Chapter 5 - VIVIAN’S DEAD MOTHER CALLED HER BY NAME
The phone rang at 4:19 p.m.
Unknown number.
Antonio looked at Vivian.
She answered.
“Hello?”
A woman breathed on the other end.
Then:
“Vivian?”
Her entire body froze.
The voice was older.
Thinner.
But she knew it.
Some voices live deeper than memory.
“Mom?”
Antonio closed his eyes.
Vivian stood so quickly the table shook.
“Mom?”
The woman began crying.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Vivian could not breathe.
Her mother, Elena Bellini, had supposedly died in a hospital in Connecticut sixteen years earlier after complications from pneumonia.
Vivian had attended the funeral.
She remembered the closed casket.
Her father saying the illness had changed Elena too much.
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because Vittorio found out you left Lorenzo.”
A chill moved through Vivian.
“You know?”
“I’ve known everything.”
Anger arrived beneath shock.
“You let me believe you were dead.”
“I had to.”
“No.”
“Vivian—”
“No. You chose to.”
Silence.
Her mother absorbed the blow.
“Yes.”
At least she admitted it.
“Why?”
“Because someone tried to kill me.”
“Vittorio?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Elena hesitated.
“Your father.”
Vivian gripped the table.
Antonio stood.
“That’s a lie.”
Elena heard him.
“Antonio?”
“Yes.”
“You’re with her?”
“I’m protecting her.”
Elena laughed bitterly.
“You’ve always been good at calling things protection.”
Vivian closed her eyes.
Everyone spoke the same language.
Secrets.
Protection.
Fear.
“Mom. What happened?”
Elena explained.
Sixteen years earlier, Nathan believed Elena was giving information to federal investigators.
She was not.
But someone had planted files in her car.
Nathan confronted her.
They fought.
That night someone shot at Elena’s vehicle.
She survived.
Nathan believed whoever wanted her dead would try again.
So they staged her death.
Vivian’s anger shifted.
“Dad knew?”
“Yes.”
“You both let me think you were dead?”
“We thought grief was safer than fear.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make.”
“No.”
Again.
A terrible honesty.
“Where have you been?”
“Arizona. Then Canada.”
“Why never come back after Dad died?”
Elena began crying.
“Because the man who killed Nathan contacted me the next morning.”
Vivian’s skin went cold.
“He said if I returned, you would die next.”
“Who?”
A pause.
Then Elena said:
“Lorenzo.”
Vivian stopped breathing.
Antonio shook his head violently.
“No.”
“He called me.”
“What did he say?”
“That Nathan was dead. That I should stay gone if I wanted Vivian alive.”
Vivian’s chest tightened.
That did not sound like a threat.
It sounded like a warning.
“Did he say he killed Dad?”
“No.”
“Then why do you think he did?”
“Because he knew before the police released Nathan’s name.”
Antonio leaned toward the phone.
“Elena, Lorenzo was there the night Nathan disappeared.”
“I know.”
“You know Vittorio had access to him.”
“I know.”
“Then stop telling Vivian conclusions like facts.”
Silence.
Vivian almost laughed.
Antonio’s lawyer voice survived everything.
Then Elena whispered:
“There’s something else.”
Of course there was.
“Nathan left me a code before he died.”
“What code?”
“Four numbers.”
“For what?”
“I never knew.”
She recited them.
Vivian wrote them down.
Antonio stared.
“What?”
He took the paper.
“Those aren’t four numbers.”
“What are they?”
“Dates.”
Two birthdays.
Vivian’s.
And Lorenzo’s.
Combined.
The code opened Nathan’s safe-deposit box.
Vivian’s heart pounded.
The next morning, with two federal marshals Antonio trusted, they opened it.
Inside was a single flash drive.
A letter.
And a wedding photograph.
Not Vivian’s wedding.
Her parents’.
Standing behind Nathan and Elena was Vittorio Falcone.
Beside him stood another young man.
Same eyes as Lorenzo.
Same jaw.
Vivian turned the photograph over.
Nathan had written one name.
MARCELLO FALCONE.
Lorenzo’s uncle.
Reported dead thirty years earlier.
Then Vivian opened her father’s letter.
May you like
The first sentence read:
If Marcello is alive, he is the reason every one of us is in danger.
