Chapter 5 - MARCO’S REAL NAME
Marco did not run.
That mattered.
When I placed the photograph on my desk that night, he looked at it and closed his eyes.
Lucia whispered:
“You knew?”
Marco opened them.
“I knew Thomas Caruso.”
Emma stood near the fireplace, one arm wrapped carefully around her injured ribs.
“You knew my father?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He saved my life.”
The answer changed the room.
Marco had entered my organization at twenty-two.
Quiet.
Capable.
Loyal.
I had trusted him with my home, my sister, my life.
Yet he had never told me his connection to Thomas.
“Start talking,” I said.
Marco sat.
“My father worked docks for Kolov.”
“Your father was Antonio Moretti.”
“Yes.”
“He disappeared.”
“Kolov killed him.”
Marco looked at Emma.
“I was sixteen. I went looking for records proving it. Your father caught me inside an accounting office.”
Emma’s eyes filled.
“He could have turned me in.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“Fed me.”
For the first time, Marco smiled.
“Your father kept crackers in every desk drawer.”
Emma laughed once through tears.
“That sounds like him.”
Marco’s smile vanished.
“He told me revenge makes young men stupid.”
I almost looked away.
Thomas Caruso and my father would have gotten along.
Marco continued:
“When Thomas left New York, he took me to Salvatore Castellano.”
“My father.”
“He paid for boarding school under another name.”
Lucia stared.
“Our father paid for your school?”
“Yes.”
“Then why join Dominic?”
“Because after Salvatore died, I believed the protection would disappear.”
“So you got close to me.”
“Yes.”
My voice cooled.
“To spy?”
“At first.”
Lucia inhaled sharply.
Emma watched me carefully.
I didn’t move.
“What changed?”
Marco met my eyes.
“You did.”
That sounded sentimental.
Marco was not sentimental.
He continued:
“Your uncle wanted war. You stopped him. He wanted to move narcotics through Castellano warehouses. You refused. He told you mercy was weakness. You fired half the men he recommended.”
I remembered all of it.
“You decided I wasn’t my uncle.”
“Yes.”
“And the ledger?”
Marco looked toward Emma.
“Thomas contacted me two weeks before he died.”
Rose covered her mouth.
“What did he say?”
“That someone had found him.”
“Did he tell you where the ledger was?”
“No.”
“Then why does this note say you know?”
Marco hesitated.
“Because I knew the clue.”
Emma stepped closer.
“What clue?”
Marco looked directly at her.
“Your father said the second ledger was hidden somewhere nobody from Kolov would ever willingly go.”
“That could be anywhere.”
“He added one sentence.”
“What?”
Marco swallowed.
“Where Emma learned to count.”
Emma stopped.
Rose’s face changed.
I saw recognition.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Emma whispered:
“My father taught me numbers in church.”
Not Sunday school.
In the basement of St. Agnes Church in Dayton.
Thomas volunteered there fixing furnaces and repainting classrooms.
Emma used to sit beside him while he worked.
Rose suddenly stood.
“There was an old metal cabinet.”
Emma looked at her.
“The one behind the boiler room?”
Rose nodded.
“Your father had the only key.”
I looked at the brass key from the safe-deposit box.
Same age.
Same shape.
We drove to Dayton the next morning.
St. Agnes still stood.
The priest allowed us into the basement after Rose explained Thomas’s history.
The cabinet remained.
Painted over.
Forgotten.
The brass key turned.
Inside were old tools.
A coffee tin.
Children’s worksheets.
And behind a false metal panel, wrapped in plastic:
A black ledger.
Emma touched it.
But Marco stopped her.
“Wait.”
There was something else behind it.
A sealed envelope.
Addressed in Thomas’s handwriting.
TO DOMINIC CASTELLANO.
I stared at my own name.
Thomas had written to me years before I even knew Emma existed.
And the first line inside explained why Kolov had waited so long to strike.
May you like
Dominic—
If you are reading this, someone inside your family is still working for Kolov.
