Chapter 7 - The Child They Were Hunting
Sofia’s car had exploded beneath Westbridge.
Everyone remembered the bridge.
Only a handful knew where the vehicle had been taken afterward.
Moretti Salvage Yard Number Four stood near the eastern docks, surrounded by rusted shipping containers and mountains of crushed metal. The police had delivered Sofia’s burned car there after closing the investigation.
I had ordered it sealed inside Warehouse C.
I had never entered that warehouse.
Some graves were easier to survive when left unopened.
We drove to the safe house first.
Luca sat handcuffed in the rear of the van. Enzo wanted him placed in a cell, but I kept him near us. Whoever controlled the Nine wanted both brothers present.
That meant Luca was either still useful to them or as expendable as I was.
Maeve cleaned the blood from Elena’s face.
“They let you escape from the station,” I said. “Why?”
“To make sure we delivered the message.”
“Who had you?”
“I never saw their faces.”
Elena looked up.
“One man had a bird tattoo.”
“Where?”
“On his neck. A black bird with red eyes.”
Luca stopped pretending not to listen.
“Damon Crowe.”
The name was known across three states.
Crowe had once served as Carlo Bellini’s chief enforcer. He specialized in disappearances that looked like accidents and accidents that left no bodies.
Officially, he had died in a prison riot six years earlier.
“Another dead man,” I said.
Luca met my eyes.
“The Nine collect them.”
I opened Sofia’s ledger.
Most pages contained codes, but several names had been written in full.
Damon Crowe appeared eleven times.
Beside the final entry were the letters E.S.O.
Elena Sofia O’Shea.
Maeve saw them too.
“They knew about her from the beginning.”
“Why was she important?”
Maeve hesitated.
Elena stepped closer to the table.
“I’m tired of everyone whispering.”
I closed the book.
“You’re right.”
Maeve objected.
“Marco—”
“She is already inside the danger. Ignorance won’t take her out.”
I crouched before Elena.
“Your aunt Sofia discovered something terrible. Before she died, she hid proof. The people who killed her believe your mother knows where the rest of it is.”
“Does she?”
Maeve answered.
“No.”
Elena watched her.
“You’re lying.”
Maeve’s face broke.
The child turned toward me.
“My mommy squeezes her thumb when she lies.”
Maeve released her hand.
I stood.
“Where is the rest?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“That is not the same as no.”
“Sofia told me she hid the original ledger somewhere no criminal would willingly look.”
“Where?”
“A place connected to innocence.”
Luca laughed from the corner.
“Carlo used orphanages. Churches. Children’s hospitals. Half the city’s innocent places belonged to criminals.”
Maeve ignored him.
“She gave me a rhyme to teach Elena.”
Elena frowned.
“The bedtime song?”
“Say it.”
The girl held Bruno closer.
“Under the lion, beneath the saint, where mothers pray and sinners ain’t. Count seven stars, then turn the stone. The truth sleeps where no king owns.”
Enzo looked at me.
“The lion and the saint.”
Saint Matthew’s Children’s Home.
My father had funded it for twenty years. A stone lion stood outside its chapel.
I had attended the dedication ceremony as a boy.
“The ledger is at the orphanage,” I said.
“Maybe,” Maeve replied.
Luca shook his head.
“Too obvious.”
“Only if you know the rhyme.”
He looked at Elena differently now.
Not with affection.
With understanding.
“The Nine aren’t hunting the girl because she has the ledger,” he said. “They’re hunting her because she is the map.”
Elena’s face tightened.
“I’m not a map.”
“No,” I said. “You’re a child. And they are going to learn the difference.”
We divided our forces.
Enzo would take Maeve and Elena to an underground apartment beneath one of our restaurants. I would go with Luca to the salvage yard and determine why the Nine wanted us there.
Elena refused.
“You promised to save my mommy.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t promise to come back.”
The words stopped me.
I removed the black lion ring from my finger.
My father had worn it during wars, funerals, and meetings where men decided who would live until morning.
I placed it in Elena’s palm.
“Keep this until I return.”
“What if you don’t?”
“Then Bruno becomes the head of the family.”
For the first time since I met her, she smiled.
It was small.
It was enough.
At midnight, Luca and I entered Warehouse C.
Sofia’s burned sedan remained beneath a gray tarp.
Someone had placed nine candles around it.
A projector flickered against the far wall.
Sofia’s face appeared.
The recording was dated three days before her death.
She looked directly into the camera.
“Marco, if you are seeing this, then someone has finally brought you back to the place where you buried the truth.”
I stepped closer.
Luca whispered my name.
On the screen, Sofia held up a photograph.
It showed my father standing beside Carlo Bellini and Damon Crowe.
Between them was a young boy.
Me.
“Sofia,” I whispered.
Her recorded voice continued.
“The Moretti family did not rescue you from the fire when you were five years old.”
The warehouse doors slammed shut.
Gasoline began pouring beneath them.
May you like
On the screen, my dead wife spoke the sentence that shattered my entire life.
“They started it.”
