Chapter 2 - THE BLOOD IN CLAIRE’S SUNFLOWER GARDEN
I closed my hand around the brass key stamped 317.
Then I looked at Sofia.
“Shoes.”
She stared at me.
“What?”
“Put shoes on Emma.”
“You said we were going to your house.”
“We are.”
“There was a gunshot.”
“I know.”
“Rocco is there.”
“I know.”
Her face went white.
That was when I understood how insane my words sounded.
I had spent thirty years speaking in a tone that made other people move first and ask questions later.
Sofia was not one of my men.
Emma was not part of my organization.
They did not owe me obedience because I happened to have more guns than whoever wanted them dead.
I forced myself to slow down.
“You’re right.”
Sofia blinked.
Maybe nobody expected Dante Moretti to say that sentence either.
“I need to get back to the estate because one of my guards may have been shot and because Gabriel hid something under Claire’s garden.”
I held up the key.
“But you and Emma do not need to go with me.”
“Then where do we go?”
“I can arrange somewhere safe.”
“Your safe?”
“No.”
I thought about it.
“A hotel chosen by you.”
She almost laughed.
“A hotel?”
“With security outside, not inside.”
“I don’t want your men knowing where we are.”
That hurt my pride.
Which meant it was probably reasonable.
“Then my attorney can arrange it. She is not in my chain of command.”
“You have an attorney outside your chain of command?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know that?”
“Constantly.”
A tiny smile almost appeared.
Then Emma walked into the room wearing one sneaker.
She had put it on the wrong foot.
“Mommy?”
Sofia crouched.
“We’re going somewhere else tonight.”
“Mr. Moretti’s?”
“No, sweetheart.”
Emma looked at me.
“Are you going to the flowers?”
Children heard everything.
“Yes.”
“Daddy’s secret?”
My throat tightened.
“Maybe.”
She pulled Daisy against her chest.
“Don’t let bad people take it.”
I looked at the photograph on the table.
At Gabriel Romano.
At the man who had died believing I could stop something I had not even known existed.
“I won’t.”
I called Mara Keating.
She had been my outside attorney for twelve years.
Former federal prosecutor.
Forty-nine.
Gray streak through dark hair.
The only person I paid thousands of dollars an hour to insult me professionally.
She answered on the second ring.
“It’s midnight, Dante.”
“I need a safe location for a woman and her three-year-old daughter.”
Silence.
Then:
“Are they witnesses?”
“Maybe.”
“Are they in danger because of you?”
“Yes.”
“Honest answer. That’s new.”
“Mara.”
“I’m awake.”
I explained enough.
Rocco.
Gabriel.
The key.
The garden.
The gunshot.
Her voice changed.
“Do not touch anything in that garden.”
“It is my property.”
“And if you want evidence admissible against anyone, you will stop thinking ownership means control.”
I hated her.
“Who do I call?”
“State police first.”
“No Chicago PD?”
“Not until we know who Rocco had relationships with.”
She paused.
“I’m also calling Special Agent Evelyn Hart.”
“FBI?”
“Human-trafficking task force.”
My jaw tightened.
“I did not say federal.”
“No. You said manifests involving women transported under company codes.”
“That made the decision for you.”
I almost hung up.
Then looked at Emma.
“Fine.”
Sofia chose a hotel near Oak Brook.
Mara arranged it under another name.
One female security contractor stayed in a car across the street.
Sofia approved her.
I left after Emma made me promise to come back.
The drive to Lake Michigan felt longer than every funeral procession I had ever attended.
My estate was lit like a crime scene.
Because it was one.
Two state police vehicles.
An ambulance.
My men lined against the rear courtyard because I had ordered everyone disarmed before investigators entered.
They were furious.
I did not care.
“Who was shot?”
I demanded.
Mrs. Bell came toward me.
“Tomas.”
Thirty-two.
One of my younger security men.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
The word hit my chest.
“Where?”
“Northwestern.”
“Shoulder.”
“He lost blood, but they think he’ll be okay.”
I closed my eyes for one second.
Then:
“Rocco?”
“Gone.”
Of course.
Mrs. Bell pointed toward garden.
“He shot Tomas when Tomas tried to stop him.”
I crossed the terrace.
The sunflower garden looked like a wound.
Wet dirt.
Dead stalks.
A hole nearly three feet wide.
One stone border cracked.
A shovel lay on the ground.
Blood darkened the gravel near hedge.
Tomas’s.
An FBI evidence technician stopped me.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“Yes.”
“Please stay behind marker.”
Every instinct in me wanted to say:
This is my daughter’s garden.
Instead, I stopped.
Special Agent Evelyn Hart approached.
She was perhaps forty.
Short.
Brown coat.
No visible fear.
I disliked her immediately.
Probably because she looked at me as if I were simply another fact.
“Mara says you have something.”
I opened my palm.
The brass key.
317.
Hart did not touch.
“Where did it come from?”
I explained.
Gabriel’s photograph.
Emma.
Room 317.
The burned warehouse.
Hart’s eyes narrowed.
“You understand if we proceed, your own organization may be implicated.”
“Yes.”
“Potentially you.”
“Yes.”
That answer surprised her.
It surprised me too.
Then a technician called.
“Agent Hart.”
We turned.
They had found something beneath the flowers.
Not a box.
A pipe.
A narrow steel conduit buried vertically in the soil.
At the bottom was a waterproof cylinder.
The cap had been broken open.
Rocco had reached it.
But he had not escaped with everything.
Inside the cylinder were three objects.
A flash drive.
A folded letter sealed inside plastic.
And an old photograph.
Hart held the photograph under evidence light.
My legs nearly failed.
Elena.
My wife.
She stood beside Gabriel Romano inside one of my warehouses.
The date stamp was four days before the bombing.
I had never seen the picture.
Elena wore the dark green coat she had loved.
Gabriel stood several feet away, holding a folder.
Behind them was a painted metal door.
317.
My chest stopped working.
“She knew him.”
I whispered.
Hart looked at me.
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
Mara arrived ten minutes later.
She read my face.
“What did they find?”
I pointed.
Her expression changed when she saw Elena.
Then investigators opened the letter.
Not before photographing.
Not before gloves.
Not before every procedure I once would have considered unnecessary delay.
The handwriting belonged to Gabriel.
I knew because Sofia had shown me notes he wrote Emma.
The letter began:
Mr. Moretti, if you are reading this, either Elena found you or we both failed.
I stopped breathing.
Hart read aloud because my hands had begun shaking.
I called your private line on March 14. Rocco answered. I hung up because he was one of the men I had begun to suspect. I later contacted Elena through the Moretti Foundation because I knew she handled shelter grants and would understand what the women were being used for.
Elena.
My wife had known something.
Without telling me.
No.
Maybe she had been trying.
The letter continued.
The missing fourteen million dollars is payment routing. It is not the real crime. Containers marked as humanitarian transfers and construction equipment have been used to move women through properties controlled by Moretti-linked companies. I do not believe you authorized this. Elena does not believe you did either.
My throat closed.
Then:
Rocco is involved, but he is not the one giving orders. Vincent Marchetti may have discovered pieces. I do not know if he is compromised or frightened. There is one person above them whose name I will not put on paper because if this cylinder is found before the vault, Sofia and Emma die.
Hart stopped.
“Vault.”
I opened my hand.
317.
The letter continued.
The complete records are in the underground archive beneath Lake Street Warehouse Seven. Room 317 survived the fireproofing retrofit. The brass key is hidden behind my family photograph. Sofia does not know. If I am dead, do not tell her until you can move her and Emma somewhere Rocco cannot reach.
I looked away.
Gabriel had known.
He had planned.
He had trusted me.
And I had spent three years believing his death was a forklift malfunction.
The last paragraph destroyed what remained of my certainty.
Elena says she will tell you after Sunday Mass. She believes the person behind this has been close to your family longer than you have been alive. She says if she is wrong, she will apologize for frightening you. If she is right, she says you will have to choose whether Moretti blood matters more than what Moretti means.
Sunday Mass.
The bomb exploded Sunday.
Outside the church.
Elena never got to tell me.
Claire died because she got into the car with her mother.
I stared at the photograph.
Four days before their deaths, my wife had stood beside Gabriel Romano trying to uncover something inside my own organization.
“Who knew Elena was investigating?”
Hart asked.
I laughed without humor.
“Apparently everybody except me.”
Then one of the technicians approached.
“Agent.”
He held up an evidence bag.
A second piece had been found in the hole.
A torn strip of paper.
Freshly torn.
Probably dropped when Rocco ran.
On it, three printed words remained.
SALVATORE — FOUNDATION ROUTE
Everything inside me went still.
Mara looked at me.
“Salvatore who?”
I already knew.
Only one Salvatore in my world required no last name.
My father’s younger brother.
My uncle.
Salvatore Moretti.
The man who had taught me how to drive.
The man who sat beside my mother when my father died.
The man who had held Claire at her baptism.
The man who stood on the other side of me while we lowered Elena and Claire into the ground.
He had retired from daily operations seven years earlier.
At least publicly.
He chaired the Moretti Foundation.
Elena’s foundation.
My dead wife’s charity.
I looked at Agent Hart.
“Room 317.”
She nodded.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“No.”
My voice was stone again.
“Tonight.”
Hart stared.
“There may be armed people.”
“I know the building.”
“That does not make you law enforcement.”
“No.”
I looked at the photograph of Elena.
“But if Salvatore knows Rocco failed to get everything beneath the garden, he knows where the vault is too.”
Mara cursed quietly.
Hart made one call.
Then another.
Thirty minutes later, federal agents were moving.
And for the first time in my life, I followed them instead of leading.
Because somewhere beneath a burned warehouse, Gabriel Romano had left the truth.
May you like
And if I wanted Sofia and Emma to survive it—
I had to stop acting like the most dangerous man in Chicago was automatically the man in control.
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