Chapter 4 - The Mafia King's Sister Knew the Truth—And the Woman He Was Protecting Became His Greatest WeaknessAnna called her mother seven times.
Every call went to voicemail.
By the eighth attempt, her hands were trembling so violently that she could barely hold the phone.
"Something happened to her."
Lorenzo stood beside the fireplace, speaking quietly to Leo.
"Get two teams to the apartment. Nobody enters without checking the building first. I want every camera between her front door and the street."
Anna rounded on him.
"Stop talking about her like she's a package you're trying to locate."
Lorenzo ended the call.
"Your mother may have been taken by someone who knows my security procedures. I need information before I send anyone charging through that door."
"Then take me there."
"No."
"She's my mother."
"And you're the reason they want her."
The words struck harder than he intended.
Anna stepped backward.
Lorenzo saw the hurt cross her face.
For a moment, he looked as though he wanted to take the words back.
Instead, he said, "I mean they're using her to reach you."
"I know what you meant."
Anna turned away.
She had spent ten years protecting Elena Bennett from the past. She paid her mother's rent, arranged her medical appointments, and made sure the older woman never had to work another exhausting overnight cleaning shift.
Now Anna had walked into the world they escaped, and within hours, that world had found her mother.
A woman appeared at the top of the staircase.
"Why is everyone shouting?"
She wore black silk pajamas beneath an oversized cardigan. Her dark hair fell loosely around her shoulders, and her resemblance to Lorenzo was unmistakable.
Except her eyes were warmer.
And considerably more suspicious.
"Giulia," Lorenzo said. "Go back upstairs."
His sister ignored him.
She descended the staircase, studying Anna with open curiosity.
"You're the woman from the hotel."
Anna blinked.
"You know about me?"
Giulia gave a humorless laugh.
"My brother has spent the last three hours turning Manhattan upside down because of you. Of course I know."
"Giulia."
"What? You kidnapped a concierge and brought her home. That's not exactly subtle, Lorenzo."
Anna folded her arms.
"Finally. Someone willing to call it what it was."
Giulia's eyebrows rose.
Then she smiled.
"I like her."
Lorenzo looked exhausted.
"Not now."
Giulia noticed the ledger on the table.
Her smile disappeared.
"Where did you get that?"
Anna followed her gaze.
"Your father left it."
Giulia went pale.
"No."
She approached the table.
"That book was supposed to be destroyed."
Lorenzo stared at her.
"What do you know?"
Giulia looked from her brother to Anna.
Then she whispered, "More than either of you."
Before Lorenzo could question her, Leo returned.
"We found the apartment."
Anna hurried forward.
"And?"
"The front door was forced. There's evidence of a struggle."
Anna felt sick.
"Where's my mother?"
Leo hesitated.
"We don't know."
The silence that followed seemed endless.
Then Giulia spoke.
"Matteo Russo."
Lorenzo turned.
"What?"
"He took her."
"How can you know that?"
Giulia looked toward the portrait above the fireplace.
"Because Matteo has been alive for fifteen years. And I've been sending him money."
Lorenzo didn't move.
Anna stared.
"What did you just say?"
Giulia's eyes filled with tears.
"I thought I was paying him to stay away."
Lorenzo's voice became dangerously quiet.
"Start talking."
Giulia sank into a chair.
Five years earlier, while studying art history in Florence, she had received an envelope containing photographs of their father with a young woman.
The woman was not their mother.
She was Matteo Russo's sister, Sofia.
Salvatore Moretti had maintained a secret relationship with Sofia for years. When she threatened to expose financial arrangements between the Moretti and Russo families, she disappeared.
Matteo claimed Salvatore had ordered her death.
He demanded money in exchange for silence.
At first, Giulia paid from her inheritance.
Then the demands grew.
When she threatened to tell Lorenzo, Matteo sent a photograph of her standing outside her university.
On the back were five words.
Your brother cannot protect everyone.
"So you kept paying him?" Lorenzo asked.
Giulia wiped her cheeks.
"I was twenty-two. I was scared."
"You should have told me."
"You would have killed him."
"Perhaps."
"And then what? Another family war? Another funeral? Another woman disappearing because men in our family can't solve anything without violence?"
Lorenzo looked away.
Anna watched him carefully.
For all his power, he seemed incapable of answering his sister.
Giulia reached into her cardigan pocket and produced a folded letter.
"He sent this yesterday."
Lorenzo took it.
His eyes moved across the page.
Then his expression changed.
"What does it say?" Anna demanded.
He handed it to her.
The letter contained a single sentence.
The accountant's daughter will open the door her father closed.
Beneath it was an address in Brooklyn.
Anna recognized the street.
Her father had once taken her there when she was seven.
It was where he taught her to ride a bicycle.
Where he bought her lemon ice from a corner shop.
Where he told her that numbers could reveal the truth even when people lied.
She looked up.
"There's something there."
Lorenzo nodded.
"Apparently."
"Then we go."
"No."
Anna stepped toward him.
"You don't get to keep saying that."
"Your mother is missing. Matteo wants you. Walking into a location he provided is exactly what he expects."
"Then tell me your better plan."
Lorenzo looked at Leo.
"Find out who owns the property."
Leo checked his phone.
"Already did. It's an abandoned parish school. Closed twelve years ago."
Anna's pulse accelerated.
"Saint Agnes."
Both men looked at her.
"That's the school where my father volunteered."
She closed her eyes.
Memories surfaced.
A basement classroom.
Wooden desks.
The smell of chalk.
Her father teaching immigrant children mathematics after working long days.
And a metal cabinet beneath the stairs.
She opened her eyes.
"He kept records there."
Lorenzo moved closer.
"What kind of records?"
"I don't know. But he told me once that the safest place to hide the truth was somewhere people had stopped looking."
Giulia stood.
"Then maybe Matteo isn't telling you where to go."
Anna turned toward her.
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe he's telling you what he already found."
Lorenzo looked toward Leo.
"Prepare the cars."
Anna exhaled.
"You're taking me?"
"I'm taking you somewhere safe while my people investigate."
"No."
Lorenzo closed his eyes briefly.
"Anna."
She stepped closer.
"Listen carefully. My father built whatever this is. My mother has been taken because of it. And you need someone who understands the way he thought."
"You're not trained for this."
"Neither was I when you dragged me into a room full of armed men."
That silenced him.
She lowered her voice.
"You said I could choose whether to stay."
"I did."
"Then stop pretending my choice doesn't matter."
Lorenzo looked at her for a long time.
Finally, he nodded.
"You come with me. You follow the security team's instructions. And if I tell you there's an immediate danger, you move."
Anna considered him.
"Fine. But you don't threaten me again."
Something passed across his face.
Regret, perhaps.
"You have my word."
Giulia watched them.
Then she shook her head.
"Oh, this is going to end terribly."
Neither answered.
Twenty minutes later, three vehicles left the mansion.
Anna rode beside Lorenzo in the Maybach.
The city looked different now.
Every pedestrian seemed suspicious.
Every passing car might conceal someone watching.
Anna stared out at the lights of the Queensboro Bridge.
"Why did your father keep my father's ledger?"
Lorenzo considered the question.
"Salvatore believed information was more valuable than money."
"Was he a good man?"
"No."
The answer came immediately.
Anna turned.
Lorenzo continued.
"He was capable of generosity. He paid for hospitals, schools, scholarships. He also ruined people who crossed him."
"Did you love him?"
Lorenzo looked toward the window.
"Yes."
"Do you still?"
"Some days."
Anna understood that answer more than she wanted to.
Her own father had lied to her for years.
Perhaps to protect her.
Perhaps because he was ashamed.
Perhaps because love and deception were not always opposites.
She watched Lorenzo's reflection in the glass.
"Do you want to be like him?"
"No."
"Then why are you?"
He turned.
The question hung between them.
Finally, he said, "Because I inherited a world that punishes hesitation."
"That's an explanation. Not an excuse."
He gave a faint smile.
"You enjoy telling me things I don't want to hear."
"Someone should."
The Maybach slowed.
Leo's voice came through the vehicle's speaker.
"We're approaching the school."
Lorenzo straightened.
"Any movement?"
"Nothing visible."
The abandoned building stood behind a rusted fence.
Its brick facade was covered in graffiti.
Several windows had been boarded shut.
Anna stepped out into the cold.
For a moment, she was seven years old again.
Her father's hand held hers.
He was laughing.
Count the steps, principessa. Numbers never lie.
Anna approached the entrance.
Lorenzo remained beside her.
"Are you all right?"
She nodded.
"Just remembering."
Inside, the school smelled of dust and damp plaster.
Their flashlights swept across abandoned desks.
A broken crucifix lay beneath a classroom window.
Anna led them toward the basement.
She counted the stairs.
Seventeen.
Exactly as she remembered.
At the bottom, she stopped.
The metal cabinet was gone.
In its place stood a newer wooden panel.
She touched it.
"Someone renovated this."
Leo examined the wall.
"Recently."
Lorenzo looked toward Anna.
"Can you remember anything else?"
She closed her eyes.
Her father had always made games out of ordinary things.
Count the stairs.
Find the odd number.
Look for the thing that didn't belong.
Then she remembered.
"The third tile."
She crouched beside the wall.
There were six square tiles beneath the old staircase.
The third had a small crack across one corner.
Anna pressed it.
Nothing.
She tried lifting the edge.
The tile moved.
Beneath it lay a narrow metal compartment.
Inside was a sealed plastic envelope.
Lorenzo knelt beside her.
Anna opened it.
There was a small brass key.
A photograph.
And a handwritten note.
If Anna finds this, the first betrayal has already happened.
Her throat tightened.
She unfolded the note.
Do not trust the man who claims to have killed Vincenzo Russo.
Anna slowly turned toward Lorenzo.
He stared at the paper.
Then Leo's radio crackled.
"Boss. We have a problem."
Lorenzo stood.
"What problem?"
"Russo's body never reached the morgue."
Silence.
Leo continued.
"The transport vehicle was intercepted. Two of our men are missing."
Anna looked down at the warning in her father's handwriting.
"That means—"
Lorenzo finished the thought.
"Someone wants us to believe Vincenzo is dead."
At that moment, a telephone began ringing somewhere in the abandoned school.
An old-fashioned landline.
Its sharp metallic sound echoed through the empty corridors.
Leo raised his weapon.
Lorenzo looked toward the darkness.
Anna followed the sound into a classroom.
A dusty black telephone sat on the teacher's desk.
It rang again.
And again.
She reached for it.
Lorenzo caught her wrist.
"Don't."
Anna looked at him.
Then she lifted the receiver.
"Hello?"
A familiar voice answered.
Her mother's.
"Anna?"
"Mama!"
"Listen carefully, sweetheart."
Elena was crying.
"Your father didn't die because he stole money."
Anna closed her eyes.
"I know."
"No, baby. You don't."
A man's voice spoke in the background.
Then Elena gasped.
"Anna, the man standing beside you—"
The line crackled.
"—his father wasn't the one who betrayed us."
Anna's heart hammered.
"Who was?"
Elena whispered a name.
May you like
And Lorenzo Moretti went completely still.
Because the name was his own.
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