Chương 6
Nico parked two blocks away.
“You stay with the car,” Luca told him.
“No.”
“That was not a discussion.”
“I’m not letting you walk into an unknown building with one exit.”
“It has windows.”
“Second floor. Painted shut.”
Elena looked up. “How do you know?”
“I drove past before parking.”
Luca almost argued.
Then he remembered Sofia’s line about anger being useful.
“You wait at the rear entrance,” he said. “If we are not out in twenty minutes, come in.”
“With what?”
“Your judgment.”
“That has limits.”
“Tonight everyone’s does.”
They walked through the alley.
Elena rang twice.
For nearly a minute, nothing happened.
Then a bolt shifted.
The woman who opened the door was in her late sixties, with cropped gray hair and a cardigan buttoned unevenly over a blue blouse. She looked first at Elena, then at Luca, then at the stuffed lion in his hand.
“You brought him,” she said.
“I had to,” Elena answered.
Miriam Walsh stepped back.
The office beyond was smaller than Luca expected. Files occupied metal shelves. A desk lamp burned near stacks of mail. The radiator knocked in the corner with irregular complaints.
Miriam held out her hand.
“Phones.”
“We left them outside,” Elena said.
The lawyer looked at Luca. “Weapons.”
“No.”
“That was not a question.”
“You do not take my weapon.”
“Then you do not take Sofia’s box.”
The two stared at each other.
Miriam was not fearless. Luca saw the tension in her jaw and the way her left hand remained close to the edge of the door. Fear had simply failed to alter her decision.
Elena waited.
Luca removed the pistol from beneath his jacket.
He cleared it, locked the slide, and placed the weapon and magazine separately on a high shelf near the entrance.
Miriam nodded toward the lion. “That too.”
“No.”
“It may contain a transmitter.”
“My son gave it to me.”
“Then your son will understand caution.”
“He is three.”
“Three-year-olds understand more than men like you prefer.”
Luca looked at the stuffed lion.
Its plastic eyes stared in different directions. One ear had been repaired with green thread.
He gave it to Miriam.
She squeezed the body, checked the seams, and returned it.
“Room two,” she said.
The box was not metal.
It was an ordinary plastic document case stored inside a fireproof cabinet. Number 214 was written across the lid.
Luca used the brass key.
Inside lay a black ledger, two flash drives sealed in evidence bags, a stack of photocopied bank records, three envelopes, and a small voice recorder wrapped in a silk scarf.
Sofia’s scarf.
Luca recognized the blue pattern.
He had found its matching glove in her wrecked car.
For months, he had kept that glove in his bedside drawer.
He touched the scarf with one finger.
“Do not handle anything unnecessarily,” Miriam said.
“You handled it.”
“With gloves.”
“Where did this come from?”
“Sofia brought it to me over six visits.”
“Why did you help her?”
“She helped my daughter.”
“How?”
“That has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with why I should trust this.”
Miriam’s lips pressed together.
“My daughter married a man who enjoyed controlling money, doors, and breathing room. Sofia used foundation funds to place her in an apartment under another name. Legitimate funds,” Miriam added. “She did not ask for gratitude. She asked me, months later, whether I knew how to keep documents from a powerful man.”
“And you assumed she meant me.”
“I assumed she meant several.”
Elena lifted one of the envelopes. It bore Luca’s name.
Miriam stopped her. “The first recording before the letters. Sofia was specific.”
Luca picked up the recorder.
The batteries still worked.
A date was written across a strip of tape: October 14.
Six days before Sofia died.
He pressed play.
At first there was café noise. Cups, chairs, an espresso machine releasing steam. Then Sofia’s voice, low and close to the microphone.
“I’m recording this because I no longer trust my own fear.”
Luca’s grip tightened around the recorder.
Sofia continued.
“Rafe came to the bakery today. He said Luca has been under pressure and that I should stop asking questions about the foundation accounts. He knew the names of two companies I never mentioned to anyone. When I asked how, he said Luca had shown him my notes. Luca has never seen them.”
A chair scraped in the recording.
“I asked whether he was threatening me. He smiled. He said threats were for strangers. Then he looked at Matteo and told me children survive only when their parents understand the limits of curiosity.”
Elena closed her eyes briefly.
The recording crackled.
“I know what Luca will do if I tell him. He will confront Rafe. If Rafe lies well enough, Luca will believe him because believing him protects the shape of Luca’s whole life. If Rafe lies badly, Luca will kill him, and then whatever Rafe is hiding will disappear with him. I need proof. I need Matteo away from the house. Elena says she can help, but I don’t want to make her choose this.”
The recording ended.
Luca pressed play again.
The last line repeated.
I don’t want to make her choose this.
He set the recorder down.
Elena stared at the floor.
“She asked anyway,” Luca said.
“Yes.”
“And you agreed.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elena looked at the scarf in the box.
“Because she asked what would happen to Matteo if she died.”
Miriam moved to the window and adjusted the blind by half an inch.
“What would have happened?” Luca asked.
Elena gave a soft, humorless breath. “You are holding the answer.”
May you like
The first envelope addressed to Luca contained copies of transfers. The Moretti Children’s Foundation had moved funds into consulting firms in Delaware and Nevada. Those firms paid companies connected to port security contractors, a state senator’s campaign adviser, and a real estate group controlled by men Luca knew as competitors.
The figures were not enormous by Moretti standards.
