Chapter 3 - THE LOCKET MY FATHER DIED PROTECTING
My father's locket had never opened.
I'd tried as a child.
I'd tried again after my mother died.
Eventually, I decided it was simply decorative.
Now I sat beneath Margaret's kitchen light, staring at the scratched silver pendant while Rebecca explained that my father had once worked as an accountant for the Moretti family's shipping operations.
I knew that much.
What I hadn't known was that he'd discovered financial transfers connected to illegal weapons shipments and stolen charitable funds.
"He collected evidence," Rebecca told me. "Then he disappeared from work for three days."
"He died saving Adrian's father."
"That's what everyone was told."
My fingers went numb.
Rebecca continued carefully.
"The ambush was real. But your father may have been the intended target."
I shook my head.
"No. Adrian's father told me what happened himself."
"Vittorio Moretti controlled the narrative afterward."
The name made my stomach twist.
Vittorio had raised me after my parents died.
He'd paid for my education, walked me down the aisle, and called me his daughter.
He'd been dead for four years.
I couldn't imagine him lying about something so terrible.
But I had once been unable to imagine Adrian choosing another woman while I begged him for help.
Trust, I'd learned, could be wrong.
"How do I open the locket?" I asked.
"Look at the back."
I turned it over.
There was a tiny indentation beside the clasp.
Margaret brought me a sewing needle.
I pressed it gently into the opening.
A click sounded.
The locket separated.
Inside was a miniature photograph of my parents.
Behind it lay a thin metal strip no longer than my thumbnail.
Numbers had been engraved across its surface.
A code.
I read them aloud.
Rebecca became silent.
"Are you there?"
"Yes."
"What do they mean?"
"Those may be the access credentials to an old encrypted archive."
"An archive of what?"
"Your father's evidence."
I leaned back against the chair.
Outside, rain began tapping against the windows.
For sixteen years, I'd carried my father's final secret against my heart without knowing it.
"Rebecca, why are you helping me?"
Her answer came slowly.
"Because my older brother investigated your father's death."
"What happened to him?"
"He disappeared."
My throat tightened.
"When?"
"Two weeks after he discovered Daniel Russo's connection to the ambush."
I closed my eyes.
Daniel.
Again.
Before I could ask another question, Margaret appeared at the kitchen doorway.
Her face was pale.
"Claire, there's a man downstairs."
I covered the phone.
"Who?"
"He says his name is Thomas Bennett."
The room spun.
Bennett was my maiden name.
Margaret gripped the doorframe.
"He says he's your father's younger brother."
I stared at her.
My father had never mentioned a brother.
May you like
Then Margaret whispered the words that changed everything.
"He says your father might still be alive."
