Chapter 3 - The Painting From Eight Months Ago
The message vanished from the screen before either of us touched the phone.
“Can you recover it?” I asked.
Rafael nodded to his security chief.
“Everything.”
Within an hour, we were driving toward Parcel C.
Rafael wanted me to stay home.
I refused.
“My forged signature is on those transfers.”
“And someone may have taken Serena there.”
“Which gives me two reasons.”
He looked at me.
“Three.”
“What?”
“You're stubborn.”
“That's not a reason.”
“It is when you're my wife.”
I stared at him.
“Careful. That almost sounded like a joke.”
“It wasn't.”
It was.
I could tell now.
Parcel C was an abandoned distribution warehouse beside the river.
Inside, dust covered old machinery.
Rafael's men searched room by room.
I found the office.
The lock had been broken.
Inside were filing cabinets, an old desk, and dozens of Callow Logistics archive boxes.
“Why would Dad keep these here?”
I opened one.
Invoices.
Payroll.
Shipping manifests.
Then I noticed the dates.
Seven years earlier.
Another box went back nine.
A third contained records from twelve years ago.
Rafael entered behind me.
“June.”
I held up a ledger.
“My mother kept these.”
Laura Callow had been Callow Logistics' controller before she died.
At least, that was what everyone had called it.
An accident.
A car off a wet road.
I was nineteen.
Serena was sixteen.
I opened the ledger.
My mother's handwriting filled the pages.
Then, near the end, the entries changed.
Names.
Payments.
Account numbers.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Victor.
Another appeared beside it.
MORETTI.
I looked at Rafael.
“Your family?”
His expression went cold.
“My uncle.”
“What did he have to do with my mother?”
“I don't know.”
That was the first time I believed Rafael Moretti was genuinely frightened by something.
Not for himself.
For what the answer might do to me.
We searched until evening.
No Serena.
But we found a hidden drawer beneath the desk.
Inside was an old disposable camera.
A key.
And an envelope addressed in my mother's handwriting.
JUNE.
My hands shook.
Rafael stood beside me without touching me.
“Open it when you're ready.”
I looked at the envelope.
My mother had been dead twelve years.
There was no version of ready.
I tore it open.
Inside was one sheet.
June,
If you are reading this, Victor has finally gone too far.
Do not trust the company books.
Do not trust what he tells you about the Morettis.
And most importantly, do not believe that my accident was—
The sentence stopped.
The bottom half of the page had been torn away.
I closed my eyes.
Rafael swore softly.
Then footsteps sounded somewhere outside the office.
His entire posture changed.
He moved me behind him.
“Stay here.”
The footsteps came closer.
Slow.
Uneven.
A shadow crossed beneath the door.
Then a woman's voice whispered my childhood nickname.
“Junebug?”
Only three people had ever called me that.
One was Serena.
May you like
One was my father.
And the third had been dead for twelve years...
