Chapter 5: The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Gone
Adrian moved first.
He crossed the diner in four strides and pushed the door open.
Cold air and rain swept in.
He stepped onto the sidewalk, looked both directions, came back inside.
"Nothing," he said.
"Someone was there," Dana said.
"I know."
I was still looking at the photograph.
My mother, young and laughing, standing next to a woman with Vincent Moretti's cheekbones and a smile that looked like it cost her something.
"She's alive," I said.
"I believe so." Adrian came back to the counter.
"I've believed it for about eight months.
I haven't been able to prove it."
"What happened twenty-three years ago?
Why does your family think she's de@d?"
Adrian was quiet for a moment.
Outside, a car passed slowly through the rain.
"My father built the Moretti Group on two foundations.
His own ambition, and Gerald Foss's legal architecture.
Foss structured every acquisition, every contract, every arrangement that couldn't survive daylight." He sat back down.
"My aunt Margaret was the only person in the family who understood what Foss was actually doing.
She was trained as an accountant.
She saw the structure from the inside."
"She tried to expose him."
"She tried to leave and take documentation with her.
Foss found out.
My father was told she'd been in an accident.
He was shown paperwork.
He grieved." Adrian's voice was careful and flat.
"I was eight years old.
I remember the funeral.
There was a closed casket."
Dana made a quiet sound.
"Your father doesn't know she's alive," I said.
"I don't think so.
No."
"But Foss does."
"Foss arranged it." Adrian looked at me directly.
"And your mother helped Margaret disappear.
That's why she wouldn't sign the NDA.
She already knew too much, and she'd already chosen a side."
I thought about my mother in her hospital bed.
The oxygen machine.
The way she sometimes woke at night and stared at the ceiling for a long time before she knew I was in the room.
I'd assumed it was the illness.
"She never said a word to me," I said.
"She was protecting you."
"She was protecting a woman she helped hide from a mafia attorney for twenty years while she worked double shifts and argued with insurance companies and—" My voice cracked.
I stopped.
Adrian didn't fill the silence.
That was the right thing to do.
I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth for a moment.
Dana put her arm around my shoulders.
I let her.
"Okay," I said finally.
"Okay."
"Emily—"
"I said okay." I straightened.
"What do you need from me?"
"Foss knows my father came here tonight.
He'll know I followed.
He'll assume we spoke.
Whatever he's been building, he'll move faster now." Adrian folded the photograph and put it back in his coat.
"I need access to documents my father signed that Foss controls.
I can't get near them without triggering his legal safeguards.
But there's a secondary archive — paper records from the Hargrove acquisition — that was never digitized.
It's stored in a building my father owns outright, with no Foss involvement."
"And you need someone he doesn't recognize to go in."
"I need someone he hasn't prepared for."
I looked at the business card still sitting on the counter.
"You said the job was telling your father no."
"That's part of it."
"What's the other part?"
"Helping me get my aunt back before Foss realizes she's no longer hidden."
The diner was very quiet.
Then my phone buzzed again.
Same unknown number.
May you like
One new message: *She's closer than he thinks.
So are you.*
