Chapter 7 - MY FATHER'S NAME
Dante did not take me back to his house.
I asked him to drive to the lake.
Not his lakefront property.
The public lake.
The ordinary one.
The one where people walked dogs, pushed strollers, drank bad coffee, and had no idea my dead father had apparently been connected to half the powerful men in Chicago.
We stopped near Belmont Harbor.
The wind cut through my borrowed coat.
I welcomed it.
Cold made things simple.
Dante stood six feet away from me beside a bench.
I had asked for distance.
He gave it without comment.
"Start talking."
He looked toward the water.
"Your father did work for my family."
The words landed without surprise because my body had already believed them.
"For your brother?"
"Mostly."
"What does mostly mean?"
"Salvatore handled the transportation companies."
"Your brother."
"Yes."
"And you?"
"I handled construction, property, and the parts of the family business I was trying to make clean."
I laughed without humor.
"Clean."
"You can dislike the word."
"I dislike men deciding a business becomes moral because the paperwork changes."
Dante accepted that.
"Fair."
"What did my father find?"
"I don't know everything."
"Tell me what you do know."
He shoved his hands into his coat pockets.
"Michael was hired as an outside forensic accountant after money disappeared from several companies."
"Stolen by who?"
"That was the question."
"And the answer?"
"He never finished giving it."
I stared at him.
"Because he died."
"Yes."
"In a hit-and-run."
"Yes."
"Was it an accident?"
Dante looked at me.
"I do not believe so."
The world stayed exactly the same around us.
A cyclist passed.
A woman threw a ball to a golden retriever.
Two teenagers laughed near the path.
My father became a murdered man inside that completely ordinary morning.
I sat on the bench.
"Did you know then?"
"I suspected."
"Did you tell my mother?"
"No."
"Did you tell police?"
His silence answered.
I stood again.
"You let us believe it was an accident."
"I let the official story stand."
"That is the same thing."
"To you, yes."
"To anyone with a soul, yes."
Dante's face tightened.
"You are allowed to hate me for it."
"Stop giving me permission."
My voice broke.
"You do not get to give me permission to feel things about my own father."
He nodded once.
"You're right."
I hated how quickly he said it.
I hated that Nolan would have argued until I forgot what I was angry about.
Dante's willingness to accept blame left the anger with nowhere to go.
"Why?"
"Because Michael came to me two days before he died."
I went still.
"What did he say?"
"He said the missing money was not the real problem."
"What was?"
"Names."
The black ledger.
"Witnesses."
Dante nodded.
"He had found records linking people who should never have appeared in the same rooms."
"Politicians?"
"Businessmen."
"Police?"
"Yes."
"Your family?"
He looked at the water.
"Yes."
"The Pierces?"
"Yes."
My pulse jumped.
"Richard Pierce."
Nolan's father.
"Yes."
"And Nolan's name was in the ledger when he was fourteen."
"That is the part I do not understand."
I wrapped my arms around myself.
"What did my father want from you?"
"Protection for you and your mother."
I laughed once.
The sound was ugly.
"You did a great job."
Dante flinched.
Actually flinched.
It was small.
But I saw it.
"No," he said.
"I did not."
The answer took some of the anger out of me again.
I hated him for that too.
"What happened after he came to you?"
"I arranged for a car to take him to a safe property."
"Did he go?"
"No."
"Why?"
"He changed his mind."
"Did he tell you why?"
"He said he needed to get one thing from storage first."
I thought of the missing receipt.
"The black ledger?"
"Maybe."
"You knew about it?"
"I knew he kept notes."
"Then he died."
"The next night."
My knees felt weak again.
"And you did nothing."
Dante's eyes met mine.
"I did many things."
His voice had changed.
"None of them brought your father back."
"Did you kill the person who did it?"
The question came out before I considered whether I wanted the answer.
Dante's face became unreadable.
"I never proved who did it."
"That wasn't my question."
"No."
He held my gaze.
"I did not kill anyone over Michael Calloway's death."
I believed him.
I did not know why.
Maybe because he did not try to make the answer sound noble.
"Why did Mom know your name?"
"I visited her once after the funeral."
"She never told me."
"I asked her not to."
"Why?"
"Because if Michael died for what he knew, anyone watching your family needed to believe he had told me nothing."
"Had he?"
Dante looked at me.
"He told me enough to be afraid."
The wind lifted my hair across my face.
I pushed it back.
"What did he tell you about Richard Pierce?"
I called Mom from the harbor before we left.
She answered on the first ring.
"Are you with him?"
"Dante?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
A pause.
"Did he tell you?"
"Some of it."
Mom exhaled.
"Then I owe you the rest of my part."
I sat back down on the bench.
Dante moved farther away without being asked.
"What part?"
"After your father died, I found a suitcase under our bed."
My heart tightened.
"What was in it?"
"Cash."
"How much?"
"Almost eighty thousand dollars."
I stared at the lake.
We had struggled after Dad died.
Mom had worked two jobs for a while.
I had worn the same winter coat three years.
"Why didn't you use it?"
"Because there was a note."
"What did it say?"
"If I used the money, someone would know I had found it."
"Who?"
"He did not say."
"Where is it now?"
"Gone."
I closed my eyes.
"You destroyed it?"
"No."
Her voice became quieter.
"Dante took it."
I looked toward him.
He was facing the water, but I saw his shoulders tighten.
"Why?"
Mom continued.
"He came after the funeral and said the serial numbers could be traced to a Moretti account."
"Did he give it back?"
"No."
My anger returned.
"Of course he didn't."
Dante turned, hearing enough.
"Ask him what he did with it," Mom said.
I ended the call and stood.
"Eighty thousand dollars."
Dante nodded.
"I remember."
"What did you do with it?"
"Had it documented, then returned to the company account it came from."
"Why not give it to us?"
"Because if Salvatore knew your mother had spent marked money, he would know Michael had left her something."
"So you decided for her."
"Yes."
The answer did not soften the anger.
"Did you replace it?"
Dante looked at me.
"An anonymous education fund paid part of your college tuition."
My mouth fell open.
"That was you?"
"Yes."
"Mom told me it was a scholarship."
"It was structured as one."
"You watched me all those years?"
"No."
"Then how did you know where I went to college?"
"Your mother told a lawyer who administered the fund."
I felt violated and grateful at the same time.
I hated both feelings.
"You should have told us."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you?"
Dante looked toward the water.
"Because I thought distance was protection."
"And now?"
"Now I think distance without truth is just another kind of control."
That did not erase what he had done.
But it gave me another piece of the man standing in front of me.
"That Pierce wanted access to a trust."
"What trust?"
"I don't know."
"My trust?"
"You were fourteen."
"That doesn't answer me."
"I know."
He looked toward the path.
One of his security men stood far away, pretending to study his phone.
"Michael said a trust would become important when you were older."
"How much money?"
"He did not say it was money."
I stared.
"Then what?"
"Evidence."
The brass key in my pocket suddenly felt heavier.
"The lockbox."
"Possibly."
"Arthur Vale has something to do with it."
"Almost certainly."
I took out the key.
The brass looked dull beneath the gray sky.
"Thirty-one, seven, nineteen, four."
Dante nodded.
"The old warehouse."
"We go today."
"We check it first."
"You check it."
"Yes."
"Then we go."
He looked at me.
"If it is safe."
"Nothing is safe."
"Safer, then."
I put the key back into my pocket.
"What else are you hiding?"
That question changed the air between us.
Dante looked away.
There it was.
Something else.
"Tell me."
"I do not know if it matters."
"It matters if you are hiding it."
His jaw flexed.
"Your father mentioned my wife."
I stared at him.
"Elena Voss?"
"No."
"Your wife."
"Lucia."
It was the first time he had said her name.
His voice changed around it.
"What did Dad say about her?"
"That she had seen one of the meetings listed in his notes."
"She was a witness too."
"Yes."
"And Elena Voss was the last person seen with her."
"Yes."
"How did Lucia die?"
Dante's eyes went flat.
"Car crash."
My skin prickled.
"Accident?"
"I was told it was."
"You do not believe that either."
"No."
Two deaths.
Two supposed accidents.
Two witnesses connected to the same ledger.
My father and Dante's wife.
Fifteen years apart.
And now Elena Voss had reappeared beside Nolan.
"Why now?"
I whispered it mostly to myself.
Dante heard.
"Something changed."
My phone buzzed.
An email had arrived from an address made of random numbers.
No subject.
One attachment.
A scanned bank document.
I opened it.
At first I saw only numbers.
Then a signature at the bottom made my heart stop.
MICHAEL CALLOWAY.
My father's name.
The document was dated eleven days ago.
I looked at Dante.
"Someone used my father's signature last week."
He took the phone.
His face hardened.
"Not just his signature."
He pointed to the account holder line.
M. CALLOWAY TRUSTEE.
Status: ACTIVE.
My mouth went dry.
"My father has been dead for fifteen years."
Dante stared at the document.
"Then either someone wants you to think he isn't."
May you like
He looked at me.
"Or Michael Calloway never died the way you were told."
