Chapter 3 - THE ACCIDENT THAT WAS NEVER AN ACCIDENT
Lucia Moretti had been driving home from a charity event sixteen years earlier when a truck hit her car.
She survived.
Her driver died.
The impact damaged her hearing permanently.
Dante had always believed it was a random collision.
Lucia had not.
“I asked you,” Dante said.
His voice was tight.
“I asked you a hundred times whether you remembered anything.”
Lucia signed.
I remembered everything.
Emma translated.
Dante stared at his mother.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Her hands moved.
Because you were eighteen.
He laughed bitterly.
“I was your son.”
You were angry.
“That is not an answer.”
Lucia signed faster.
You wanted revenge for everything. Your father was dead. Your brother was missing. You were becoming dangerous.
Dante stopped.
Emma noticed one phrase.
“Your brother?”
Dante looked away.
Lucia closed her eyes.
There was another wound here.
“Dante?”
“My younger brother, Luca, disappeared three months after my father died.”
“Disappeared?”
“He was sixteen.”
“What happened?”
“We never found him.”
Lucia’s hands trembled.
Because they took him.
Dante went still.
“What?”
Emma translated anyway.
Lucia continued.
Your father discovered the trafficking network. He moved evidence. They poisoned him. Then they took Luca because they thought he knew where the evidence was.
Dante’s face drained.
“For sixteen years, you let me believe he ran away.”
Lucia started crying.
I believed he was dead.
“Believed?”
That word mattered.
Lucia reached into her purse and removed a photograph.
Recent.
A man in his early thirties.
Dark hair.
Gray eyes.
Standing outside a train station in Montreal.
He looked like Dante.
Not exactly.
Enough.
Dante took the photograph with shaking hands.
“No.”
Lucia signed:
I received it last month.
“From who?”
Unknown.
On the back was written:
LUCA MORETTI IS ALIVE.
Dante sat down.
For the first time since Emma had met him, the feared Mafia boss looked less like a dangerous man than a son discovering his family had been shattered twice.
Then his gaze lifted to Emma.
“The church.”
She nodded.
They drove to St. Agnes before sunrise.
An old priest let Lucia into a private crypt beneath the chapel.
The brass key opened a small steel box hidden behind a memorial plaque.
Inside were three things.
A ledger.
A cassette tape.
And a sealed envelope marked:
FOR DANTE, WHEN HE IS READY TO LISTEN.
Dante opened the envelope.
His father’s handwriting filled the page.
Son,
If you’re reading this, then I failed.
Dante’s hands tightened.
The letter named the men involved in the trafficking network.
Matteo Moretti.
Victor Bellini.
A customs official.
Two police officers.
And one name that made Dante whisper:
“No.”
Emma looked.
The final name was Dr. Samuel Moretti.
Dante’s uncle.
His mother’s brother.
Lucia stared at it.
Then signed:
Samuel treated your father during the months before he died.
Emma’s stomach turned.
The doctor who had been caring for Dante’s poisoned father had been part of the group poisoning him.
But the letter contained one final warning.
Do not trust the man who stands closest to you.
Dante looked up.
His security chief had been with him for fourteen years.
Marco Santini.
And at that exact moment, Dante’s phone rang.
Marco.
Dante answered.
“What?”
His expression changed.
May you like
Then he looked at Emma.
“Luca was just seen in Manhattan.”
