Chapter 3 - THE HOUSE THAT BELONGED TO VINCENT’S FATHER
Evelyn read the address again.
“Your father?”
Vincent nodded.
“My family sold it twenty years ago.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know.”
Mara was already searching land records.
The property had changed hands through four shell companies.
Then, six years earlier, it transferred into a trust.
Beneficiary:
Evelyn Hart.
Evelyn stared.
“No.”
“You own the house,” Mara said.
“I’ve never seen it.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
“Grant has.”
“How do you know?”
“He asked me about it two years ago.”
Evelyn turned.
“What?”
Vincent remembered the meeting.
Grant had approached him at a Boston redevelopment dinner and casually asked about old Moretti family properties.
Specifically Alder Crest.
Vincent assumed he was interested in the neighborhood.
Now it looked deliberate.
“Why would your father’s house end up in my name?”
Vincent had no answer.
Mara pulled the trust documents.
Created eight years earlier.
Before Evelyn married Grant.
Trustee:
Helen Hart.
Evelyn’s mother.
Evelyn stood.
“My mother died seven years ago.”
“When was the trust created?” Vincent asked.
“Eight years, three months.”
Her mother had established it less than a year before her death.
Evelyn remembered nothing about property.
Helen had worked as a librarian.
Widowed.
Careful with money.
Not someone secretly buying Brookline real estate.
Unless she hadn’t bought it.
Mara continued.
“The trust acquired the house for one dollar.”
Vincent’s face changed.
“From who?”
A former Moretti holding company.
Authorized signer:
Anthony Moretti.
Vincent’s father.
Silence.
Evelyn looked at him.
“Your father gave my mother a house?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
Vincent turned toward the window.
“My father knew hundreds of people.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
He faced her.
“It’s the only one I have.”
For the first time, she saw uncertainty in him.
Not danger.
Not control.
Something almost like fear.
They drove to Alder Crest just before dawn.
Vincent insisted on security.
Evelyn insisted on coming.
The house was empty.
Gray stone.
Boarded side windows.
Overgrown ivy.
Vincent stood at the front gate for a long time.
“I haven’t been here since I was fourteen.”
“What happened?”
“My mother died.”
Evelyn’s chest softened.
“I’m sorry.”
“My father sold everything connected to her.”
But apparently not this.
Inside, dust covered the floors.
Furniture remained beneath white sheets.
The place had been preserved, not abandoned.
In the library, Evelyn found a photograph.
Her mother.
Helen Hart.
Standing beside Anthony Moretti.
Twenty-five years earlier.
Evelyn whispered:
“They knew each other.”
Vincent took the photograph.
On the back, in his father’s handwriting:
HELEN SAVED MY SON.
Vincent went still.
“What does that mean?”
Evelyn looked at him.
“You’re asking me?”
He was.
That was the frightening part.
They searched the library.
Behind a false panel, Marco found a steel safe.
Old.
Mechanical.
Vincent didn’t know the combination.
Evelyn did.
Or something in her memory did.
Her mother’s birthday.
The lock clicked.
Everyone stared at her.
“I don’t know why I knew that.”
Inside were files.
One labeled:
VINCENT MORETTI — 1998.
Another:
HELEN HART.
And another:
EVELYN.
Vincent opened his file.
Medical records.
Police reports.
Photographs of a thirteen-year-old boy in a hospital bed.
Vincent.
He stared.
“I was attacked.”
Evelyn remembered hearing rumors.
A kidnapping attempt during a family war.
Vincent continued reading.
A woman had found him near a train station after he escaped.
She hid him in the back of a library delivery van until his father’s men arrived.
Name:
Helen Hart.
Evelyn’s mother.
Vincent sat down.
“She saved me.”
Evelyn looked at the next file.
Her own name.
Inside:
A letter from Anthony Moretti to Helen.
If anything happens to you, the house remains Evelyn’s. Do not tell her unless Mercer finds her.
Evelyn stopped breathing.
“Mercer?”
Grant?
Impossible.
The letter was written nineteen years earlier.
Grant had been seventeen.
Vincent took the page.
Then his face hardened.
“No.”
“What?”
“He didn’t mean Grant.”
At the bottom:
Thomas Mercer is still looking for the account.
Evelyn frowned.
“Who is Thomas Mercer?”
Vincent looked at her.
“My father’s accountant.”
The name Mercer was not coincidence.
Grant’s father, Thomas Mercer, had worked for Anthony Moretti.
And according to the next document, he had stolen more than forty million dollars from the Moretti organization before disappearing.
Evelyn felt sick.
“My husband’s father stole from yours.”
Vincent nodded.
Then Mara opened the final file.
A certified birth record.
Grant Mercer.
Father:
Thomas Mercer.
Mother:
Caroline Marsh.
Evelyn frowned.
“Marsh?”
Vincent read again.
Cordelia?
No.
Different story.
But the surname mattered.
Then Marco pulled out another envelope.
Newer.
Dated three months earlier.
Someone had been inside this safe recently.
The letter was addressed:
GRANT.
May you like
Inside were only four words.
EVELYN HAS THE KEY.
