Chapter 4 - The Name That Should Not Have Been ThereAt 2:17 in the morning, Sophia Moretti woke because someone was standing beside her bed.
She did not scream.
Six months earlier, she would have.
Six months earlier, she had been Sophia Rossi, a waitress who counted tips beneath fluorescent kitchen lights and checked over her shoulder when she walked home after midnight.
Now she slept with a pistol in the drawer beside her bed.
Her hand moved toward it before her eyes were fully open.
“Easy.”
Enzo’s voice stopped her.
Sophia sat upright.
Moonlight slipped through the curtains of the Manhattan penthouse Dante had purchased after the Sands Point estate became impossible to use. Enzo stood near the foot of the bed wearing a black suit, no tie, and an expression Sophia had learned to fear.
“What happened?”
“Dante wants you downstairs.”
Sophia looked beside her.
The other half of the bed was empty.
“When did he leave?”
“Forty minutes ago.”
That answer bothered her more than it should have.
Dante never left without telling her anymore.
Not since their wedding.
Not since the warehouse.
Not since Sophia had watched Vanessa Genovese shoot her father in the back.
She pulled on a robe.
“Is Elena okay?”
“She’s safe.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
Enzo hesitated.
That frightened her.
“Just come downstairs.”
The private elevator required a fingerprint and a rotating security code. When its doors opened onto the lower level, Sophia immediately knew something had happened.
Four Moretti soldiers stood outside Dante’s study.
Two were bleeding.
One had a bandage wrapped around his hand.
Inside, Dante stood behind his desk.
His white dress shirt was stained with blood.
Sophia stopped.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Whose blood is that?”
Dante looked toward the chair opposite him.
A man sat there with his hands tied behind his back.
Sophia recognized him.
Anthony Bell.
Assistant district attorney.
Forty-three years old.
Married.
Two children.
His name appeared on page 117 of the ledger.
According to Frank Rossi’s handwritten notes, Bell had accepted money from three different crime families while building his public reputation as a prosecutor who was supposedly cleaning up organized crime.
Now his lower lip was split.
One eye was swollen.
And he looked terrified.
Sophia turned toward Dante.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing yet.”
“That is not an answer.”
Bell laughed nervously.
“Your husband thinks I tried to have him killed.”
Sophia’s eyes returned to Dante.
“Did he?”
Dante slid a photograph across the desk.
Sophia picked it up.
It showed a black sedan burning beneath an overpass.
She recognized the car.
Dante’s Mercedes.
“The driver?” she asked.
“Dead.”
The room became colder.
Sophia placed the photograph down.
“When?”
“Eleven forty-three.”
“You were supposed to be in that car.”
“Yes.”
“Why weren’t you?”
Dante’s eyes hardened.
“You called me.”
Sophia remembered.
She had called Dante from Veluto because Elena had refused to leave after dinner and was arguing with Pierre about whether French people understood tomatoes.
Dante had changed his route.
A meaningless domestic interruption had saved his life.
Sophia looked at Bell.
“What does he have to do with it?”
Dante tossed a burner phone onto the desk.
“Number connected to the bomb team received a call from Bell’s office.”
“I didn’t make that call,” Bell said immediately.
Dante walked around the desk.
Bell flinched.
“I know.”
Sophia stared at her husband.
“You know?”
“I figured it out twenty minutes ago.”
“Then why is he tied to a chair?”
“Because someone wanted me to find the connection.”
Dante placed both hands on the desk.
“This wasn’t an assassination attempt.”
Sophia understood.
“It was a message.”
Dante nodded.
“Someone is showing us they know the ledger.”
Bell swallowed.
“There’s more.”
Dante looked at him.
Bell hesitated.
“Tell her.”
The prosecutor stared at Sophia.
“Yesterday morning, a package arrived at my office.”
“What package?”
“A photocopy.”
“Of what?”
Bell’s face lost what little color remained.
“A page from the ledger.”
Sophia felt her stomach tighten.
“That’s impossible.”
Only four people knew where the original ledger was hidden.
Sophia.
Dante.
Enzo.
Elena.
And even Elena did not know the exact location.
Sophia had insisted on that.
The ledger was no longer inside Veluto.
After their marriage, Sophia had moved it personally.
She had not told Dante where.
That had been part of their agreement.
He possessed the empire.
She possessed the insurance.
It was the only way she could sleep at night.
“What page?” Sophia asked.
Bell looked at Dante.
“Tell her.”
“Page 117. My page.”
“And?”
“There was handwriting at the bottom.”
Sophia’s pulse quickened.
“What did it say?”
Bell looked directly at her.
“Ask the waitress who her mother really was.”
Silence.
Sophia almost laughed.
“My mother?”
Dante watched her carefully.
Sophia’s mother, Maria Rossi, had died when Sophia was twelve.
Cancer.
At least that was what Frank had told her.
Maria had been gentle, quiet, and painfully private.
Sophia remembered flour on her hands.
Old Italian songs.
A blue dress she wore every Sunday.
Nothing about organized crime.
Nothing about ledgers.
Nothing about Morettis.
“This is ridiculous,” Sophia said.
Dante opened a drawer.
He removed a photograph.
It was old.
Probably taken sometime in the late 1990s.
Four men stood outside Veluto.
One was Dante’s uncle.
One was Frank Rossi.
Sophia recognized them immediately.
The third was a man she did not know.
The fourth person was not a man.
It was a woman.
Sophia stopped breathing.
Her mother.
Maria Rossi looked twenty years younger.
She was standing beside Dante’s uncle.
Not behind Frank.
Beside Dante’s uncle.
And she was holding the leather-bound ledger.
Sophia sat down.
“No.”
Dante came around the desk.
“Sophia.”
“No.”
She picked up the photograph.
Her mother’s face smiled back at her from another lifetime.
“Where did you get this?”
“It was delivered to Veluto tonight.”
“By who?”
“No return address.”
Sophia turned the photograph over.
There were five words written on the back.
THE WRONG ROSSI STOLE THE BOOK.
Sophia read them twice.
Then a third time.
“My father told everyone he stole it.”
“Apparently he lied.”
Sophia laughed once, bitterly.
“That would be consistent.”
Dante crouched in front of her.
“There is something else.”
She looked at him.
“I searched the ledger again.”
“You don’t have the ledger.”
“No.”
He paused.
“But months ago, I photographed several pages.”
Sophia stood so quickly that the chair scraped backward.
“You what?”
“I needed backup.”
“You promised me.”
“I promised I wouldn’t take the book.”
“You photographed it?”
“Only sections.”
Sophia stared at him.
Their marriage had been built on a strange kind of trust.
Not innocence.
Neither of them possessed that.
But honesty.
She had forgiven the first lie—the lie that brought her into his home—because he had eventually chosen her over the reason for it.
Now she felt the old wound opening again.
“You told me I was the keeper of the keys.”
“You are.”
“No. You gave me a key after making yourself a copy.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“This is not the time.”
“It is exactly the time.”
Bell shifted nervously.
“Maybe I should—”
“Be quiet,” Sophia and Dante said simultaneously.
Bell became silent.
Sophia pointed at Dante.
“You do not get to decide which lies matter because somebody tried to blow up your car.”
“I did it to protect us.”
“You always say that.”
“Because protection is my responsibility.”
“And what is mine?”
Dante did not answer.
Sophia stepped closer.
“To smile beside you at restaurants? To intimidate senators? To wear diamonds while you make decisions behind my back?”
“That is not fair.”
“No?”
Her voice remained quiet.
That made Dante more uncomfortable than shouting would have.
“You brought me into your world because you thought I was useful. Then you fell in love with me. I believed that changed the rules.”
“It did.”
“Then stop treating me like a beautiful hostage.”
The words landed.
Dante’s face changed.
Before he could respond, Enzo’s phone vibrated.
He looked at the screen.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We have another problem.”
Enzo turned the phone toward them.
A photograph had been sent to every major news outlet in New York.
It showed Dante and Sophia sitting at table 9 during Veluto’s reopening.
Across their faces, someone had drawn red Xs.
Beneath the photograph were six words.
THE LEDGER BELONGS TO THE DEAD.
Sophia stared at it.
Then another message appeared.
This one had been sent directly to her phone.
Unknown number.
She opened it.
A photograph filled the screen.
Elena Moretti.
She was sitting in the rear seat of a car.
Her eyes were closed.
Sophia’s heart stopped.
“Mama.”
Dante grabbed the phone.
His entire body changed.
The husband disappeared.
The crime boss returned.
“Enzo.”
Enzo was already moving.
“I’m calling her detail.”
“No answer,” one of the guards said from the doorway. “We lost contact nine minutes ago.”
Dante’s face became terrifyingly calm.
Then Sophia’s phone rang.
Unknown caller.
Dante reached for it.
Sophia pulled it away.
“It came to me.”
“Sophia—”
“It came to me.”
She answered.
“Hello?”
A man breathed quietly on the other end.
Then he spoke.
“Your mother used to answer the phone exactly like that.”
Sophia froze.
“Who are you?”
“You have something that belongs to me.”
“The ledger?”
A soft laugh.
“No, Sophia.”
The voice lowered.
“The truth.”
The call ended.
Dante immediately ordered the number traced.
Sophia barely heard him.
She was staring at the photograph of her mother.
For years, she had believed Frank Rossi’s gambling had destroyed their family.
Now she wondered if the destruction had begun long before the first card game.
She looked toward Dante.
“Find Elena.”
“I will.”
“No.”
Sophia stepped close enough that their faces were inches apart.
“We will.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed.
“This is not negotiable.”
“Neither am I.”
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then something changed in Dante’s expression.
Perhaps he finally understood that the woman standing before him was no longer the waitress he had ordered into his car.
She had survived the Genoveses.
She had buried her father.
She had hidden the most dangerous book in New York.
And somebody had just taken the closest thing she had to a mother.
Dante nodded once.
“Together.”
Sophia looked down at the old photograph.
Maria Rossi stood beside Dante’s uncle, holding the ledger.
On the back, beneath the threatening message, Sophia noticed something she had missed.
A faint handwritten number.
She showed Dante.
“What does it mean?”
He stared at it.
Then his face changed.
“I know.”
“Where?”
“St. Vincent Cemetery.”
Sophia’s stomach tightened.
“Why?”
Dante looked at the photograph of Maria.
“Because plot 317 is where my uncle is buried.”
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And for the first time, Sophia realized the secret buried inside the ledger might not be about money at all.
It might be about her.
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