Chapter 7 - There are several ways a person can discover that the man she loves may have ordered her brother’s death.
None of them involve breathing correctly afterward.
I stood in the kitchen of the Lake Geneva house with both hands pressed against the pale stone counter and stared at Matteo across the room.
The anonymous package lay between us.
Six months earlier, that kitchen had contained no glasses, no sugar, no furniture, and almost nothing that suggested a human being intended to remain there.
Now there were 4 coffee mugs in the cabinet.
A ridiculous yellow armchair occupied the corner of the living room.
My shoes were beneath the bench near the back door.
Matteo’s records covered an entire wall.
There was a photograph of Mari making an offensive gesture at the camera beside the refrigerator.
There was a blue bowl I had purchased because Matteo said it was ugly and I had therefore considered ownership mandatory.
There were 2 lives woven into the rooms.
And in the center of all of it sat a recording that could destroy everything.
I pressed play again.
Matteo’s voice emerged from the small digital recorder.
Cold.
Controlled.
Unmistakable.
“Ethan Bennett cannot leave that building alive.”
A pause followed.
Then another male voice.
“And the witness?”
“Handle it.”
The recording ended.
I had listened to it 4 times.
Each time, some stupid part of me expected the words to change.
They did not.
Matteo stood near the kitchen window.
He had removed his jacket after entering the house, but his tie remained in place. The knot was slightly crooked because I had pulled it loose in the car earlier while complaining that a man should not dress like a funeral announcement on a Thursday.
That had been approximately 40 minutes before my life split open.
“Say something,” I whispered.
He looked at me.
There are expressions a person expects from a guilty man.
Denial.
Panic.
Anger.
An attempt to explain.
Matteo displayed none of them.
His face had become still in the particular way it did when he was preparing to survive something.
I hated that face.
I hated that I knew it.
“I knew Ethan,” he said.
The name struck me harder than the recording had.
I gripped the counter.
“How long?”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“How long did you know who he was?”
“Before I met you.”
The room tilted.
I actually reached for the edge of the counter because I became uncertain whether the floor remained beneath me.
Before I met you.
Four words.
Four extremely ordinary words.
They destroyed 6 months in approximately 2 seconds.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“When I told you about my family?”
“Yes.”
“When I told you Ethan died when I was 19?”
“Yes.”
“When I told you my mother never recovered?”
“Yes.”
His answers arrived without defense.
Each one was a clean cut.
I laughed.
The sound frightened me.
It contained nothing resembling amusement.
“And you just sat there?”
“Yes.”
“You looked me in the face and let me tell you about him?”
“Yes.”
“Stop saying yes.”
Matteo’s expression broke by approximately half a degree.
That was all.
I wanted to throw something.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I picked up the photograph on top of the package.
It showed Ethan outside a warehouse beside the Chicago River.
He was 25.
His hair was longer than I remembered. He wore the brown jacket my mother had hated because one sleeve was torn.
Behind him stood 3 men.
One was Lorenzo.
The 2nd I did not recognize.
The 3rd was Matteo.
Young Matteo.
Perhaps 27.
His face was harder and thinner than it was now.
But it was him.
My stomach contracted.
“You met him.”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
A memory returned with surgical clarity.
Ethan sitting on the hood of his old Honda when I was 17, eating fries from a paper bag and telling me never to trust men who wore watches worth more than cars.
I had laughed.
He had thrown a fry at my face.
Two years later, police said he had been killed during an armed robbery near a warehouse.
Wrong place.
Wrong time.
That was the phrase.
Wrong place, wrong time.
Our mother repeated it until the words became furniture inside our home.
Matteo had known the truth.
“You ordered it.”
He looked at the recorder.
Then at me.
“I gave an order.”
The difference enraged me.
I seized the blue bowl and threw it.
It struck the wall approximately 1 meter from his head and shattered across the wooden floor.
Matteo did not move.
“Do not stand there and give me mafia grammar.”
“I’m not.”
“You said he couldn’t leave alive.”
“Yes.”
My throat burned.
“Then what exactly am I misunderstanding?”
Matteo lowered his head.
For the 1st time since I had known him, the most dangerous man in Chicago looked like someone who did not possess the courage required to continue a conversation.
That frightened me more than denial would have.
“I cannot tell you yet.”
Something inside me went completely still.
“Yet?”
“There are things contained in that night that involve people who are still alive.”
“My brother isn’t.”
“I know.”
“Do not say that as though you’re allowed to know.”
His eyes closed briefly.
It was the smallest possible flinch.
I saw it.
I hated myself for seeing it.
“You have 30 seconds,” I said. “Tell me why the man I love is on a recording ordering my brother’s death.”
Matteo looked toward the window.
Beyond it, the lake was gray beneath a sky preparing for rain.
The same lake where he had kissed me and asked permission.
The same kitchen where he had told me forever.
“I was trying to keep Ethan alive.”
I laughed again.
“No.”
“Chloe—”
“No. You don’t get to transform murder into protection because you happen to be good at speaking quietly.”
“He was working with the Morettis.”
I stopped.
The surname shifted the air.
“Ethan?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It isn’t.”
“My brother repaired heating systems.”
“He also transported financial ledgers.”
“You’re lying.”
“I have never lied to you about what I am.”
“You lied about him.”
“Yes.”
The admission hurt worse because it was true.
Matteo crossed the room by 1 step.
I moved backward immediately.
He stopped.
The distance returned.
Those old 3 steps.
For months, that distance had disappeared.
Now I put it back myself.
His face changed when he understood.
“Do not come closer.”
He obeyed.
“Ethan discovered that the Morettis were using legitimate shipping companies to move money through medical equipment contracts,” Matteo said. “He did not begin as part of their organization. He repaired refrigeration systems in 2 warehouses. He saw numbers he was never supposed to see.”
“Then why is Lorenzo in that photograph?”
“Because Ethan came to us.”
“For what?”
“Protection.”
The answer made my knees weak.
I lowered myself into the chair beside the counter.
Matteo remained standing.
“He had copied a ledger,” he continued. “Names. Transactions. Officials. Police. Judges. Men inside my family and theirs. Enough information to start a war.”
“And you protected him by saying he couldn’t leave a building alive?”
Matteo’s mouth tightened.
“The recording is incomplete.”
“Convenient.”
“It is.”
His agreement made me look at him.
He appeared exhausted suddenly.
Not physically.
Older.
As though something he had buried for years had begun climbing out through his bones.
“What came before that sentence?” I asked.
He did not answer.
“What came after?”
Silence.
I stood.
“Then we’re done.”
His entire body changed.
Not dramatically.
Matteo never did anything dramatically.
His fingers tightened once at his side.
That was all.
But I felt the movement from across the kitchen as though he had struck the wall.
“Chloe.”
“We’re done.”
“Do not decide this from a manipulated recording.”
“I’m deciding it from the fact that for 6 months you slept beside me knowing exactly who Ethan was.”
“Yes.”
“You bought this house knowing.”
“Yes.”
“You let me love you knowing.”
He looked at me for so long I became furious that I could still read pain in his face.
“I did.”
“Why?”
His voice fell.
“Because I was selfish.”
That was the first answer I believed completely.
The tears came then.
Not loudly.
I hated him for that too.
I hated that my grief around Matteo had always been quiet.
“I need to leave.”
“I’ll have the driver—”
“No.”
“Chloe, whoever sent this package knows where we live.”
“Our house?”
The word escaped before I could stop it.
Our.
Matteo heard.
So did I.
His face almost collapsed.
Almost.
I looked away.
“I’m going to Mari.”
“I’ll send Lorenzo outside the building.”
“No.”
“This is not negotiable.”
“Everything involving my life is negotiable now.”
His eyes met mine.
For a moment, Don DeLuca appeared.
Cold authority.
Absolute command.
Then it disappeared.
He lowered his head.
“All right.”
I packed in 6 minutes.
I placed clothing into a bag with hands that refused to stop shaking.
In the bedroom, my toothbrush stood beside his.
I left it.
I hated myself for leaving it because the gesture felt theatrical.
Then I hated myself for caring.
When I returned downstairs, Matteo remained exactly where I had left him.
The broken blue bowl lay on the floor.
He had not touched it.
I carried the package beneath my arm.
His eyes moved toward it.
“That stays with me.”
“No.”
“It may contain evidence—”
“It concerns Ethan.”
“It concerns you now.”
“Everything concerns me now.”
We stared at each other.
He surrendered first.
I walked toward the front door.
“Chloe.”
My hand stopped on the handle.
I did not turn.
“If you never forgive me,” he said, “I will understand.”
I closed my eyes.
“But do not believe I came near you because of Ethan.”
I wanted not to listen.
My body listened anyway.
“I stayed away from you for 3 months after I learned your full name,” he continued. “I tried to have you transferred. I canceled it before the paperwork was processed because I couldn’t—”
His voice stopped.
I turned.
He looked furious at himself.
“Because you couldn’t what?”
“Because I had already begun looking for you when you were not in the room.”
The pain in my chest became unbearable.
“That doesn’t make this better.”
“I know.”
“I wish you would stop knowing everything.”
“So do I.”
I opened the door.
Rain had begun.
A black SUV stood beyond the porch.
I stared at it.
“You said no driver,” Matteo said behind me. “I listened.”
“Then whose car is that?”
Matteo became completely still.
The vehicle’s rear door opened.
Lorenzo stepped out.
His face was pale.
In 6 months, I had never seen Lorenzo Ricci look pale.
He crossed the yard quickly.
“Inside,” he said.
Matteo’s voice changed instantly.
“What happened?”
Lorenzo entered and closed the door behind him.
His eyes went first to the package in my arms.
Then to Matteo.
“We have a problem.”
“That is evident.”
“Vanessa disappeared.”
The name moved through me like ice.
Matteo did not blink.
“When?”
“Three hours ago.”
“Security?”
“Two dead.”
My breath stopped.
Lorenzo looked at me.
“And there’s more.”
He removed an old photograph from inside his jacket and placed it on the counter beside the broken pieces of the blue bowl.
I recognized Ethan immediately.
He stood beside Vanessa DeLuca.
Her arm was around his waist.
They were smiling.
Not the smile of acquaintances.
Not the smile of business associates.
The intimate smile of 2 people who had once believed they knew each other.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written a date.
Four months before Ethan died.
May you like
Beneath it were 5 words.
Ask Matteo who betrayed him.
