Chapter 8 - THE DEAD MAN WHO CALLED
Naomi’s phone rang at 11:42 that night.
Unknown number.
She almost ignored it.
Then answered.
“Hello?”
Breathing.
Nothing else.
“Who is this?”
A man whispered:
“Naomi.”
She dropped the phone.
I caught it.
“Daniel?”
Silence.
Then:
“Matteo?”
I recognized the voice only from recordings.
Daniel Ellis.
Alive.
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Then tell me why you faked your death.”
“I didn’t.”
Naomi grabbed the phone.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel sounded exhausted.
“Salvatore pulled me out before the explosion.”
“What explosion?”
The police report had said Daniel died when his vehicle caught fire after leaving work.
The body was too badly burned for visual identification.
Dental records confirmed him.
Except those records had been substituted.
By Salvatore.
Daniel explained.
Someone had put a bomb beneath his car.
Salvatore discovered it minutes before Daniel returned.
He staged the death because whoever ordered the attack needed to believe Daniel was gone.
“Then why didn’t you come home?”
Naomi was crying now.
“Because the person who wanted me dead was still watching Lily.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t know until last week.”
I took the phone.
“Name.”
Daniel hesitated.
Then:
“Antonio Moretti.”
My dead adoptive father.
I stared at the phone.
“That’s impossible.”
“No.”
Daniel continued.
“Antonio didn’t die five years ago.”
The lies were becoming almost absurd.
But I had learned not to dismiss impossible things.
“When did he die?”
“He didn’t.”
My mother had told me Antonio died of pancreatic cancer.
Closed family funeral.
Private burial.
I had been overseas negotiating a crisis and returned hours after he supposedly died.
The coffin remained closed because of “medical deterioration.”
I had never seen his body.
I felt sick.
“Where is he?”
Daniel whispered:
“New Jersey.”
My entire childhood shifted.
Again.
Daniel explained that Antonio discovered Salvatore was my biological father long before I was born.
He raised me anyway.
But as he got older, love turned into fear.
He became terrified Salvatore’s bloodline would eventually reclaim the Moretti empire.
When he learned Naomi was pregnant, he authorized surveillance.
Then something changed.
He ordered more.
Daniel found records suggesting Antonio approved a plan to remove Naomi permanently.
My mother discovered it and got Naomi out first.
For five years, Antonio had been living under another identity while continuing to manipulate the family through intermediaries.
“Why?”
“Because officially dead men can’t be investigated.”
Daniel gave us an address.
Then warned:
“Do not bring Lily.”
I almost laughed.
“That part didn’t need saying.”
Before hanging up, Daniel asked one thing.
“Can I hear her?”
Naomi covered her mouth.
Lily was asleep upstairs.
“No,” she whispered.
“Not yet.”
Daniel’s breathing broke.
“I understand.”
The call ended.
Then Naomi looked at me.
“He loved her.”
“Yes.”
“So do you.”
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t need to.
At dawn, we reached the New Jersey address.
A quiet house.
White fence.
Ordinary mailbox.
I knocked.
An old man opened the door.
Antonio Moretti.
The father I had buried five years earlier.
Alive.
May you like
He looked at me and said:
“You finally found your daughter.”
