.
Book.
Log.
Vale.
Daniel.
“She knew.”
Everyone looked at me.
“She knew something before dinner.”
Sloan frowned.
“What?”
“She was trying to tell us about a log.”
Daniel stepped closer.
“Medication log?”
“Maybe.”
“Where would she get one?”
I looked at Sloan.
“Her purse.”
“It was left at the restaurant.”
Bishop straightened.
“We locked the room.”
“Then go.”
The Copper Lantern was still sealed when we arrived.
My manager looked like he had aged ten years.
I ignored him.
The private dining room remained almost exactly as we left it.
Glass fragments.
Wine stain.
Half-cleared plates.
Cora’s purse on a chair.
I emptied it.
Wallet.
Lipstick.
Keys.
Small notebook.
No medication log.
I opened the notebook.
Most pages contained ordinary things.
Appointments.
Sketches.
Lists.
Then one page had been torn out.
The next sheet carried pressure marks from the missing writing.
“Pencil,” I said.
Marco found one.
I shaded lightly across the page.
Indented letters appeared.
APRIL 17.
ST. CATHERINE’S.
MOM.
VALE LIED.
Sloan stared.
“She remembered.”
Daniel nodded.
“Maybe fragments.”
I kept shading.
More words.
ASK LUCIA ABOUT THE BLUE BOOK.
Sloan’s head snapped up.
“Lucia.”
His cousin.
The woman in the red dress.
“She was with Cora after your father died,” I said.
“She raised her while I was overseas.”
“Where is she now?”
Nobody knew.
Marco checked his phone.
“Her car left the restaurant at 8:42.”
“Destination?”
“Working.”
Sloan called.
No answer.
Again.
Voicemail.
His face hardened.
“Find her.”
Marco typed.
Thirty seconds.
Then his expression changed.
“Phone is moving.”
“Where?”
“Uptown.”
“Send it.”
We left.
Daniel rode with Marco.
I sat beside Sloan.
He stared out the windshield.
“You knew your cousin cared for Cora.”
“Yes.”
“Could she be involved?”
“No.”
“You answered too quickly.”
“She loved my sister.”
“People can love someone and still hide things.”
His eyes met mine.
“I’m learning that.”
The phone stopped moving near an old Garden District property registered to a Marquetti holding company.
Sloan recognized the address.
“My mother’s house.”
“Where she died?”
“Yes.”
We entered through the rear.
No guards.
No lights.
That was worse.
Inside, dust covered furniture beneath white sheets.
Sloan moved through the rooms with an expression I could not read.
“This place has been empty seven years?”
“Yes.”
“Why keep it?”
“Cora wouldn’t let me sell.”
Upstairs, we heard movement.
Sloan raised his gun.
“Lucia?”
No answer.
We followed the sound to a bedroom.
The door opened.
Lucia stood there.
Crying.
“Thank God.”
Sloan aimed at her.
“Where is Cora?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I swear.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because she told me to come if anything happened.”
She reached into her purse.
Sloan’s weapon rose higher.
“Slowly.”
Lucia removed a small blue book.
Cora’s note.
The blue book.
“What is it?” I asked.
Lucia held it out.
“A medication diary.”
I opened it.
Dates.
Symptoms.
Dosages.
Notes in Celeste Marquetti’s handwriting.
Sloan recognized it immediately.
“My mother wrote this.”
Lucia nodded.
“She started tracking everything because she believed her migraines were caused by medication.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She made me promise.”
“She died.”
“I was afraid.”
Sloan laughed bitterly.
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“She told me Victor was watching.”
“Victor was dead.”
“That’s what your father wanted everyone to believe.”
Sloan looked like he had been hit.
“My father knew?”
Lucia sat.
“Your uncle tried to seize part of the shipping company years ago. There was violence. Your father told the family Victor died abroad.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.”
“Where was he?”
“Close.”
Daniel entered behind us.
Lucia gasped when she saw him.
“You’re alive.”
Daniel stared.
“You knew me?”
“I saw you at the hospital.”
I turned.
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
Daniel frowned.
“You were with Cora?”
“Yes.”
“Why was her chart under an alias?”
“Protection.”
“From whom?”
“Victor.”
The room fell silent.
Lucia explained.
Three years earlier, Cora began remembering flashes from the night their mother died.
A voice.
A blue medicine bottle.
An argument behind a locked office door.
Victor’s face.
Vale had been pressured into sedating Cora after she panicked.
But someone changed the dosage.
Someone wanted her impaired.
Possibly permanently.
Daniel discovered the discrepancy.
Victor attempted to kill him.
Vale helped fake Daniel’s death to keep him alive.
I stared at Daniel.
“Vale helped you?”
Daniel nodded.
“After the crash.”
“Then why let the hospital destroy me?”
His face tightened.
“He thought severing your connection to me would protect you.”
I laughed once.
“He destroyed my career to protect me.”
“I argued with him.”
“From hiding?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to stay angry.
I was angry.
But the shape of the past was changing faster than I could hold it.
Sloan opened the blue book.
One page was marked.
April 17.
Seven years earlier.
Celeste had written:
A.V. says dosage correct.
V. insists I continue.
Memory worse.
Sloan traced the letters.
“She knew.”
Lucia nodded.
“And on the night she died?”
“She called me.”
“What did she say?”
Lucia’s voice broke.
“She said she had finally remembered what Victor wanted her to forget.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t trying to steal your father’s company.”
“Then what?”
“He believed it belonged to him.”
Sloan frowned.
“Why?”
Lucia looked toward the floor.
“Because Victor wasn’t your father’s brother.”
Nobody moved.
Sloan’s voice became very quiet.
“What was he?”
Lucia looked at him.
“Your father.”
The silence after that was enormous.
Sloan shook his head once.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“Your mother had an affair before she married Lorenzo.”
Sloan stepped backward.
“No.”
“Lorenzo knew. He raised you anyway.”
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“And Cora?”
“Lorenzo’s biological daughter.”
The meaning landed.
Victor had believed Sloan was his son.
Cora was not.
The trust transferred control to Cora at nineteen.
Victor’s strategy suddenly made a terrible kind of sense.
Sloan had spent his entire life believing Lorenzo Marquetti was his father.
Now the dead man who had supposedly been his uncle had become something else.
Something worse.
“Where is Cora?” he asked.
Lucia wiped her face.
“I don’t know.”
“Victor took her.”
“Then he needs her alive.”
“For the trust.”
Lucia nodded.
“He needs her signature.”
Marco’s phone sounded.
He looked down.
“I found the transport van.”
“Where?”
“Abandoned by the river.”
“Any sign of her?”
“No.”
Sloan looked ready to break something.
I flipped through Celeste’s blue book.
A folded page dropped out.
Not diary paper.
A map.
Warehouse district.
One location circled.
Pier 19.
Daniel leaned over my shoulder.
“That’s Marquetti property.”
Sloan stared at it.
“No.”
“What?”
“My father shut Pier 19 twenty years ago.”
“Why?”
“He said the foundations were unsafe.”
Lucia whispered, “That was where Victor disappeared.”
Marco checked satellite records.
“There’s electrical usage.”
“How recent?”
“Tonight.”
Sloan was already moving.
Then Lucia grabbed his arm.
“Wait.”
He turned.
She looked terrified.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“Cora wasn’t the only person Victor took.”
Sloan stared.
“Who?”
Lucia’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered on speaker.
Nobody spoke.
A man breathed on the other end.
Then Victor’s voice filled the room.
“Hello, son.”
Sloan’s face became stone.
Victor continued.
“Bring the blue book to Pier 19.”
“What did you do with Cora?”
“She’s safe.”
“If you touch her—”
“Bring Delphine too.”
My blood went cold.
Sloan looked at me.
Victor laughed softly.
“Yes, I know she’s there.”
“Why her?”
“Because Daniel saved the wrong copy of the medication log.”
May you like
A pause.
“And Delphine has been carrying the original for three years without knowing it.”
