Chapter 6 - THE LIST OF SONS
Marco’s face went white.
“What list?”
Clara reached for him.
He came immediately.
She held his hand.
“The people who could inherit the trusts.”
Marco frowned.
“I don’t want them.”
“It isn’t about wanting them.”
Luca understood before she finished.
“If Clara dies and Matteo is unavailable…”
Enzo completed it.
“Marco becomes the protected successor on several accounts.”
Marco looked angry.
“I’m fourteen.”
“Legally the assets would be held for you,” Luca said.
“So somebody wants Mom dead for money?”
“No.”
Clara shook her head.
“Not just money.”
She looked at Luca.
“The trusts contain records.”
The exit network had been built to protect people.
But its structure also documented exactly which businesses, officials, unions, and enforcers had financed the old organization.
Control the trust.
Control the archive.
Destroy it.
And decades of evidence disappeared.
Marco squeezed his mother’s hand.
“So somebody wants me because I can open it?”
“When you turn eighteen,” Clara whispered.
Luca’s jaw hardened.
“Then why target you now?”
“To force Matteo out.”
That answer shifted everything.
Clara’s poisoning might not primarily have been an assassination.
It might have been bait.
“Someone knew Matteo would come if I was dying.”
“Has he?”
Clara looked toward the window.
“I don’t know.”
Enzo did.
He placed a photograph on the table.
Hospital parking garage.
Taken ninety minutes earlier.
A man in his forties.
Dark hair with silver at the temples.
A black coat.
He looked disturbingly like Luca.
Marco stared.
“That’s him?”
Luca touched the photograph.
His brother had aged.
Of course he had.
But Luca still saw the nine-year-old who used to hide baseball cards in Luca’s dresser.
“He’s here.”
Enzo nodded.
“He entered through the service garage and disappeared from camera coverage.”
Luca stood.
Clara caught his wrist.
“No guns.”
He looked at her.
“If someone is hunting him—”
“No guns between you.”
Luca understood.
“You think he’ll be afraid of me.”
“I think he has every reason to be.”
The truth irritated him because it was true.
Twenty minutes later, Luca found Matteo Rinaldi in the hospital chapel.
No dramatic entrance.
No ambush.
Just a middle-aged man sitting alone in the last pew.
Antonio’s face.
Luca’s eyes.
Matteo did not turn around.
“You still walk too loudly.”
Luca stopped.
Thirty-four years vanished.
“You’re alive.”
“So are you.”
Luca wanted to strike him.
Then embrace him.
He did neither.
“You let me bury you.”
“You buried paperwork.”
“That seems to be a family tradition.”
Matteo looked back.
A tired smile touched his mouth.
“Still angry first.”
“You disappeared.”
“I was nine.”
That stopped Luca cold.
Matteo stood.
“Vittorio moved me because the detective who shot Dad knew there were two sons.”
“Dad survived.”
“For three days.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes.”
Luca’s throat tightened.
“What did he say?”
“That he was sorry.”
Luca looked away.
Matteo continued.
“He wanted us out. Vittorio tried. You refused.”
“I was seventeen.”
“You were already running errands for men twice your age because you thought being feared meant being grown.”
Again, the truth.
Luca hated this family’s new enthusiasm for truth.
“Why didn’t you come back later?”
“I did.”
“Thirteen years ago.”
“Yes.”
“You found Clara.”
“Yes.”
“And convinced her to run.”
“No.”
Matteo’s expression hardened.
“I told her she was pregnant in a city where someone had just tried to shoot me on a train platform.”
“She chose.”
“Yes.”
Luca breathed out.
“Who is poisoning her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You control Bellweather.”
“I created Bellweather because people like Clara needed doctors who couldn’t be bought.”
“Someone bought Vale.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“That’s what Elena was trying to discover.”
Luca stepped closer.
“Elena knew you were alive?”
“For eight years.”
Another betrayal.
Another protective lie.
“How many people in my family knew except me?”
“Two.”
“Vittorio and Elena.”
“Yes.”
“Why not tell me?”
Matteo looked at him.
“Because until recently we didn’t know whether the leak was beside you.”
Luca went still.
“Enzo.”
“I investigated him.”
“And?”
“Clean.”
That should have comforted Luca.
It didn’t.
“If not Enzo, then who?”
Matteo looked toward the chapel doors.
“The leak had access to your private schedules before Enzo became head of security.”
“Vittorio?”
“No.”
“Elena?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Matteo’s face tightened.
“Someone your father trusted more than either of them.”
Luca searched his memory.
There were very few.
Then he thought of a man who had been inside the Rinaldi house longer than almost anyone.
Father Dominic Russo.
Family priest.
Confessor to Antonio.
The man who baptized Luca, Matteo, Elena, and later Marco.
The man who had presided over Antonio’s funeral.
The man who still visited Clara weekly.
“No.”
Matteo did not soften it.
“Dominic handled the foundation’s charitable disbursements for twenty-seven years.”
“He’s eighty.”
“He wasn’t eighty when Dad was shot.”
Luca stared.
“Are you saying he arranged it?”
“I’m saying Dad discovered someone inside the charitable accounts was moving money to police and judges without authorization.”
Luca felt cold.
“Dominic?”
“We never proved it.”
“Then why Clara?”
“Because Vale’s consulting fees moved through Dominic’s parish outreach accounts.”
The chapel suddenly felt poisoned.
Luca remembered being twelve.
Dominic teaching him Latin prayers.
Remembered the priest staying with Elena after their mother died.
Remembered Dominic placing a hand on Luca’s shoulder beside Antonio’s coffin.
Every childhood memory rearranged itself.
Matteo reached inside his coat.
He removed a small cassette recorder.
Old.
Scratched.
“This belonged to Dad.”
Luca stared.
“Where did you get it?”
“He gave it to Vittorio before he died.”
“Why hasn’t anyone listened?”
“We did.”
Matteo pressed play.
Static filled the chapel.
Then Antonio Rinaldi’s voice emerged.
Weak.
Painful.
But unmistakable.
If Luca ever hears this, tell him the bullet wasn’t meant for me.
Luca stopped breathing.
Antonio coughed on the recording.
Then said:
Dominic said they were coming for the boys. I thought he meant my sons. I was wrong.
The tape clicked.
Luca looked at Matteo.
“What boys?”
Matteo’s expression was grim.
“That is what Clara figured out thirteen months ago.”
The chapel doors opened.
Not violently.
Quietly.
Marco stood there.
He had heard enough.
“Dad.”
Luca turned.
The boy held Clara’s wooden rosary.
One bead had cracked open.
Inside was a tiny rolled photograph.
Marco unfolded it.
Three teenage boys stood beside Antonio Rinaldi.
One was Luca.
One was Matteo.
The third boy was unfamiliar.
On the back Antonio had written:
Luca, Matteo, Gabriel — protect all three.
Luca stared at the third face.
Then memory returned.
A boy who had lived with Father Dominic.
An altar server.
A foster child nobody discussed after he disappeared.
Gabriel Russo.
Dominic’s adopted son.
And the man now known in Luca’s organization as—
May you like
Enzo Moretti.
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