Chapter 3 - WHAT MATEO SEWED INSIDE BUTTONS
I did not cut open the rabbit.
That should sound obvious.
It was not.
Vincent wanted it inspected immediately.
So did I.
Elena looked at both of us as if she would murder the first man who put scissors near Buttons.
“He is her favorite thing in the world.”
Vincent crossed his arms.
“He may contain evidence.”
“He may contain stuffing.”
“Someone is following your child.”
“I am aware.”
Lily sat at the breakfast table eating pancakes shaped like stars.
I had no idea my chef knew how to make pancakes shaped like stars.
Apparently my mansion possessed entire categories of ability nobody had bothered telling me about.
Buttons sat beside Lily wearing one of my linen napkins as a cape.
The possible evidence package was currently a superhero.
I rubbed my forehead.
The last traces of blue paint had washed away that morning.
The heart had been the final color to disappear.
I did not examine why that bothered me.
Elena lowered her voice.
“Wait until she naps.”
Vincent nodded.
Reasonable.
I nodded too.
Lily pointed her fork at me.
“No whispering.”
I looked at her.
“Excuse me?”
“Whispering is secrets.”
“Sometimes.”
“Secrets are rude.”
Elena winced.
“Lily.”
“What?”
I almost laughed.
This child had no survival instinct.
Perhaps that was why everyone in the house had started smiling more.
After breakfast, Lily took Buttons into the sitting room.
At eleven, she fell asleep beneath a blanket.
Elena carefully removed the rabbit from her arms.
The operation began.
Not in my office.
Apparently that felt too much like an interrogation room.
We used the sewing room where one of the household staff repaired linens.
Elena placed Buttons on the table.
Vincent inspected the damaged ear.
The stitching was crude.
Old.
Hand-sewn.
“Mateo did that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Did he sew?”
Elena almost smiled.
“No.”
Vincent carefully pressed the fabric.
Something hard shifted beneath his thumb.
Elena stopped breathing.
He looked at me.
I looked at her.
“Do it,” she whispered.
Vincent cut three stitches.
Inside the stuffing was a tiny brass key wrapped in plastic.
And a folded strip of paper.
Elena grabbed the edge of the table.
I unfolded the note.
Mateo’s handwriting.
Elena recognized it immediately.
Her knees weakened.
I pulled out a chair.
She sat without arguing.
The note contained only two lines.
E, if you ever find this, I failed to fix it.
Box 409. LaSalle. Don’t trust the badge.
Elena covered her mouth.
For several seconds, she made no sound.
Then a broken breath escaped.
“Mateo.”
I placed the note in front of her.
She touched his handwriting.
Not the words.
The ink.
As if the physical shape of his letters could somehow become his hand again.
Vincent looked away.
So did I.
Grief deserved privacy even when it happened in front of you.
After a while, Elena whispered, “LaSalle.”
“There are dozens of banks on LaSalle,” Vincent said.
Elena shook her head.
“He used to joke about one.”
“What?”
“Chicago Mercantile Trust.”
I knew it.
Old private bank.
Historic vault.
Expensive.
Discreet.
“He said rich men trusted basements more than churches.”
That sounded like someone who worked around men like Bellini.
Vincent pulled out his phone.
“I’ll check.”
“No.”
Elena’s voice sharpened.
He stopped.
“I’m going.”
“Obviously,” I said.
She looked at me.
“You are not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Why?”
“Because someone with police access is following you.”
“And bringing Adrian Romano into a bank is subtle?”
Fair.
Vincent smiled.
I ignored him.
“We use a private entrance.”
“Elena.”
She looked at me.
“You are not retrieving whatever your husband died hiding without protection.”
Her chin lifted.
“You keep saying that word.”
“What word?”
“Protection.”
“And?”
“Men use it when they want women to stop making decisions.”
I went quiet.
That was probably true far more often than I liked admitting.
“Then choose the plan.”
She stared.
“What?”
“You choose.”
I pointed toward the key.
“Bank. Timing. Vehicle. Who enters.”
Vincent looked at me as though I had suffered head trauma.
Elena looked suspicious.
“You’ll agree?”
“Within reason.”
“There it is.”
“I am still me.”
That almost pulled a smile from her.
“Tomorrow morning. Before opening.”
“Good.”
“Vincent can drive.”
Vincent nodded.
“You stay in the car.”
I stared.
Elena stared back.
“No.”
“Then I take a taxi.”
“Fine.”
Vincent slowly turned his head toward me.
I ignored him.
“Tomorrow.”
That evening, I moved Elena and Lily into rooms in the east wing.
Not because those rooms were more luxurious.
Because the security layout was better.
Elena noticed immediately.
“Cameras?”
“Hallways only.”
“Inside?”
“No.”
“Locks?”
“Controlled from inside. Security cannot override unless fire system activates.”
She tested the door.
Then the window.
Then the adjoining room.
I respected that.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“No men enter without knocking.”
“Agreed.”
“Even security.”
“Agreed.”
“And Lily does not leave the property with anyone unless I approve.”
“Agreed.”
She stared.
“You’re being easy.”
“I’m never easy.”
“I’ve heard.”
There was something in her voice.
Not flirtation exactly.
But close enough that the room changed temperature.
I looked away first.
That annoyed me.
Lily came running from the bathroom wearing a robe much too large for her.
“Mister Big House!”
“What?”
“Your bathtub is a swimming pool.”
“It is a bathtub.”
“It has stairs.”
“One.”
“That’s too many.”
Elena laughed.
The sound hit me unexpectedly.
Warm.
Unprotected.
For one second, I imagined hearing it every evening.
Dangerous thought.
I killed it immediately.
Or tried.
The bank opened its private-vault entrance for Elena at 7:15 the next morning after her identification and Mateo’s death certificate established her right to access the box.
I stayed in the car.
I hated every second.
Vincent stayed beside me.
“You’re tapping your fingers.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“Shut up.”
He smiled.
Twenty-two minutes later, Elena emerged carrying a small gray case.
Relief hit hard enough to irritate me.
She climbed into the rear seat.
“Drive.”
I looked back.
“What’s inside?”
“I haven’t opened it.”
“Why?”
“Because Mateo wrote ‘don’t trust the badge.’ There were two police officers inside the lobby.”
Vincent immediately pulled away.
“Coincidence?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
I looked through the rear window.
One officer exited the bank.
Watched us leave.
Not coincidence.
“Vincent.”
“I see him.”
The officer lifted his phone.
Vincent turned south instead of east.
A dark SUV left the curb behind us.
Then another.
My security vehicle closed in.
“Seat belt,” I said.
Elena already had one on.
Of course.
The SUV followed through two turns.
Vincent accelerated.
Chicago traffic thickened around us.
No gunfire.
Nobody wanted that downtown.
But pursuit was enough.
The SUV stayed three cars back.
Then a city patrol unit appeared ahead.
Lights activated.
Vincent swore.
“Do not stop,” I said.
Elena stared.
“That’s police.”
“Maybe.”
The patrol car moved sideways to block the intersection.
Vincent turned into an alley.
Elena gripped the case.
“This is insane.”
“Yes.”
“You live like this?”
“Not every morning.”
“That is not comforting.”
The SUV entered behind us.
My security vehicle followed it.
We exited onto another street.
Vincent hit the accelerator.
A delivery truck cut between us and the patrol car.
For ninety seconds, the city became geometry.
Angles.
Lights.
Routes.
Then we disappeared into the underground entrance of one of my office buildings.
Steel doors closed behind us.
The SUV drove past outside.
We changed vehicles.
Twenty minutes later, we were back at the estate.
Lily was waiting in the foyer.
She ran toward Elena.
“Mama!”
Elena dropped to her knees and hugged her.
I looked away.
Not because I was uncomfortable with love.
Because I wanted it too much.
We took the gray case into the library.
Elena opened it herself.
Inside were three flash drives.
A paper ledger.
Two prepaid phones.
Photographs.
And a sealed envelope addressed to Elena.
She opened that first.
Mateo’s handwriting covered four pages.
Elena read silently.
Her face changed sentence by sentence.
At the end, tears rolled down without sound.
She handed me the letter.
I read.
Mateo had discovered Harbor East was laundering money through import invoices.
Bellini controlled the scheme.
But Bellini was not acting alone.
Someone inside my organization had been selling shipping schedules, police contacts, and payment channels.
Mateo called that person The Uncle.
My pulse slowed.
Only one man in my inner circle was called uncle by half the organization.
Carlo Romano.
My father’s younger brother.
The man who had taught me to shoot.
The man who stood beside me at my father’s funeral.
The man who had held me upright when my wife Sofia was killed.
I read the final paragraph.
Elena, I am sorry. I tried to leave and they told me nobody leaves. If anything happens to me, do not believe it was random. Keep Lily away from Harbor East, Bellini, and any policeman named Rourke.
Detective Patrick Rourke.
The detective who had investigated Mateo’s fatal crash.
Elena whispered, “That was him.”
“What?”
“The detective.”
She looked at me.
“Rourke.”
Vincent swore.
I closed my eyes.
The message on the photograph said she still had what Mateo hid.
Bellini knew.
Rourke knew.
And if Mateo was right, someone I had trusted since childhood knew too.
Then Vincent inserted one of the flash drives into an isolated laptop.
A folder appeared.
ROMANO.
Inside was an audio file.
I clicked.
Mateo’s voice.
Nervous.
Low.
“December fourteenth. Harbor East office. Carlo Romano met Bellini at 11:40 p.m.”
My stomach hardened.
The recording continued.
“I heard Romano say Adrian still believes Sofia died because Bellini wanted revenge. He laughed.”
Everything inside me stopped.
Sofia.
My wife.
Dead five years.
Car bomb.
The event that had emptied my mansion long before Elena and Lily entered it.
Mateo continued.
“Romano said, ‘As long as Adrian keeps blaming you, he’ll never look at family.’”
I could not breathe.
Elena stared at me.
Vincent went motionless.
The audio ended.
For five years, I had built hatred around Bellini.
For five years, Carlo had stood beside me while I grieved.
And now a dead bookkeeper’s hidden recording suggested my uncle had known exactly why my wife died.
Maybe more.
I looked toward the window.
Lily laughed somewhere downstairs.
The sound felt impossibly far away.
Elena spoke softly.
“Adrian.”
I did not answer.
She came closer.
“Look at me.”
Nobody told me to do that.
Not usually.
I did.
Her face held no fear.
No pity.
Just recognition.
“You don’t know everything yet.”
I swallowed.
“No.”
“Then don’t become what they expect before you know.”
The advice was so simple it hurt.
I had spent half my life answering betrayal with force.
Maybe Carlo was counting on exactly that.
I looked at the laptop again.
Then at Mateo’s letter.
“Vincent.”
“Yes?”
“Carlo hears nothing.”
“Agreed.”
“Bellini hears nothing.”
“Yes.”
“Rourke?”
“Nothing.”
I closed the laptop.
“We verify everything.”
Elena’s hand was still near mine on the table.
Not touching.
Close.
I looked at her.
“Your husband may have just saved my life five years after losing his.”
Her eyes filled.
“And maybe yours.”
I thought of Sofia.
Mateo.
Two dead people leaving behind evidence for the living.
Then Lily burst into the library holding Buttons.
“Mister Big House!”
Every adult froze.
She looked at us.
“What?”
Elena wiped her face.
“Nothing, baby.”
Lily climbed onto the chair beside me.
Buttons landed on my lap.
She pointed at his repaired ear.
“Did you make him better?”
I looked down.
The seam had been carefully restitched.
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“Daddy fixed him first.”
I looked at Elena.
Then at the evidence.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
“He did.”
May you like
And suddenly this was no longer only about revenge.
It was about finishing what Mateo had died trying to protect.
