Chapter 2 - Five Years of Silence
I had never hated a jet bridge before.
That morning, every person in front of me seemed determined to move at the speed of grief.
A man stopped to adjust his backpack. A family argued over a stroller. Someone blocked the terminal entrance while checking a text.
I wanted to move all of them with my hands.
Instead, I stayed beside Lily.
That surprised Julie more than anything else.
“You can go,” she said as we entered the terminal. “Your people are probably waiting.”
“My people can wait.”
“So can Dominic?”
“No.”
“Then why are you still here?”
I looked at Lily, who was hopping from one blue floor tile to another because she had decided the gray ones were “lava for business people.”
“Because someone already used me to frighten her mother once.”
Julie’s anger flickered.
“And standing next to Lily fixes that?”
“No.”
At least she appreciated the answer.
Nico waited near baggage claim in a charcoal suit, broad shoulders, shaved head, and the permanent expression of a man disappointed by civilization. He had been my closest friend since we were nineteen and the only person in my organization who could tell me I was being an idiot without checking the nearest exit.
His eyes moved from me to Julie.
Then to Lily.
Then back to me.
He did not ask the obvious question.
That was why I trusted him.
“Car’s outside,” he said. “Dominic is still in the building.”
“Naomi?”
“Entered forty-one minutes ago. Hasn’t left.”
Julie stepped toward him. “How do you know that?”
Nico looked at me.
“Julie Ellis,” I said. “Naomi’s sister.”
He nodded once.
Julie pointed at Lily. “And this is Naomi’s daughter. You will not put her name in a file.”
Nico’s eyebrows lifted.
“You think I keep files on children?”
“I don’t know what you keep.”
“Mostly aspirin.”
Lily tugged his sleeve. “Do you snore?”
Nico looked at me.
I almost laughed.
“Apparently this is her intake process.”
He crouched. “Only after being shot.”
Julie went pale.
Nico winced.
“Bad joke.”
“Very,” I said.
Lily whispered loudly, “I like him.”
The baggage claim doors opened.
Three men in plain clothes entered separately.
I recognized none of them.
Nico did.
His body changed before his face did.
“East exit,” he said quietly.
I did not ask why.
Julie caught the shift in our tone. “What is it?”
“Walk.”
We moved.
One of the men angled toward us.
Another circled near the carousel.
The third touched his jacket.
I lifted Lily without warning.
She squeaked.
“Game,” I said. “We’re playing follow Mr. Nico.”
“Is there a prize?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Getting to the car first.”
She wrapped both arms around my neck.
I expected awkwardness.
Instead, my body knew exactly where to hold her.
That frightened me more than the men.
Nico guided us through a service corridor. Airport staff shouted behind us. The three strangers accelerated.
At the end of the corridor, one flashed a badge.
“Port Authority.”
Nico did not slow.
“Fake.”
“How can you tell?” Julie demanded.
“Because that man used to work security at one of Dominic’s clubs.”
My uncle’s reach had arrived before our luggage.
We exited through a loading entrance.
Two black SUVs waited.
Nico opened the rear door of the first.
Julie stopped.
“No.”
“Get in.”
“I am not putting Lily in a mafia convoy.”
Nico glanced behind us. “Then call it an aggressively private taxi.”
“Julie,” I said. “Please.”
The word surprised both of us.
She got in.
I handed Lily to her and turned as the first man emerged from the building.
He saw me.
Stopped.
Then smiled.
That told me everything.
He was not there to kill me.
He wanted me to know he was there.
We drove away.
Inside the SUV, Julie held Lily so tightly the child complained.
“Aunt Jules, I need my bones.”
Julie loosened her grip.
I called building security.
“Lock executive elevators. Dominic stays where he is.”
The director hesitated.
“Mr. Moretti, your uncle instructed—”
“I’m not asking what my uncle instructed.”
A pause.
“Yes, sir.”
I hung up.
Julie stared out the window. “Naomi thought this would happen.”
“What?”
“That if you ever found out, the world around you would become dangerous enough to prove she was right.”
“She walked into Moretti Holdings.”
“Because she found something.”
“What?”
Julie shook her head.
“She didn’t tell me.”
“She brought you and Lily to New York.”
“She brought us because she didn’t want Lily home in Atlanta if something went wrong.”
The words hit slowly.
“You were backup.”
“I was the emergency plan.”
“What did Naomi expect to happen?”
“She said if she didn’t call by noon, I was supposed to take Lily to Boston.”
“To whom?”
Julie took a breath.
“She gave me a name.”
“What name?”
“Evelyn Moretti.”
My mother.
I stared.
Julie gave a tired laugh. “Yeah. That was my reaction too.”
My mother lived in Boston half the year and Florence the rest. She had left New York after my father died, claiming the city had taken enough from her.
“What does Naomi know about my mother?”
“Apparently more than I do.”
My phone rang.
Dominic.
I answered.
“Matteo. I hear you’ve become dramatic before breakfast.”
“Where is Naomi?”
Silence.
Then a soft chuckle.
“So you know.”
“Where is she?”
“You should come upstairs.”
“If she’s hurt—”
“Always with the threats. Your father had more patience.”
“My father is dead.”
Another pause.
“Come upstairs, nephew.”
The call ended.
Julie grabbed my wrist before I could tell the driver to move faster.
“Don’t go alone.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean don’t go angry.”
I looked at her hand on my sleeve.
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough. Naomi loved you.”
Past tense.
The two most dangerous words I had heard all day.
“She told you that?”
“No. She spent five years pretending she didn’t.”
Lily looked between us.
“Mommy says pretending makes your face tired.”
Julie closed her eyes.
I looked at the child and wondered how many truths adults had whispered around her only to discover she had heard them all.
We reached Midtown in nineteen minutes.
Police blocked traffic two avenues away from Moretti Holdings.
That was new.
Nico received a message.
His jaw tightened.
“What?”
“Fire alarm on forty-eight.”
“My executive floor.”
“Building is evacuating.”
I called Naomi.
The number Julie gave me rang once.
Then someone answered.
No voice.
Only breathing.
“Naomi?”
Julie leaned forward.
The breathing stopped.
A man spoke.
Not Dominic.
Older.
Rough.
A voice I had not heard since I was twenty-seven.
“Still slow, Matteo.”
My hand went cold.
Vincent Vale.
Alive.
“Where is she?”
“You always ask the wrong first question.”
“What should I ask?”
A quiet laugh.
“Ask why your father ordered me to keep Naomi Ellis away from you.”
The line disconnected.
The SUV stopped hard at the curb.
Smoke poured from an upper floor of my building.
Employees flooded the sidewalk.
Nico exited first.
I turned to Julie.
“Stay in the car with Lily.”
She started to argue.
I leaned closer.
“Whatever else you think of me, trust me for five minutes.”
Julie looked at Lily.
Then nodded.
I stepped out.
A woman ran through the crowd toward us.
Naomi.
For one impossible second, I was twenty-eight again.
Same dark curls.
Same gold hoops.
Same eyes that once looked at me like I might become better than the family I inherited.
Then I saw the blood on her white blouse.
I moved toward her.
“Naomi.”
She stopped.
Her face changed when she saw me.
Not surprise.
Not relief.
Terror.
She looked past me toward the SUV.
Toward Lily.
“No,” she whispered.
“Naomi—”
“You weren’t supposed to meet her.”
Behind us, the forty-eighth-floor windows exploded outward.
People screamed.
Naomi grabbed my coat.
“Matteo, listen to me.”
I held her shoulders.
“Who did this?”
Her eyes filled.
“Your father.”
I stared at her.
“My father has been dead for six years.”
Naomi shook her head.
“That’s what they wanted you to believe.”
Before I could answer, another series of sirens screamed down Fifth Avenue.
Naomi looked back toward the building.
“Dominic knows I copied the files.”
“What files?”
“The files proving someone used Moretti Holdings to fund surveillance around Lily.”
Julie stepped out of the SUV despite my order.
Naomi saw her sister.
Then Lily.
Her entire face changed.
She ran.
Lily opened the door before Julie could stop her.
“Mommy!”
Naomi dropped to her knees on the sidewalk and pulled her daughter against her.
I stood three feet away and watched the family I never knew I had hold on to one another as smoke climbed into the New York sky.
Naomi looked at me over Lily’s shoulder.
“You need to understand something.”
“What?”
“Whatever happens next, Lily is not a Moretti asset.”
“She’s not.”
“Not an heir. Not leverage. Not a bargaining chip.”
“She is my daughter.”
Naomi’s expression hardened.
“Biologically.”
The word was a boundary.
I accepted it.
“For now,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed.
I corrected myself.
“I mean I know I have to earn the rest.”
That startled her.
Then Nico stepped beside me.
“Matteo.”
His phone showed a security image from the executive floor.
An older man had entered the conference room ten minutes before the alarm.
Silver hair.
Cane.
Profile I had known my entire childhood.
My father.
Salvatore Moretti.
Alive.
The photograph was blurry, but the ring on his right hand was not.
Black onyx.
My grandfather’s ring.
He had been buried with it.
I looked at Naomi.
She whispered, “He told me if you ever found Lily, everything would start moving.”
May you like
I looked at the burning windows above us.
“It already has.”
