Chapter 11 - THE PRICE VITTORIO PUT ON MY LIFE
Gabriel refused immediately.
“No.”
Vittorio laughed.
“You sound like your father.”
“I’ll bring the ledger.”
“I don’t care about your terms.”
“You need the book.”
“I need the woman who can read it.”
That was the moment I understood.
Vittorio did not simply want evidence destroyed.
He wanted every person capable of reconstructing it gone.
Angelo.
Me.
Maybe even my mother.
Gabriel ended the call.
“You’re not going.”
I looked at him.
“You didn’t even ask.”
“I’m not asking.”
“And we were doing so well.”
“Tessa.”
“No.”
His expression hardened.
“This is not Ilvento. This is not you insulting my father over dinner. Vittorio kills people.”
“I’m aware.”
“I will not use you as bait.”
“Good. Because I have another idea.”
Angelo smiled faintly.
Gabriel looked at him.
“Do not encourage her.”
“She reminds me of myself.”
“That is exactly what worries me.”
Instead of making the trade, we gave the original ledger to federal investigators.
Copies went to multiple attorneys.
Encrypted backups were stored in separate locations.
For the first time, killing one person would not erase the evidence.
Then I decoded Vittorio’s meeting instructions.
He had chosen an abandoned warehouse near Red Hook.
But one phrase bothered me.
Where the saint lost his eye.
Gabriel thought it was meaningless.
I didn’t.
Mr. Cosenza had used the phrase before.
In Palermo, it referred to an old church statue damaged during the war.
But in New York, Angelo had once joked that the only saint who had “lost his eye” was the faded Saint Michael mural painted on Warehouse 17.
Not the building Vittorio named.
The one next to it.
“He’s setting a trap.”
Gabriel stared at the map.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Federal teams repositioned.
At 11:40 p.m., agents entered Warehouse 17.
They found Luca tied to a chair but alive.
Vittorio was gone.
He had left another message.
This time in English.
You read well, Tessa. Let’s see if you remember your mother’s room number.
My blood froze.
I called the care facility.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
Gabriel was already moving.
By the time we reached the hospital, the hallway outside my mother’s room was empty.
Her door stood open.
The bed was vacant.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
Gabriel caught me before my knees gave out.
Then a nurse ran toward us.
“Ms. Taylor?”
“Where is my mother?”
The nurse looked confused.
“A physician signed her out for emergency imaging.”
“What physician?”
She checked the electronic chart.
The name had been entered twenty minutes earlier.
Dr. Vincent Romano.
There was no such doctor.
But the security footage showed the man pushing my mother’s wheelchair toward the service elevator.
Richard.
My former manager.
May you like
He had taken her.
And he was wearing one of Gabriel’s security badges.
