Chapter 8 - NICO KNEW WHO I WAS BEFORE I KNEW HIM
I wanted to leave immediately.
Not because Vincent might find us.
Because suddenly the beginning of my entire relationship felt contaminated.
Three years earlier, I met Nico at a charity auction in Manhattan.
I worked for the nonprofit organizing it.
He bid an obscene amount on a painting he clearly hated.
Then asked whether I wanted coffee.
I thought it was random.
Apparently nothing in Nico’s life was random.
“How long did you know who I was?”
“Before the auction.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“So you researched me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Nico opened Lorenzo’s ledger.
My father, Anthony Ellison, had been an accountant.
At least that was what I knew.
For several years in his twenties, he handled books for one of Lorenzo DeLuca’s legitimate construction companies.
One night, he discovered numbers had been altered.
Instead of ignoring it, Dad warned Lorenzo.
The falsified accounts exposed a theft scheme connected to Vincent’s father.
Days later, someone attempted to kill Lorenzo.
Dad helped him escape through a service exit.
I sat down.
My quiet father.
The man who hated confrontation.
The man who taught me to change a tire and cried at dog movies.
He had been connected to the DeLucas.
“Why didn’t he ever tell me?”
“He left New York afterward.”
That part I knew.
Dad moved my mother and me to Pennsylvania when I was five.
Nico continued.
“My father paid him enough to start over.”
“So when you met me…”
“I recognized the name.”
“And you approached me because of him.”
“At first.”
Two words.
At first.
They hurt anyway.
“What did you want?”
“To know whether Anthony Ellison’s daughter knew anything about the old accounts.”
“And when did you figure out I didn’t?”
“The second time we had dinner.”
“Then why keep seeing me?”
Nico looked at me as though the answer should be obvious.
I made him say it.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“Because somewhere between you making fun of my tie and refusing to let me send a car home for you, I forgot why I approached you.”
I remembered that night.
I had called his tie “a funeral curtain.”
He had actually laughed.
I hated that the memory was still warm.
“You should have told me.”
“Yes.”
It was becoming his most important word.
Arthur cleared his throat.
“There’s more.”
Of course there was.
My father had left behind a sealed statement with Lorenzo.
It said that if the theft network ever resurfaced, the person behind it would likely search for Anthony’s records.
Dad had kept copies.
Nobody knew where.
Vincent apparently believed I had inherited them.
That explained why he thought I knew more than I did.
Why he had watched me.
Why he wanted me separated from Nico.
I had spent three years assuming danger came from loving Nico.
Part of it had been following my family long before I met him.
Then I remembered something.
When my mother died, she left me one box I never opened.
Dad’s old tax files.
They were sitting in a storage locker in Pennsylvania.
Arthur stood immediately.
“When was the last time you checked that unit?”
“Two years ago.”
Nico’s face changed.
“Vincent will know about it.”
My prepaid phone buzzed.
A photograph arrived from an unknown number.
The storage locker.
Door open.
Boxes scattered across the floor.
May you like
Underneath the image:
THANK YOUR FATHER FOR KEEPING SUCH GOOD RECORDS.
