Chapter 6 - THE BROTHER ROMAN NEVER KNEW
Damian wanted to meet.
Roman said no.
Sadi said yes.
“You're not meeting him alone.”
“I didn't say alone.”
“You were thinking it.”
She was.
Annoying.
They chose a public law-library conference room with federal agents nearby.
Damian arrived in a gray suit.
Thirty-nine.
Dark hair.
Same eyes as Roman.
Different expression.
Roman looked at him as if staring at a ghost.
“You're real.”
Damian smiled faintly.
“So are you.”
No embrace.
No family reunion.
Good.
Damian explained.
Their mother, Isabella Moretti, had him at nineteen.
Father?
Lorenzo.
Before marriage.
The Moretti patriarch considered the pregnancy scandalous and forced Isabella to place Damian with relatives.
Years later, Lorenzo married Isabella and had Roman.
Damian grew up knowing.
Roman didn't.
“Why?”
Roman asked.
Damian answered:
“Because you were the legitimate heir.”
That word tasted ugly.
Damian eventually entered Arthur Bellini's business network.
Not out of loyalty.
To investigate.
Arthur had evidence about Isabella's forced separation from him and used it as leverage.
Then Marcus Vale contacted Damian.
They cooperated.
Marcus believed Arthur was still trafficking workers through subcontractors.
Damian supplied internal documents.
“So Arthur killed Marcus?” Sadi asked.
“Yes.”
“You said another Moretti did.”
Damian looked at Roman.
“Arthur ordered it.”
“That's not what you said.”
“I said he wasn't the Moretti.”
Sadi's stomach tightened.
“Who?”
Damian placed a photograph on the table.
A woman leaving Warehouse 17 the night Marcus disappeared.
Elegant coat.
Silver hair.
Roman stopped breathing.
His mother.
Isabella.
Roman stared.
“My mother?”
Damian nodded.
“She met Marcus that night.”
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“Did she kill him?”
“I don't know.”
Finally, uncertainty.
Then Damian revealed why Arthur was desperate to transfer Warehouse 17.
Federal agents weren't only reopening trafficking allegations.
They were searching for a missing archive Marcus hid there.
Evidence naming every official, judge, contractor, and family member who protected the operation over three decades.
Whoever obtained it first could destroy half the old Boston network.
“Do you know where it is?” Sadi asked.
Damian looked at her.
“Marcus did.”
“He's dead.”
“Yes.”
“But he left you something.”
She frowned.
“No.”
Damian pointed toward her neck.
Sadi wore a cheap silver pendant.
Marcus had given it to her at law-school graduation dinner before she dropped out.
She had worn it for years.
Roman leaned closer.
“May I?”
She removed it herself.
The pendant opened.
Inside was a tiny storage chip.
Marcus had hidden the archive on Sadi's body for two years.
May you like
Then Damian said:
“If Arthur learns you have that, you won't survive the night.”
