Chapter 4: The Man Who Knew Too Much
I let the call go to voicemail.
Then I looked at Elena.
"Has Marco contacted you?
Since you left?"
She hesitated.
One second too long.
"Elena."
"Once," she said.
"About eight months ago.
He called the number I use for work.
I don't know how he got it."
"What did he say?"
"That he knew where I was.
That he was glad I'd been smart enough to stay quiet." She paused.
"He said to keep being smart."
I kept my expression level.
"And you didn't tell me."
"I didn't tell you because I had no way of knowing if you'd sent him."
I stood up.
"I need to make a call."
"Luca—"
"Not to Marco." I looked at her.
"Lock the door behind me.
Don't open it for anyone until I come back."
Her eyes narrowed.
"You're frightening me."
"Good.
Stay frightened until I get back."
I stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut.
I heard the bolt slide across on the other side.
Then I called Dante Ricci — the one man in my organization who had never reported to Marco, who had worked directly under my father before me, who I trusted the way you trust someone who has had every opportunity to betray you and never taken it.
He picked up on the second ring.
"Boss."
"Where is Marco right now?"
A pause.
"His car is outside your building on Fifth.
He's been there since this morning."
"He's been watching my building."
"Yes."
"He didn't follow me to Queens?"
"Not that I can see.
But, Boss — there's something else." Dante's voice dropped.
"He met with Vincent Caruso this afternoon.
Two hours.
Private room at Caruso's restaurant on Mulberry."
Vincent Caruso.
My father's oldest rival.
A man who had been waiting twenty years for a crack in the Moretti organization wide enough to walk through.
"When did that meeting happen?"
"While you were in the hospital.
Day two."
While I was unconscious, wired to machines, not yet certain I would walk out of Mount Sinai on my own feet — Marco had been sitting across a table from Vincent Caruso.
"Pull everything," I said.
"Every call Marco has made in the last thirty days.
Every meeting.
Every transfer."
"Already started," Dante said.
"Boss, there's one more thing."
"Tell me."
"The heart attack.
The doctors said it was natural.
Heat, stress, the usual." A pause.
"But one of our people at the hospital — she noticed something in your bloodwork.
Something that wasn't in the official report."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"What kind of something?"
"She's not certain.
She said it could be nothing.
But she flagged it anyway." Another pause.
"She said the levels were consistent with a specific compound.
Something that accelerates cardiac stress under heat exposure."
The meeting near Fifty-Third Street.
Marco calling, calling, calling.
Me ignoring him.
Had he been warning me?
Or had he been checking to see if it was working?
"Get me the name of the compound," I said.
"And find out who prepared my lunch that day."
"Already looking."
I stood in the hallway of Elena's building.
The wallpaper was peeling near the baseboard.
A child's bicycle was chained to the stair railing.
Somewhere above me, a television was playing, the sound of a game show audience laughing at something.
Ordinary life.
The kind of life that had nothing to do with mine.
And yet my daughter had been living inside it for six years, carrying medicine through summer heat, keeping watch over strangers, growing up in a world I had never once thought to look for her in.
Because Marco had told me she was gone.
Marco, who had told Elena I had ordered her brother's death.
Marco, who had met with Vincent Caruso while I was in a hospital bed.
Marco, who was sitting outside my building right now, waiting.
I went back to Elena's door and knocked twice.
The bolt slid back.
She opened it and read my face immediately.
"What's wrong?"
"I need you to take Sofia somewhere tonight.
Not here.
Somewhere Marco doesn't know."
"Marco." The name came out of her mouth like something she'd been afraid to say for years.
"This is about Marco."
"Yes."
"He did this to us, didn't he." It wasn't a question.
"Seven years ago.
He's the reason we—"
"I think so.
I'm not certain yet.
But until I am—"
"We need to go."
"Yes."
She didn't argue.
She didn't ask for more explanation.
She simply turned back into the apartment and called down the hallway.
"Sofia.
Put your shoes on.
We're going to Aunt Rosa's."
Sofia appeared in the hallway doorway, shoes already in hand, watching me with those careful eyes.
"Is the sad-eyed man coming?" she asked.
Elena looked at me.
"No," I said.
"But I'll know where you are."
Sofia considered this.
Then she sat on the floor and began putting her shoes on with the focused seriousness of someone who understood, without being told, that this was not the moment to ask questions.
I watched her small hands work the laces.
She double-knotted them.
Six years old, and she double-knotted her laces.
My phone vibrated again.
This time it was a message from Dante.
Four words and a name.
I read it once.
Then I walked back to the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor.
Marco had made one mistake.
May you like
Only one.
But it was the kind of mistake that doesn't get made twice.
