Chapter 10 - THE DEAD MAN CAME HOME
Finding a dead man should have been impossible.
Finding Salvatore Moretti took eighteen hours.
He had entered the country under the name Samuel Morelli.
Private charter.
No commercial passenger record.
He was living seventy miles away in a rehabilitation facility.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
A man who had helped put me in a wheelchair was hiding inside a building full of wheelchairs.
I went there with Tessa, my attorney, and federal investigators.
Salvatore looked ancient.
Thin.
Oxygen tubing beneath his nose.
But his eyes were sharp.
He recognized me immediately.
“Antonio's boy.”
“My father was fifty-three when you killed him.”
Salvatore closed his eyes.
“I didn't kill Antonio.”
“We have video.”
“You have video of me opening his hood.”
“Exactly.”
“I was repairing what Elaine had already done.”
I stopped.
Salvatore looked toward Tessa.
“You're Daniel's girl.”
She stiffened.
He nodded slowly.
“Same eyes.”
I moved closer.
“What happened?”
Salvatore told us Elaine had been stealing money from Mercer Security Systems.
My father discovered it.
He planned to testify.
Elaine damaged his brakes to frighten him.
Salvatore discovered the sabotage and attempted to repair it.
But he missed a second cut deeper in the line.
My father died.
“Why disappear?”
“Because Elaine had leverage.”
“What leverage?”
“My son.”
Dominic.
Elaine had evidence Dominic killed a man during a street fight at nineteen.
Salvatore protected him.
Then spent years doing whatever Elaine demanded.
“Does Dominic know?”
Salvatore's eyes filled.
“Yes.”
That hurt more than I expected.
He continued.
“When you became head of the Corvino companies, Dominic thought he'd always be second.”
“So he decided to take first.”
“No.”
Salvatore shook his head.
“He decided to leave.”
“What?”
“He wanted out. Elaine wouldn't let him.”
That contradicted everything.
The shell companies.
The shooter.
The forged papers.
Salvatore leaned forward.
“The money Dominic stole wasn't for himself.”
“Then where is it?”
“He was building an escape fund.”
“For who?”
Salvatore looked at Tessa.
Then back at me.
“For Monica Reyes.”
The missing caregiver.
May you like
Dominic hadn't made her disappear.
He had been hiding her.
