Chapter 2 - THE DEAD MOTHER
Norah had always said her mother died when she was sixteen.
Matteo remembered the way she said it.
Flat.
Finished.
A fact nobody was supposed to touch.
Now a woman with the same gray-green eyes stood in a recent surveillance photograph outside a law office in Vermont.
“Find her.”
Arthur hesitated.
“Quietly?”
Matteo looked at him.
“If Norah thinks I’m hunting her, she disappears farther.”
That answer surprised Arthur.
It surprised Matteo too.
“Quietly.”
For thirty-six hours, they followed money.
Not Norah’s.
Evelyn Mercer’s.
The woman had lived under three identities in fifteen years.
Teacher.
Bookkeeper.
Hospital administrator.
Always small towns.
Always cash.
Always gone before anyone became curious.
Matteo finally found an address outside Burlington.
He went alone except for Arthur.
The house was ordinary.
Blue siding.
White porch.
A vegetable garden.
Matteo hated it immediately because Norah would have loved it.
Evelyn opened the door before he knocked twice.
She was fifty-eight.
Silver in her hair.
No fear in her face.
“You took longer than I expected.”
Matteo stared.
“Where is my wife?”
“Safe.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“It was the only one you’re getting.”
His temper rose.
Then he remembered Norah in the kitchen.
I’m conceding.
He forced it down.
“Why did she tell me you were dead?”
“Because for fourteen years, dead was safer.”
“From whom?”
Evelyn looked past him.
“Your family.”
Matteo became still.
“My family never knew Norah before I met her.”
“That’s what you think.”
Evelyn stepped aside.
Inside, the walls were lined with boxes.
Financial records.
Shipping manifests.
Old photographs.
One showed Norah’s father, Thomas Vale, standing beside Matteo’s father.
Another showed them shaking hands.
Matteo frowned.
“Thomas was a bookkeeper.”
“Yes.”
“For a rival family.”
“Yes.”
“He had nothing to do with the Rossis.”
Evelyn’s expression hardened.
“He kept your father’s books.”
Matteo looked at her.
“No.”
“For eight years.”
“Why?”
“Because your father needed somebody quiet enough to hide money from his own brother.”
Matteo’s mind shifted.
His uncle Marco Rossi had died in prison twelve years earlier.
“What money?”
Evelyn opened a folder.
Inside were transfers totaling almost eighty million dollars.
Not drug money.
Not gambling.
Protection money siphoned from businesses Matteo later inherited.
“Thomas discovered your father was preparing a secret exit fund.”
“For what?”
“To run.”
Matteo laughed once.
“My father would never run.”
“He was going to testify.”
The room went silent.
Evelyn continued.
“Against Marco. Against three judges. Against half the organization you now control.”
Matteo stared at her.
“My father died of a stroke.”
“No.”
She looked him directly in the eyes.
“Your father was murdered the week before he was supposed to enter federal protection.”
Matteo stopped breathing.
Then Evelyn slid one last photograph across the table.
It showed Norah’s father outside Matteo’s childhood home.
Blood on his shirt.
Date stamped eleven years earlier.
The night Matteo’s father died.
May you like
And beneath the photograph, handwritten by Thomas Vale:
IF I DON’T MAKE IT HOME, MATTEO ROSSI’S MOTHER ORDERED THE KILL.
