Chapter 5: Everything Marco Built on a Lie
I didn't go back to Fifth Avenue.
I had Dante bring the car to a side street two blocks from Elena's building, and I sat in the back while he drove, reading everything he'd pulled in the last six hours.
Phone records.
Transfer logs.
A photograph taken outside Caruso's restaurant — Marco and Vincent, standing on the sidewalk, shaking hands.
Smiling.
And a name.
The name Dante had sent me in those four words.
Dr.
Felix Arnaud.
A private physician with a practice in Midtown and a secondary income that didn't appear in any tax record.
He had been paid three times in the past year through a shell account that traced back, after four layers, to Marco Bianchi.
The compound in my bloodwork was called something long and clinical that I wouldn't remember.
What I would remember was what Dante's contact had said about it: that in sufficient heat, with sufficient stress, it was nearly undetectable.
That it looked, to most physicians, exactly like a natural cardiac event.
Nearly undetectable.
I had been in ninety-three-degree heat.
I had been under significant stress.
And Marco had been calling me, calling me, calling me — and I had ignored him.
I sat with that for a long time.
Then I called Marco.
He picked up on the first ring.
"Boss.
I've been trying to reach you all day.
Where are you?
Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I said.
"Come to the warehouse on Delancey.
I need to go over some things."
A half-second pause.
"Of course.
When?"
"Now."
"I'll be there in twenty minutes."
He was there in fifteen.
Which told me he'd been close.
Which told me he'd been following.
The warehouse was one of the original Moretti properties — my father's, before mine.
High ceilings, concrete floors, the smell of river water and old machinery.
Dante and two others were already inside when Marco arrived.
He walked in with his coat open, his hands visible, the posture of a man who has nothing to hide.
I was standing near the center of the floor.
He stopped ten feet away.
Looked at Dante.
Looked at the others.
Looked back at me.
"What's this about?"
"Sit down, Marco."
He didn't sit.
"Luca, whatever you've heard—"
"Sit down."
He sat.
I placed the photograph on the table in front of him.
Marco and Vincent Caruso, shaking hands, smiling.
He looked at it for a long moment.
Then he looked up at me.
"That's not what it looks like."
"Tell me what it looks like."
"Vincent approached me.
He said he wanted to talk about a business arrangement.
I went to hear what he had to say.
I was going to report it to you."
"When?"
"When the time was right."
"The time was right two days ago when I woke up in a hospital bed."
Marco's jaw tightened.
"You weren't in any condition—"
"I placed the document beside the photograph.
The transfer records.
The shell account.
Dr.
Felix Arnaud's name at the bottom.
Marco looked at the document.
His hands, resting on the table, went very still.
"Seven years ago," I said, "you told Elena Russo that I had ordered her brother's death.
And then you told her that if she stayed, she would be next."
Silence.
"You told me she had gone back to Naples.
By choice."
More silence.
"And three days ago, I collapsed on a Manhattan sidewalk in ninety-three-degree heat, and a six-year-old girl called the ambulance because every adult around me was standing and watching." I paused.
"That six-year-old girl is my daughter.
A daughter I didn't know existed because you made sure I wouldn't look for her mother."
Marco's face had gone the color of old concrete.
"Luca—"
"Don't."
"I did what I thought was necessary.
Elena's brother was a liability.
She was a liability.
You were getting soft.
You were making decisions based on—"
"On what?"
"On feeling." He said it like an accusation.
"You were going to walk away from everything your father built.
For a woman.
I couldn't let that happen."
"So you decided for me."
"Someone had to."
I looked at him for a long time.
Long enough that he shifted in his chair.
"And Caruso?" I said.
"Was that also for my benefit?"
Marco said nothing.
"The compound in my bloodwork," I said.
"Dr.
Arnaud.
The shell account.
Was that also someone having to do what was necessary?"
The silence this time was different.
Heavier.
"I have a daughter," I said quietly.
"Six years old.
She has a heart condition that requires surgery.
She has been living in a two-room apartment in Queens, walking to the pharmacy alone, because her mother has been working two jobs to survive." I picked up the photograph and looked at it one more time.
"And she has never once had a father.
Because you decided I didn't need one."
Marco opened his mouth.
"Don't speak," I said.
"There's nothing left that I want to hear from you."
Dante stepped forward.
Marco looked at him.
Then back at me.
Something moved across his face — the calculation of a man measuring his options and finding them gone.
May you like
"You won't—" he started.
"I already have," I said.
