Chapter 5 - WHAT MOM NEVER TOLD ME
I drove back to Cicero alone.
Dominic insisted on security following at a distance.
I told him I would call police if anyone entered our apartment without permission.
He believed me.
Mom was sitting at the kitchen table after dialysis when I walked in carrying the blue ledger.
The moment she saw it, her face collapsed.
“You found it.”
Not:
What is that?
Not:
Where did you get it?
You found it.
I put it on the table.
“How long have you known?”
She closed her eyes.
“Avery.”
“No.”
I sat across from her.
“Dad wasn’t just a warehouse supervisor.”
“No.”
“His death wasn’t random.”
“I don’t know that.”
“You knew Victor Moretti was watching me.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“After James died.”
“Why?”
“To keep you safe.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You let a Moretti watch me for eight years?”
“Victor said the people James was investigating might come after us.”
“And you believed him?”
“I believed the man who brought me proof James had been threatened.”
“What proof?”
Mom stood slowly.
Went to her bedroom.
Returned with a lockbox.
Inside:
Letters.
Bank statements.
A photograph.
And a gun I had never seen.
I stared.
“Mom.”
“Your father gave it to me.”
She pushed the letters toward me.
James wrote them during the final month of his life.
Linda,
If Victor says leave, leave.
Do not trust William Whitmore.
Do not give Avery the ledger unless she is already involved.
My pulse hammered.
Dad did not want me involved.
Then why had Vanessa brought me in?
Why had Dominic requested deliveries?
Because every adult around me kept deciding when I was allowed to know my own life.
I hated all of them for it.
“What was Dad investigating?”
Mom explained.
Not drugs.
Not weapons.
Money.
Marlowe Freight was being used to move undeclared cash through international shipping settlements.
The money was not necessarily Moretti money.
Someone was siphoning from Moretti businesses and laundering it outward.
James discovered it.
Elena Whitmore helped.
Victor claimed he was trying to stop it from inside.
Anthony Moretti knew only near the end.
William Whitmore?
Unknown.
But Dad suspected him.
“What happened on the day Dad died?”
Mom stared at her hands.
“He left at five in the morning.”
“To work?”
“No.”
“To meet Victor.”
My skin went cold.
“Victor was there?”
“Supposed to be.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know.”
The warehouse collapse happened at 7:40.
Victor told Mom he arrived late.
Anthony Moretti later paid for an independent safety review.
Report found sabotage?
No.
It found bolts had been removed from a support assembly.
Police called it maintenance failure.
But the maintenance log was signed by James himself.
Impossible, Mom said.
He had been home when that inspection supposedly occurred.
Forged signature.
My father may have been framed as responsible for his own death.
Then Mom showed me the insurance settlement.
$86,000.
But another payment existed.
$500,000.
From:
VALOR FAMILY TRUST.
“Who is Valor?”
Mom looked away.
“Victor.”
“You took half a million dollars from him?”
“I didn’t spend it.”
“Why did he give it?”
“For you.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Blood money?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“He said your father had earned it.”
“How?”
Mom swallowed.
“James owned part of M13.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
Not ownership exactly.
A recovery share.
Victor had promised James a percentage of assets recovered if he helped expose whoever hijacked M13.
The $500,000 was an advance.
The rest?
Never settled.
“How much could it be?”
Mom did not know.
Then she said:
“That is why I let Victor watch you.”
Because if James’s recovery rights survived his death, I might inherit them.
Money.
Again.
Everyone’s secrets eventually reached money.
Then my phone rang.
Dominic.
I answered.
“What?”
“We found William Whitmore.”
Vanessa’s father.
“Where?”
“Evanston.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Does Vanessa know?”
“She’s with me.”
Then his voice changed.
“Avery, he says Elena is alive.”
I stood.
“What?”
“He says she never disappeared.”
“Where is she?”
Dominic paused.
“In federal witness protection.”
Mom dropped her coffee cup.
May you like
It shattered on the floor.
She knew that too.
