Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE
By the time we reached Lake Forest, Christmas had stopped feeling like Christmas.
The wreath on my front door looked ridiculous.
So did the lights around the columns.
Someone on the house staff had placed mechanical reindeer beside the driveway, their heads moving slowly through falling snow as if the world had not just informed me that a dead man had intercepted legal documents about my daughter.
Renee fell asleep before the gates opened.
I carried her inside.
No one spoke as I crossed the foyer.
The staff knew me well enough to read silence.
I took Renee upstairs, removed her boots, and tucked her beneath the blue quilt she had insisted on choosing because it had tiny silver stars. She stirred when I placed the stuffed fox beside her.
“Daddy?”
“I’m here.”
“Are we still doing pancakes tomorrow?”
The question hit me with surprising force.
For her, tomorrow still contained pancakes.
Not DNA results.
Not dead bodyguards.
Not nine-year conspiracies.
“Yes.”
“With chocolate chips?”
“Yes.”
“Not the healthy kind.”
I almost smiled.
“Go to sleep.”
Her eyes closed.
I remained beside the bed for another minute.
Then I went downstairs and became Michael DeLuca again.
Nico, Ethan, and my security chief, Gabriel Ross, waited in the library.
On the center table sat printed stills from the gate camera.
Dominic.
Frank Bellomo.
The courier.
Three images had changed the architecture of my life.
Gabriel had served as a Marine before working private security overseas. He did not come from the DeLuca world. That was one reason I trusted him. The other was that he had declined a bribe from my father during his first month on the job and told me about it before lunch.
He pointed toward the photographs.
“The sedan entered on an old authorization code belonging to Sal Romano.”
“Sal knew?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where is he?”
“Scottsdale, according to everything public. His phone is there. Credit cards too.”
“Which means nothing.”
“Correct.”
Ethan opened his laptop.
“The courier is alive. Name is Peter Lang. He works for Midwestern Legal Transport.”
“What happened at the gate?”
“Dominic showed credentials indicating he was part of your security detail. Told Lang there had been a threat against the house and all packages were being screened off-site. Lang handed over the envelope, got a digital signature, and left.”
Gabriel’s face tightened.
“I’ve already changed every gate authorization.”
“Good.”
“What about Dominic?” Nico asked.
I looked at the photograph.
Dominic Rizzo was my mother’s sister’s son. Forty-one. Expensive taste, weak discipline, excellent memory. He ran two restaurants and one shipping company for us and had spent most of his adult life pretending proximity to power was the same as possessing it.
“He left my parents’ house before we did,” I said.
Gabriel nodded.
“His phone is off.”
“Find him.”
“Alive?” Nico asked.
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
Nico waited.
“That wasn’t always your answer.”
“No.”
“What changed?”
I glanced toward the staircase.
“A six-year-old lives here.”
Nobody joked.
Ethan closed the laptop halfway.
“Margaret Wells agreed to meet.”
“When?”
“She’s on her way.”
I checked the clock.
“Now?”
“She said if someone intercepted the package, waiting until morning would be irresponsible.”
“I like her already.”
Margaret Wells arrived forty minutes later in a gray Mercedes driven by a man who appeared to be her son.
She entered my house carrying a leather briefcase and wearing a red wool coat dusted with snow.
She was small, silver-haired, and entirely unimpressed by the armed men in my foyer.
“Mr. DeLuca.”
“Mrs. Wells.”
“Ms.”
“Ms. Wells.”
“Better.”
Ethan hid a smile.
Margaret removed her coat and looked around.
“I was told the child is here.”
“Sleeping.”
“Good. Keep her away from this conversation.”
That was the first thing she said that made me trust her.
We entered the library.
Margaret placed her briefcase on the table and stared at the image of Frank Bellomo.
Her composure changed.
“You know him?”
“I know his face.”
“From where?”
“Eleanor Caldwell’s files.”
Every man in the room became still.
Margaret sat.
“Before she died, Eleanor gave me instructions. She believed her home had been searched twice. Nothing obvious was stolen, but file boxes had been moved. She had been documenting matters connected to Allison Sanders for years.”
“Why?”
“Because Allison was terrified.”
“Of my father?”
Margaret looked directly at me.
“Of your family.”
I accepted that.
“And Anthony?”
“She loved Anthony.”
My chest tightened.
“Was Renee his daughter?”
Margaret hesitated.
“The genetic report strongly suggests it.”
“Strongly?”
“It compared archived material attributed to Anthony with a neonatal blood sample linked to Renee. The probability was above 99.9 percent.”
Nico exhaled softly.
I sat opposite her.
“Where did the sample come from?”
“Hospital records Eleanor preserved.”
“Why wasn’t Anthony listed as the father?”
“Because Allison was hiding.”
“From whom?”
Margaret opened her briefcase and removed a folder.
“Your brother met Allison through St. Bernadette. He was not there for charitable reasons.”
That sounded like Anthony.
“He had gone there to find a woman named Teresa Molina, who had worked at one of the DeLuca-controlled freight depots.”
The name stirred something in my memory.
“Teresa disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“I was told she stole money.”
“That was the story.”
“What was the truth?”
Margaret looked at the armed men around me.
Then at Ethan.
Then back to me.
“The truth, according to Eleanor, was that Teresa had discovered women were being moved through freight containers using forged employment papers.”
The room went cold.
I did not speak.
Margaret continued carefully.
“She believed some were undocumented workers being coerced into labor. Others were being transported for prostitution. Eleanor did not know the full scope.”
My stomach turned.
The DeLuca family had profited from gambling, extortion, illicit shipping, bribery, and enough other crimes to keep several federal agencies interested.
But there were lines.
At least under me.
No children.
No narcotics in schools.
No trafficking.
No forced prostitution.
My father had always claimed the same principles.
“Who ran it?”
“Eleanor believed a group inside your freight operations did.”
“Names.”
“She only had three.”
Margaret slid a page across the table.
Vincent DeLuca.
Sal Romano.
Frank Bellomo.
I read them twice.
Nico cursed quietly.
Ethan sat back.
Gabriel’s expression did not move.
“Anthony found out?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Through Allison. She was Teresa Molina’s roommate at the shelter.”
The story assembled itself slowly.
“Allison told him.”
“She told him Teresa had records. Container numbers. Payments. Photographs. Anthony initially believed she was trying to extort him.”
“That also sounds like Anthony.”
“Then Teresa vanished.”
“Dead?”
“We don’t know.”
I looked again at Frank’s photograph.
“What does this have to do with Renee?”
Margaret folded her hands.
“Allison became pregnant while she and Anthony were collecting evidence.”
My throat tightened.
“Anthony knew?”
“Yes.”
“Did he want the child?”
Margaret’s expression softened.
“Very much.”
I looked away.
That hurt more than I expected.
Anthony had wanted a daughter.
He had never told me.
“He planned to leave Chicago,” Margaret continued. “Eleanor was helping Allison relocate. Anthony intended to confront your father first.”
I laughed without humor.
“Of course he did.”
“He believed he could force Vincent to shut the operation down and turn over the men involved.”
“He thought Dad would choose family over money.”
“Yes.”
“He was always optimistic in stupid ways.”
Margaret said nothing.
“What happened?”
“Three days before Anthony’s death, Allison arrived at the shelter bruised and terrified. She said someone had followed her from a prenatal appointment.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Then Anthony died.”
“Yes.”
“And Allison?”
“She disappeared five days later.”
I stared at her.
“My adoption file says she died from an overdose.”
“The death certificate belongs to another woman.”
Ethan swore.
I stood.
The room suddenly felt too small.
“Explain.”
Margaret opened another folder.
“Allison Sanders was declared dead using the identity of a woman named Alice Sanderson. Similar names. Same approximate age. The certificate was altered before entering the child-welfare file.”
“By who?”
“We don’t know.”
“Is Allison alive?”
Margaret paused.
“That is the question Eleanor spent nine years trying to answer.”
I walked toward the window.
Snow covered the lawn.
My reflection floated over the darkness like a stranger.
Behind me, Margaret said, “There is more.”
I turned.
She removed a small black flash drive.
“Eleanor left this in a safe-deposit box with instructions that it be given only to you after her death.”
“What’s on it?”
“I don’t know. It is encrypted.”
“Password?”
“She left a clue.”
Margaret handed me a card.
Four words were written in blue ink.
THE NAME HE REFUSED.
I stared at it.
“Anthony?”
“That was my assumption.”
A sound came from the doorway.
I turned.
Renee stood there in her pajamas holding the stuffed fox.
Her hair was messy from sleep.
“Daddy?”
I crossed the room immediately.
“What are you doing up?”
“I heard voices.”
She looked at Margaret.
Then at the papers.
Then at the photograph of Frank Bellomo.
Her face changed.
Children recognize monsters differently from adults.
Not by reputation.
By memory.
Renee pointed at Frank.
“That man.”
I crouched.
“What man?”
“The one in the picture.”
My pulse slowed.
“What about him?”
She looked confused by my question.
“He came to Grandma’s house before.”
“When?”
“Lots of times.”
Nobody in the room moved.
I kept my voice gentle.
“Did he talk to you?”
Renee nodded.
“What did he say?”
She hugged the fox tighter.
“He said I looked just like my real daddy.”
The words cut through me.
I forced my face not to change.
“What else?”
“He said I should ask Grandpa about the lake.”
Behind me, Margaret inhaled sharply.
I looked at her.
“What?”
She was staring at Renee.
“Anthony’s boat went down on Lake Michigan.”
“I know.”
“No,” she said quietly. “You know where they told you it went down.”
I stood.
Margaret opened the last folder in her briefcase.
“The Coast Guard coordinates in the official report do not match the coordinates in Eleanor’s files.”
She laid a map on the table.
One location was twenty-seven miles offshore.
The other was less than two miles from a private marina owned by a DeLuca holding company.
May you like
And written beside the second location in Eleanor Caldwell’s hand were five words.
FRANK SAYS ANTHONY REACHED SHORE.
