Chương 5
There was no signature.
Adrian read the letter from her hand.
“Pier Four,” he said.
Melissa watched his face.
He folded the page once. “October nineteenth, nineteen ninety-four. My father took me to a warehouse meeting because my mother had left and he didn’t trust the staff. I was thirteen. Gabriel Romano arrived with six men. Salvatore was supposed to secure the east entrance.”
His voice changed as he spoke, becoming flatter, stripped of performance.
“The lights went out. Someone fired from the catwalk. My father pushed me behind a forklift. He was hit before he reached cover. Gabriel’s men started shooting back. I tried to crawl to my father, and a piece of steel came down on my legs.”
Rain ticked against the windshield.
“The building caught fire,” Adrian continued. “I remember gasoline running under the pallets. Gabriel found me. He could have taken his brother and left. Instead, he lifted the steel enough to drag me free. He carried me through the warehouse while men from both sides were still firing.”
Melissa held the ring in her fist.
“What did he say?”
Adrian looked at her in the mirror.
“He told me not to close my eyes. He said if I lived, I was supposed to become better than the men who brought children to warehouses.”
Melissa lowered her gaze.
Her father had said almost the same thing to her two years earlier, standing in the secret passage beneath the Moretti mansion. He had placed one hand on the wall to steady himself. The fingers were curled from old burns.
“You remember his face?” she asked.
“Half of it. The rest was blood and smoke.”
“What happened outside?”
“Salvatore pulled me from Gabriel’s arms. There was another explosion. Gabriel went back inside.”
“For whom?”
“His brother.”
“Matteo.”
Adrian nodded.
“Neither body was found,” Melissa said.
“I was told the fire consumed them.”
“My father survived. Matteo didn’t.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Melissa waited for denial, accusation, some demand that would place the burden back on her. He only sat there with his hands resting on his useless legs, rainwater dripping from his black hair to his open shirt.
“Why didn’t Gabriel come for you?” he asked.
“He did.”
Adrian looked up.
“He came to the hospital two nights later. Salvatore’s men were outside your room. My father heard them talking. They said the wrong Moretti had survived.”
Adrian’s expression changed slowly.
“My father was the target,” he said.
“No. Both of you were.”
“Salvatore told me the Romanos arranged the ambush.”
“My father spent twenty-eight years proving otherwise.”
A truck moved along the county road beyond the trees. Its headlights passed across the van and disappeared.
Adrian reached for the ignition.
“Saint Michael’s garage.”
“You’re coming?”
“You need someone who can drive while you hold the baby.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He turned the key. “If I stay here, they find me. If I take the van, I’m stealing your father’s escape plan. Either way, we can argue somewhere that isn’t six hundred yards from the men trying to kill us.”
Melissa strapped herself in beside the baby.
Adrian drove.
The van’s hand controls had been installed beneath the steering wheel. He tested the accelerator and brake with his right hand, then guided them onto the county road. The storm had knocked out power along several miles. Houses passed in darkness. Water streamed across the pavement in silver sheets.
Melissa kept watching the mirrors.
No headlights followed.
Adrian drove with the concentration of a man who disliked unfamiliar machinery. His shoulders remained tense. Every few minutes, he flexed his bleeding hand against the steering control.
“There’s gauze in the kit,” Melissa said.
“I’m driving.”
“I noticed.”
She reached between the seats, opened the first-aid kit, and removed an antiseptic wipe and bandage.
“Give me your hand.”
He glanced at her.
“Don’t make this sentimental.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
At a red light blinking over an empty intersection, he extended his palm. Melissa cleaned the cut. Adrian’s fingers twitched once but he made no sound.
The light continued blinking.
“You can go,” she said.
“It’s legally a stop.”
“You run companies that hide money through six states, but you’re worried about a flashing red light?”
“The companies employ people.”
“That wasn’t my point.”
“I know.”
He waited another second and then drove through.
Saint Michael’s garage stood beneath an elevated highway between a shuttered furniture warehouse and a twenty-four-hour bakery. Its sign had lost the final letter in “Michael,” leaving SAINT MICHAE’S in blue neon. The service bays were closed, but yellow light showed beneath a side door.
Adrian parked in the alley.
Melissa wrapped the baby in the dry blanket from the van. Before opening the door, she slipped the ring beneath her robe again.
Adrian noticed.
“Your father said to ask for Daniel Ruiz.”
“He also said not to trust you.”
“Then don’t.”
She looked at him. “You say that as if trust is a switch.”
“No. I say it because I’ve spent most of my life watching people pretend it is.”
A man in grease-stained coveralls opened the side door before they knocked.
He was in his late fifties, with silver hair tied at the back of his neck and a tire iron in one hand. His eyes moved from Melissa to Adrian, then to the baby.
“You took too long,” he said.
“Daniel Ruiz?”
“That depends who’s asking.”
“Melissa Romano.”
Daniel looked at her robe, her wet slippers, and the chain visible at her throat.
“Show me.”
She raised the ring.
He lowered the tire iron.
Then he looked at Adrian. “He wasn’t in the instructions.”
“I’m accustomed to that,” Adrian said.
May you like
Daniel did not smile. “Chair stays quiet on the concrete. Baby comes first.”
He led them through the garage into a small office that smelled of motor oil, burnt coffee, and cinnamon bread from next door. A space heater glowed beneath a desk. On the wall hung a calendar from three years earlier and a photograph of Daniel beside a younger Gabriel Romano at a union picnic.
