Chapter 3 - THE NIGHT HER FATHER DIED
Elena pulled Dante into a side corridor.
“You have thirty seconds.”
He closed the door behind them.
“For what?”
“To explain why my dead father is connected to your mother’s ring.”
Dante studied her face.
Then removed the performance entirely.
“No more games.”
“Good.”
“Your father worked as a mechanic.”
“I know what he did.”
“No. You know what he told you he did.”
Elena stared at him.
Dante explained that Miguel Reyes had owned a small specialty garage on Chicago’s South Side.
Officially, it repaired imported cars.
Unofficially, Miguel also restored armored vehicles for wealthy private clients.
One of those clients had been Dante’s father, Luca Salvatore.
Sixteen years earlier, Dante was twenty-two.
Young.
Reckless.
Already involved in his father’s organization.
One winter night, someone sabotaged the brakes on a Salvatore sedan.
Miguel discovered it during a routine inspection.
He called Luca immediately.
Then he insisted on personally driving a replacement vehicle across the city.
Dante was inside.
On the way back, another car struck them.
The sedan caught fire.
Miguel dragged Dante out before the fuel tank ignited.
“He saved me,” Dante said.
Elena’s throat tightened.
“My father died in an accident three weeks later.”
“Yes.”
“You think those things were connected?”
Dante did not answer immediately.
That frightened her more than yes would have.
“My mother visited Miguel after the fire. She gave him the emerald ring because she believed he had saved her son.”
Elena looked down at her hand.
“This ring?”
“Yes.”
“But my family never had it.”
“Exactly.”
The ring disappeared after Miguel died.
And for sixteen years, Dante believed it had been stolen during the investigation.
Until six months ago.
“What happened six months ago?”
“It appeared in a private estate inventory.”
“Whose?”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“Victor Laurent’s.”
Elena went cold.
Vivien’s father.
The billionaire real-estate developer smiling in the ballroom outside.
Dante explained that Victor claimed he purchased the ring through an estate broker.
There was no receipt.
No provenance.
No legitimate transfer record.
“So you took it?”
“I bought it back.”
“For one point four million dollars?”
“Money is easy.”
His eyes hardened.
“Truth is expensive.”
Elena leaned against the wall.
“My father’s accident…”
“Was ruled mechanical failure.”
“He was a mechanic.”
“I know.”
The irony was unbearable.
Then Dante told her the final detail.
Miguel had called Luca Salvatore two hours before his death.
The call lasted four minutes.
No recording survived.
But Luca wrote down one sentence afterward.
Dante removed a folded copy from his pocket.
Elena read it.
VICTOR KNOWS I KEPT THE ORIGINAL.
She looked up.
“The original what?”
Dante shook his head.
“That is what I have been trying to discover for sixteen years.”
Then the ballroom door opened.
May you like
Marcus stood there.
And judging by his face, he had heard enough to know his new father-in-law had a secret.
