CHAPTER 11 The Last Moretti Loyalist
I stared at the paternity report while the bomb counted down.
Name of alleged father: Alessandro Moretti.
Probability of paternity: 0.00%.
Luca stood close enough to see my expression but not the words.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing that matters.”
That was the truth.
Whatever blood moved through his veins, Luca was my son.
I had held him through fevers.
Taught him to tie his shoes.
Sat outside his bedroom after Elena died because he was afraid to sleep alone.
No document could rewrite six years of fatherhood.
But the report had been created for a reason.
Sophia scrolled downward.
The test had not used my sample.
It had used DNA from a police evidence file linked to an assault charge twenty-two years earlier.
A charge against my older brother, Matteo.
Matteo died before Luca was born.
The sample had been mislabeled intentionally.
“It is false,” Sophia said. “They used your brother’s DNA and identified it as yours.”
Cole intended to convince a court that I had no legal claim to Luca.
Marco would then become guardian through forged documents and political influence.
“He wanted my son and my empire,” I said.
The upload reached fifty-one percent.
Four minutes remained.
Walsh ordered the officer to disconnect the server and take the drives.
“Removing them may stop the upload.”
“Staying may stop our hearts.”
We pulled two drives from the rack and ran toward the lift.
The doors did not open.
Cole had locked them remotely.
Water began pouring beneath the archive shutters.
He was flooding the complex before detonating it.
A voice came through the emergency stairwell.
“This way.”
A man stepped from the darkness.
For one impossible second, I thought my father had returned from the dead.
The stranger had the same broad shoulders, the same scar across the chin and the same gray eyes.
Then I recognized him.
Matteo.
My brother.
Alive.
I raised my gun.
“You died in Sicily.”
“That is what Cole paid people to tell you.”
Luca stared between us.
“Who is he?”
“My brother.”
Matteo looked at Luca with an emotion close to grief.
“There is no time.”
He opened a concealed passage behind the electrical panel.
Walsh’s officers entered first.
Sophia guided the children.
I remained near Matteo.
“Why are you alive?”
“Because Elena helped me disappear.”
The words cut through the chaos.
“Explain.”
“After our father died, I discovered he had served Cole. I tried to expose the relationship. Marco reported me. Cole arranged the shooting in Sicily.”
“You were buried.”
“Someone else was.”
“And you let me believe—”
“Elena found me two years later. She was already investigating Marco. We agreed I would remain hidden until we had proof against Cole.”
“Why did she not tell me?”
“Because she believed you would confront Marco before we were ready.”
She had been right.
I would have.
The bomb timer sounded through the archive.
Ninety seconds.
We moved through the passage and entered an old sewage channel beneath the river.
The explosion came before we reached the ladder.
Concrete fractured behind us.
Water slammed through the passage.
Matteo lifted Luca onto his shoulders.
I pushed Sophia and Emma toward the ladder while Walsh’s officers fought the current.
We emerged through a storm outlet near the Brooklyn shore.
The terminal collapsed beneath the East River.
For several seconds, the water rose like a dark hill.
Then it swallowed the evidence, the archive and possibly Senator Cole.
The federal upload had reached seventy-eight percent.
Enough to expose hundreds of crimes.
Perhaps not enough to find everything.
Paramedics treated my stab wound near the waterfront.
Luca sat wrapped in a blanket beside Matteo.
He kept staring at him.
“You look like Dad.”
Matteo smiled.
“Your father is better looking.”
“No, he isn’t.”
For the first time that night, I laughed.
Then Luca asked, “Are you my real dad?”
The question silenced everyone.
I knelt despite the pain in my side.
“I am your father.”
“But the computer said—”
“The computer showed a lie someone created.”
“Why?”
“Because they believed family is decided by paperwork.”
“Is it?”
“No.”
He studied my face.
“Would you still be my dad if the test was real?”
“Yes.”
He put his arms around my neck.
“Then it really doesn’t matter.”
Sophia turned away, wiping her eyes.
Matteo watched us.
“Cole will not stop.”
“You think he survived?”
“He always prepares an exit.”
Walsh approached holding a recovered radio.
“We intercepted a transmission. A private aircraft is being prepared at Teterboro Airport.”
“Cole?”
“Possibly.”
Matteo shook his head.
“Too obvious.”
He pointed toward the harbor.
“Cole built his network through shipping. He will leave by sea.”
A container vessel named the Saint Aurelia was scheduled to depart at dawn.
It belonged to a company controlled by Atlantic Recovery.
Inside its cargo hold were records, money and enough weapons to begin again elsewhere.
Matteo had spent years tracing the ship.
“What is Cole’s destination?” I asked.
“Somewhere without extradition.”
“And Marco?”
“Cole will take him if he believes Marco still knows where the complete ledger is.”
Marco remained in the hospital under guard.
Or so we believed.
Walsh’s phone rang.
She listened.
Her face hardened.
“What happened?”
“The hospital transport was attacked.”
“Marco?”
“Gone.”
My own phone vibrated.
A message from Marco.
One photograph.
He sat inside a shipping container beside Senator Cole.
Marco’s shoulder was bandaged.
Cole stood behind Luca’s former nanny, Rosa, with a gun against her head.
Rosa had cared for my son since infancy.
The message read:
BRING THE ORIGINAL LEDGER TO THE SAINT AURELIA BEFORE DAWN.
COME WITH MATTEO.
May you like
YOUR FAMILY HAS OWED ME FOR THIRTY YEARS.
TONIGHT, I COLLECT.
