Chapter 6 - MICHAEL’S VOICE FROM THE GRAVE
They did not go to the vault immediately.
That was Alessandro’s decision.
For once, Elena agreed.
Carlo had spent years waiting for the second key to surface.
If they rushed to the bank, they might walk directly into his trap.
Instead, Alessandro called the only man he still trusted.
Father Thomas Grady.
Elena stared at him.
“Your emergency contact is a priest?”
“He has disappointed me less than most criminals.”
Father Grady arrived before dawn.
Sixty-seven.
Red nose from the cold.
No visible fear of Alessandro.
He entered Tommy’s apartment, looked at the blood on the floor, and sighed.
“Again?”
Elena blinked.
“Again?”
Alessandro ignored that.
Father Grady had been Michael’s confessor.
That stunned Elena almost as much as everything else.
“Michael was Catholic?”
“On desperate Tuesdays,” the priest said.
He knew about the vault.
Not the contents.
Michael had told him one thing weeks before dying:
If Elena ever comes asking, tell her I was trying to get clean without making her dirty.
Elena had to sit down.
Michael had not been a criminal.
But once you touched a criminal organization’s money, even to expose it, clean exits became complicated.
Father Grady also knew something Alessandro didn’t.
Michael suspected a traitor inside Alessandro’s inner circle.
“Who?”
“He never gave me the name.”
“But he gave you something.”
The priest reached inside his coat.
An envelope.
Michael’s handwriting.
ELENA.
She opened it with shaking hands.
My love,
If you are reading this, then I failed to get far enough away from men who confuse fear with loyalty.
Her vision blurred.
Michael explained only pieces.
He had discovered Carlo’s theft.
He had helped Alessandro document it.
Then he found evidence that Carlo was not acting alone.
Someone close to Alessandro had helped arrange meetings, clean payments, and manipulate security schedules.
Michael wrote:
Alessandro believes loyalty is inherited. It is not. That may be the mistake that kills him.
Elena looked up.
“Who did he trust most?”
Alessandro answered immediately.
“Matteo.”
His security chief.
The man who had supposedly failed to protect Sofia.
The man whose name kept appearing on Alessandro’s phone while he bled in the alley.
But Matteo had disappeared.
No body.
No call.
Nothing.
Father Grady continued reading.
There was another line.
If Alessandro is alive when you hear this, tell him Carlo was never his biggest problem.
Alessandro’s face hardened.
Elena unfolded the final page.
A name had been written there.
Not Matteo.
Not Carlo.
GIANNI CONTI.
Alessandro’s father.
Elena stared.
“Your father?”
Alessandro went completely still.
“My father died twelve years ago.”
Father Grady crossed himself.
Elena looked at the letter again.
Michael’s next sentence made the entire room colder.
Gianni Conti did not die in 2014.
May you like
He disappeared.
And Carlo has been taking orders from him ever since.
