Chapter 6 - Vanessa Cortez
Vanessa Cortez did not want to see Rico.
She agreed to see Clara.
That surprised everyone.
“Why me?” Clara asked.
Dante shrugged.
“She said you’re the only person in the Moretti house who isn’t a Moretti.”
The clinic was small and quiet.
Vanessa was thirty-nine, thin, dark-haired, and exhausted.
She looked at Clara’s waitress shoes.
“You still work at Il Destino?”
“Technically.”
“Elena liked that place.”
“Why did you disappear?”
Vanessa stared at the window.
“Because Elena died.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“It does if you understand fear.”
Elena had discovered money moving through Harbor Meridian, a Moretti shipping subsidiary.
Old obligations from the years before Rico took control.
Rico had been trying to clean the family companies.
Someone did not want the old network shut down.
“Vittorio?” Clara asked.
“He controlled Harbor Meridian.”
“Did he order Elena’s murder?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Elena think he would?”
“She thought he’d scare her.”
“She underestimated him. Or I did.”
She described the red book.
A ledger Elena kept with dates, shell vendors, and names.
The night before she died, Elena gave it to Vanessa.
“Then why did Leo say Vittorio took it?”
“He did.”
“When?”
“After.”
Vittorio came to Vanessa’s apartment two days after the funeral.
He knew she had the ledger.
“He threatened you?”
“He told me my brother’s immigration problem could become much worse.”
“What was in the ledger?”
“Enough to destroy half the old Moretti network.”
“Where is it now?”
“I don’t know.”
Then Vanessa reached into a drawer.
“Locker 214. Penn Station.”
“What’s inside?”
“One copy Elena made.”
“You kept a copy?”
“Not of the ledger.”
“Of a voice recording.”
“Whose voice?”
Vanessa looked straight at her.
“Elena’s.”
Clara returned to Brooklyn with Dante.
Rico met them at Penn Station.
Locker 214 held a cheap phone wrapped in a scarf.
They charged it in the car.
Date:
Elena’s voice filled the vehicle.
“If you’re hearing this, I was right to be afraid.”
Rico closed his eyes.
Then Elena said the sentence that broke him.
“Rico, the attack won’t be about you.”
May you like
He opened his eyes.
“It will be about me.”
