Chapter 8 - THE MAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
I spent the next four hours trying to remember my father's funeral.
Not the facts.
The body.
That was the part my mind kept circling.
Had I seen him?
I remembered a closed casket.
I remembered white lilies.
I remembered Mom's black dress.
I remembered squeezing the sleeve of my aunt's coat until my fingers hurt.
I remembered adults telling me the accident had been too severe.
I did not remember seeing my father's face.
"That doesn't mean anything," I said.
Miriam sat across from me in Dante's library with three laptops open.
"It means it is worth checking."
Dante stood near the fireplace.
Alessandra sat on the arm of a chair, reading the scanned bank document for the fifth time.
"The death certificate is real," Miriam said.
"The county record is real."
"The coroner's file exists."
I leaned forward.
"Exists?"
"Most of the supporting photographs and intake paperwork are missing."
"Missing how?"
"Digitization problem, according to the clerk."
Alessandra snorted.
"Convenient city."
Miriam ignored her.
"The body was identified by dental records and personal effects."
"Who identified the dental records?"
She looked at another screen.
"A private dentist named Harold Beck."
"Alive?"
"No."
"Of course not."
Dante's phone rang.
He answered, listened, and said only one word.
"Send it."
A photograph appeared on the library screen seconds later.
It showed an older man entering a bank in Oak Park eleven days earlier.
The date matched the trust document.
The man was thin.
Gray-haired.
He leaned on a cane.
His face was partially turned away from the camera.
My heart began pounding anyway.
"That's him."
No one spoke.
I stepped closer to the screen.
"That's my father."
The man had the same long nose.
The same slope of shoulder.
The same habit of carrying his head slightly forward when he walked.
Dante moved beside me.
"You are sure?"
"I was fourteen, not four."
My voice shook.
"That's him."
Miriam enlarged the image.
The face blurred.
"Could be resemblance."
I turned on her.
"It is him."
She did not argue.
That was worse.
Dante looked at one of his people.
"Trace the vehicle."
The man nodded and left.
I stared at the photograph until anger replaced hope.
"If he's alive, he abandoned us."
My own words hurt.
"He let us bury an empty box."
Dante's voice was quiet.
"We do not know that."
"I know what fifteen years feels like."
"Yes."
"Do you?"
He looked at me.
Then toward the photograph of Lucia on the mantel.
I had not noticed it before.
She was beautiful.
Dark-haired.
Laughing at something outside the frame.
Dante's face softened when he looked at her.
"Yes," he said.
I looked away.
An hour later, they traced the bank visitor to an assisted-living facility in western Illinois.
The name on his registration was Thomas Reed.
Age seventy-four.
No close family listed.
The photograph on the facility website looked even more like my father.
I did not ask whether we should go.
I put on my coat.
Dante followed.
Alessandra blocked the library door.
"You are not both disappearing into rural Illinois with Nolan watching every highway camera he can buy."
I stared at her.
"What do you suggest?"
"Take a car that does not scream Dante Moretti."
She tossed him a key.
"And leave the parade home."
Dante looked at the key.
"Your Volvo?"
"No one has ever looked dangerous in that Volvo."
"You insulted me for buying it."
"I insult you for many things."
She looked at me.
"Bring him back."
I almost laughed.
"I thought he was protecting me."
"He gets dramatic around ghosts."
Dante sighed.
"Alessandra."
"Drive carefully."
For two hours, Dante Moretti drove a beige Volvo through flat winter farmland.
It was the most normal thing I had seen him do.
No driver.
No security visible.
No tinted armored glass.
He even stopped for gas himself.
I sat in the passenger seat drinking terrible coffee from a paper cup.
"Do you always drive like someone's grandmother?"
He glanced at the speedometer.
"I am six miles over the limit."
"Terrifying."
The corner of his mouth moved.
Then my phone rang.
Nolan.
I watched it vibrate.
Dante kept his eyes on the road.
"Do you want to answer?"
"No."
It stopped.
A voicemail arrived.
I played it on speaker.
Nolan's voice filled the car.
"Mia, I know you're scared."
My stomach twisted.
"I know Moretti is telling you things about me."
Dante did not react.
"I need you to remember who was there when your father died."
My fingers tightened around the phone.
"Ask Dante why he never told you he met Michael the night before the crash."
Dante's hands tightened on the steering wheel.
The voicemail continued.
"Ask him what Michael gave him."
Then it ended.
I turned slowly.
"What did my father give you?"
Dante drove another mile before answering.
"A sealed envelope."
My anger returned instantly.
"Where is it?"
"Destroyed."
"By who?"
He looked straight ahead.
"Me."
The car suddenly felt too small.
"Pull over."
"Mia."
"Pull over."
He did.
The tires crunched onto a gravel shoulder.
I opened the door and stepped into the cold.
Dante followed but stayed near the car.
"You burned something my father gave you before he died?"
"Yes."
"What was in it?"
"I did not read all of it."
"What did you read?"
"A warning."
"About who?"
Dante's silence lasted too long.
"Your brother."
His face tightened.
"Yes."
I laughed in disbelief.
"So you destroyed evidence protecting your family."
"Yes."
No excuse.
No defense.
Just the truth.
It hurt more.
"I should leave."
"If you want."
"Stop being reasonable."
He looked at me.
"Would you prefer I become Nolan?"
The question hit too close.
"Do not use him to make yourself look better."
"I am not."
His voice sharpened for the first time.
"I am telling you that anger at me does not require me to trap you."
We stared at each other in the freezing wind.
Then I got back into the car.
Not because I forgave him.
Because the man in the assisted-living photograph still looked like my father.
We reached the facility just before four.
Thomas Reed sat alone near a window overlooking a frozen pond.
The moment I saw him clearly, hope died.
He was not my father.
He had the same nose.
The same shoulders.
But his eyes were wrong.
My father had hazel eyes.
This man's were blue.
I stopped in the doorway.
Thomas looked at me.
Then at Dante.
His expression changed.
"You took your time."
Dante went still.
"Do I know you?"
Thomas smiled faintly.
"Not by this face."
He touched his cheek.
"Age is useful camouflage."
I stepped forward.
"Why did you sign my father's name?"
He looked at me for a long time.
"Because Michael asked me to."
The room tilted.
"When?"
"Fifteen years ago."
"My father is dead."
"Yes."
My chest tightened.
"Then why make me think he wasn't?"
"I did not send you the bank document."
Dante's eyes narrowed.
"Who did?"
Thomas looked toward the hallway.
"If Elena Voss has come back, you have less time than I thought."
I sat across from him.
"Who are you?"
"Samuel Reed."
Dante's face changed.
"Salvatore's bookkeeper."
"For eleven miserable years."
Samuel looked at me.
"Your father was my friend."
"Then tell me why his name is on a trust document from last week."
Samuel nodded toward a small cabinet.
Dante opened it.
Inside was a metal file box.
Samuel gave me a key from around his neck.
Samuel did not immediately open the metal file box.
Instead, he asked me to sit.
"Your father made me promise I would not hand anything over to a frightened child."
I stared at him.
"I'm twenty-nine."
"Fear can make adults younger."
I almost snapped at him.
Then I looked at my hands.
They were trembling.
Samuel noticed.
"Michael used to do that too."
"Shake?"
"Hide it."
He smiled faintly.
"He would put both hands in his pockets and pretend he was cold."
A memory surfaced.
Dad standing in our kitchen before work.
Both hands in his coat pockets.
Mom asking why he had not eaten breakfast.
Him smiling too quickly.
I had thought he was late for a meeting.
Maybe he had been afraid.
"Did he know he was going to die?"
Samuel's eyes softened.
"He knew it was possible."
"Why didn't he leave?"
"He tried."
"Dante said he refused the safe property."
"He refused that night."
Samuel looked at Dante.
"Because Michael no longer knew which part of the Moretti family could be trusted."
Dante accepted the words without reaction.
Samuel continued.
"He had already moved Carol and your mother in his head a hundred times."
"But not in real life."
"People make terrible plans when they are afraid of making the wrong one."
I thought of myself staying with Nolan because leaving felt dangerous and staying felt familiar.
"Did he stay for me?"
Samuel shook his head.
"Do not romanticize it."
The bluntness startled me.
"Michael made mistakes."
"What mistakes?"
"He believed evidence would protect him once enough copies existed."
"It didn't."
"No."
Samuel's gaze sharpened.
"He also believed he could manage men more dangerous than he was because he understood their numbers."
"That sounds familiar."
I glanced at Dante.
Dante did not object.
Samuel almost smiled.
"Your father liked people who admitted what they were."
"Did he like Dante?"
"Some days."
Dante looked offended.
"Only some?"
"You were insufferable at thirty-seven."
"I was not thirty-seven when Michael died."
"Then you were insufferable younger too."
For one second, the room became ordinary enough for me to imagine these men fifteen years earlier arguing over coffee.
Then Samuel's face became serious.
"Michael did trust one thing about Dante."
I looked at him.
"What?"
"If forced to choose between his own life and a child, Dante would choose the child."
Dante looked away.
Samuel reached for the file box.
"That is why the trust uses him as witness."
"Not because he was innocent."
"No."
"Because my father believed he had a line he would not cross."
"Exactly."
I thought of the ballroom.
Dante had not asked what kissing him meant for his reputation.
He had asked who I needed saving from.
Maybe my father had seen that line long before I did.
Samuel unlocked the box.
"Michael created a delayed trust before he died."
"For money?"
"For records."
"What records?"
"Enough to destroy men who have spent fifteen years becoming respectable."
My mouth went dry.
"Nolan's father?"
"Among them."
"Dante's brother?"
Samuel looked at Dante.
"Especially him."
Dante did not react.
"Why is Nolan's name in the ledger?"
Samuel's face hardened.
"Because the boy saw something."
I leaned forward.
"What?"
"The night Michael realized the missing money was only bait, Nolan was in a room he was never supposed to enter."
"What room?"
"A private dining room at Lake Crown."
Dante stepped closer.
"Who was there?"
Samuel looked at him.
"Your brother."
He counted on his fingers.
"Richard Pierce."
"Arthur Vale."
"Two police commanders."
His eyes shifted to me.
"And Lucia."
Dante's face emptied.
"My wife?"
Samuel nodded.
"She was the reason Michael started writing names."
Dante looked as though someone had struck him.
"Lucia never told me."
"She planned to."
Samuel's voice softened.
"She was afraid of what you would do."
Silence filled the room.
Then Samuel looked at me again.
"Michael placed the records in a trust that can be opened only when two conditions are met."
"What conditions?"
"You turn thirty."
I stared.
My birthday was in forty-one days.
"And?"
Samuel looked at Dante.
"The witness signs."
Dante's expression changed.
May you like
I felt cold before Samuel said the words.
"Dante Moretti is the witness."
