Chapter 8
Mateo was nine.
He had been living near Philadelphia with Lucia’s older sister under another last name.
Vincent found him two days earlier.
The aunt survived.
Mateo disappeared.
Dante looked at Elena.
“You knew where he was.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was afraid this would happen.”
“It happened anyway.”
Her face twisted. “I know.”
Vanessa was under federal protection when Dante met her.
No perfect makeup. No silk dress.
She looked exhausted.
“My father has Mateo.”
“What does he want?”
“The master ledger.”
“We don’t have it.”
“He thinks you do.”
“Where is the boy?”
Vanessa pushed a motel key card across the table.
“My father uses a property in the Catskills.”
An agent took it.
Dante kept watching her.
“Why help?”
“Because he told me that once he gets the ledger, he doesn’t need me either.”
Dante felt no sympathy.
“Did you love me?”
“In my way.”
“That wasn’t love.”
She flinched.
Then she placed the bronze Moretti seal on the table.
“I kept it when I ran.”
“For leverage?”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
“Evidence.”
She gave agents a storage-unit number in Queens.
“My father kept copies there.”
“Then why kidnap Mateo?”
Vanessa swallowed.
“Because the master ledger isn’t on paper.”
“What is it on?”
“A watch.”
Dante’s chest tightened.
“Marco’s watch?”
“Yes.”
“The one buried with him?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“He wasn’t buried with it.”
Dante remembered the funeral.
Marco’s folded hands.
No watch.
His father Lorenzo had said he would keep it safe.
Dante had never seen it again.
He stood.
May you like
For seven years, he had searched for his brother’s killers outside his own house.
Now every road led back inside it.
