Chapter 3 - THE BRUISE AND THE LEDGER
My mother was not in the house.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that someone had wanted me to believe she might be.
The living room had been disturbed just enough to frighten me.
One lamp lay on its side.
A drawer had been pulled open.
The framed photograph of my father that normally sat beside the television had been turned facedown.
Nothing expensive was missing.
That made it worse.
Dante stood near the kitchen doorway while two of his people checked the rest of the house.
He did not tell me not to touch anything.
He did not need to.
I stood in the center of the room holding my mother's cracked phone like it was evidence in a trial I had not agreed to attend.
"Where would she go?" he asked.
"My aunt's sometimes."
"Call her."
I did.
Aunt Carol answered on the fourth ring, confused and half asleep.
Mom was not there.
I called two neighbors.
Nothing.
I called the hospital where she volunteered on Thursdays.
Nothing.
Before the unknown caller rang, I searched the room where my father used to keep his papers.
Mom had turned it into a small sewing room years ago.
His desk was gone.
The filing cabinet was gone.
But one shallow closet still held a box labeled MICHAEL - TAXES.
I pulled it onto the floor.
Dante remained in the doorway.
"You can come in."
"You looked like you wanted space."
"I want answers more."
He entered and sat on the floor opposite me without comment.
The image of Dante Moretti cross-legged beside a box of fifteen-year-old tax returns would have been funny in another life.
We sorted silently.
Receipts.
Mileage logs.
Old invoices.
A birthday card I had made for Dad when I was nine.
WORLD'S BEST DAD, written in glitter glue.
My breath caught.
Dante saw it and looked away.
I turned the card over.
Dad had saved it with financial records that could apparently get people killed.
For some reason, that broke me more than the overturned photograph.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes.
"He kept this."
Dante's voice was quiet.
"Of course he did."
"You didn't know him."
"I knew enough to know he talked about you too much."
I looked up.
"He talked about me?"
"Constantly."
Dante almost smiled.
"Your science fair."
"A piano recital you hated."
"The time you broke a neighbor's window and blamed weather."
I stared.
"I was ten."
"He thought the weather defense was inventive."
A laugh escaped me through tears.
For fifteen years, my father's professional life and home life had existed in separate rooms inside my memory.
Dante had just opened a door between them.
I kept digging.
Near the bottom was a faded envelope from a locksmith.
Inside was a receipt for two brass keys.
The serial number stamped on the receipt matched the key Mom later placed on the kitchen table.
There had been two.
"Where is the other one?"
Dante studied the receipt.
"Could be with the lockbox."
"Or someone else."
"Yes."
A handwritten note appeared on the back.
A.V. HOLDS ONE.
C. MUST NEVER KNOW UNTIL SAFE.
C.
Carol?
My mother?
Or me, if Dad had used my middle name Claire?
I turned the receipt toward Dante.
"Arthur has another key."
His face hardened.
"Then Arthur has known more than he admitted for a long time."
Another ally with another missing truth.
The list was becoming crowded.
Then a number I did not know texted me.
SHE IS FINE.
My vision narrowed.
"He has her."
Dante crossed the room.
"Show me."
I did.
Another message appeared.
FOR NOW.
My knees weakened.
Dante did not grab me.
He moved a chair behind me with his foot.
I sat because suddenly standing felt impossible.
"Nolan," I whispered.
"Maybe."
"Who else?"
"Someone who wants you to think it is Nolan."
I looked up at him.
"That distinction does not matter to me right now."
"It has to."
"My mother is missing."
"Which is why we cannot make the first conclusion the final one."
I wanted to slap the calm out of him.
Instead, I gripped the phone tighter.
"Find her."
Dante went still.
I heard my own words after I said them.
They sounded like an order.
They sounded like surrender.
They sounded like exactly what he had warned me about in the car.
Protection was not free.
But he only nodded.
"I will."
"What do you want?"
"Nothing tonight."
"You said protection has a price."
"It does."
"Then name it."
Dante glanced toward the overturned photograph of my father.
"Truth."
I stared at him.
"About what?"
"Everything Nolan had access to."
"My passwords."
"More."
"My apartment."
"More."
"My work tablet."
"Mia."
His voice dropped.
"Why did someone turn your father's photograph facedown?"
I looked toward it.
A cold feeling moved through me.
"I don't know."
"Who was he?"
"Michael Calloway."
"What did he do?"
"Accounting."
Dante's face changed so slightly another person might have missed it.
I did not.
"You know that name."
"Maybe."
"Do not do that."
"Do what?"
"Give me half an answer like you're protecting me from the rest."
He watched me for a long second.
"Your father ever work for a company called Moretti Freight?"
The room seemed to shift beneath me.
"No."
Then I remembered something.
My father's old business cards.
The ones Mom had kept in a kitchen drawer because she never threw anything away.
They said CALLOWAY FINANCIAL CONSULTING.
But when I was little, he had traveled constantly.
Detroit.
Milwaukee.
Cleveland.
Chicago warehouses along the river.
He used to tell me he counted other people's mistakes for a living.
"I don't know," I corrected.
Dante looked toward the kitchen.
"How long ago did he die?"
"Fifteen years."
"How?"
"Hit-and-run."
His jaw tightened.
"Where?"
"Lower Wacker."
Dante turned away from me.
That frightened me more than anything he could have said.
"You knew him."
He did not answer.
I stood.
"Dante."
"I knew of him."
"That's not the same thing."
"No."
"Did he work for your family?"
"Possibly."
"Possibly?"
"I was not running everything then."
"Who was?"
"My brother."
Luca's father.
The dead brother Dante admitted he had lied to his nephew about.
A terrible shape began forming from disconnected pieces.
My father.
Dante's brother.
Luca outside my apartment with Nolan.
A staged fraud accusation ready before the kiss.
My mother missing hours later.
"What did Nolan know about my father?"
"I don't know."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it is true."
I shook my head.
"Men like you always know."
Something hard flickered across Dante's face.
"Men like me?"
"Powerful men."
"Powerful men know less than people think."
His voice was suddenly colder.
"The dangerous ones pretend otherwise."
One of his people entered the room.
A woman in her thirties with a severe black ponytail and a tablet in her hand.
"We found the car."
I stepped toward her.
"My mother's?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Two blocks from a pharmacy near Sheridan."
"Is she there?"
"Not in the car."
My heart sank.
"Cameras?"
The woman looked at Dante.
He nodded.
"She parked at 10:42 p.m.," the woman said.
"She entered the pharmacy alone."
"And came out?"
"Yes."
"Then what?"
The woman hesitated.
"She got into another vehicle voluntarily."
I blinked.
"With who?"
"We are still identifying the plate."
Dante's gaze sharpened.
"Show me the image."
She handed him the tablet.
I moved beside him.
The photo was grainy but clear enough.
Mom stood near the passenger side of a dark sedan.
She was not struggling.
She was holding a pharmacy bag in one hand.
The driver's face was hidden by the windshield reflection.
Then I noticed Mom's posture.
She was leaning toward the window like she was talking to someone she knew.
"She recognized the driver."
Dante nodded.
"Looks that way."
"Zoom in."
The woman did.
The image blurred.
One detail became clearer.
A round white sticker on the lower corner of the windshield.
Dante's face changed again.
"What?"
He handed the tablet back.
"Private club parking permit."
"Which club?"
"Lake Crown."
I knew the name.
Nolan's father belonged there.
So did half the men whose charity galas I had organized.
"Nolan?"
"Maybe."
I hated that word now.
"Can we get the membership list?"
"Yes."
"How?"
He looked at me.
"You do not want the answer to that."
"Try me."
"My sister is on the board."
I stared.
"That's it?"
"Disappointed?"
For the first time all night, I laughed.
It sounded cracked and strange.
But it was a laugh.
Dante looked at me as if the sound surprised him too.
Then my phone rang again.
Unknown number.
I answered immediately.
"Mom?"
Silence.
Then a man's voice.
Not Nolan.
Older.
Calm.
"Ms. Calloway."
"Where is my mother?"
"Safe."
"Put her on the phone."
"Soon."
"Who are you?"
"Someone who is trying to prevent you from repeating your father's mistake."
The room went silent around me.
Dante stepped closer.
I turned on speaker.
"What mistake?"
The man chuckled softly.
"Trusting a Moretti."
Dante's face became unreadable.
"If you hurt her—"
"Your mother will be home before sunrise if you listen."
"Listen to what?"
"Go back to your apartment tomorrow."
"Why?"
"There is something there Nolan has been searching for."
My skin prickled.
"What?"
"A black ledger."
I looked at Dante.
His face had gone pale beneath the warm room light.
"You know what that is," I said.
The caller heard me.
"Of course he does."
"What is it?"
The man ignored me.
"Ask Dante what your father was counting the week before he died."
The line went dead.
I turned toward Dante.
"What black ledger?"
He looked at me for several seconds.
Then he walked to the overturned photograph of my father.
He lifted it from the floor.
He turned it over.
On the back, beneath the cardboard stand, someone had written four numbers in faded blue ink.
Dante whispered them aloud.
"Thirty-one, seven, nineteen, four."
My mouth went dry.
"What do they mean?"
Dante looked at the photograph as though my father had just spoken from fifteen years away.
"They are not numbers."
May you like
He met my eyes.
"They are a location."
