Chapter 2 - THE MAN IN THE BURNED CAR
2
Grace did not sleep that night.
Technically, she was no longer working.
Luca had suspended all household staff until security determined who arranged her employment.
Grace should have gone home.
Nobody allowed her to.
Victor used softer language.
“For your protection.”
Grace called it what it was.
“Being trapped in a mansion surrounded by armed men.”
Victor didn't disagree.
She was given a guest suite on the second floor.
Titan lay outside the door.
Not one of his handlers could move him.
Grace eventually opened the door.
“You're going to get me fired from a job I apparently never actually got.”
Titan walked inside and lay beside the bed.
“Fine.”
She sat on the carpet.
For twelve years she had imagined her father dying in fire.
She had imagined his truck leaving the road.
Flames spreading.
Samuel alone.
Her last conversation with him had been stupid.
He asked whether she had replaced the bald tire on her car.
She rolled her eyes.
He said he was serious.
She said she was nineteen and didn't need him checking every detail of her life.
He laughed.
“Someday you'll miss being annoyed.”
She had.
Every day.
Now Samuel might have been alive during all of them.
Graduation.
Her first apartment.
Her engagement that failed.
Her aunt's funeral.
All the nights she wished she could call him.
Anger began replacing shock.
At two in the morning, Grace left the suite.
Titan followed.
Two security guards tried to stop her from going downstairs.
“Call Luca.”
“Mr. Moretti is asleep.”
“Then wake him.”
Luca was not asleep.
She found him in the library wearing a white shirt with sleeves rolled to his forearms.
Documents covered the desk.
Grace entered.
“You have ten minutes.”
Luca looked at his watch.
“For what?”
“To tell me why my father saved you, why a child's sweater was in that crate, why he vanished, and why somebody wearing his face stood outside your estate tonight.”
Luca leaned back.
“That's ambitious.”
“Nine minutes fifty seconds.”
Titan walked to Luca and sat.
Luca stared at him.
“He hasn't behaved like this in twelve years.”
“Like what?”
“Restless.”
Grace looked at Titan.
“Maybe he remembers things better than people do.”
That landed.
Luca stood and walked toward the fireplace.
“Twelve years ago, I was twenty-five.”
“Newspapers say twenty-six.”
“The newspapers are wrong about many things.”
“You'll fit right in with this story.”
Luca ignored the comment.
“My father was still running the family businesses. I was responsible for shipping.”
“Legal shipping?”
“Some.”
Grace almost laughed.
“At least you're honest.”
“I learned late.”
Luca explained that one of their warehouses had been used for animal transport.
Officially, trained guard dogs.
Unofficially, Luca suspected something else was moving through the same facilities.
He went alone to inspect it.
“That was stupid,” Grace said.
“Yes.”
“Good. Continue.”
Inside the warehouse he found crates.
Dogs.
Documents.
Medical supplies.
And four people who were not supposed to be there.
Two women.
A teenage boy.
A little girl.
All frightened.
All carrying identification that belonged to other people.
Grace's humor disappeared.
“What were they doing there?”
“At the time, I didn't know.”
“Now?”
Luca stared at the fire.
“My family had a system.”
Grace waited.
“They called it Shepherd.”
The word meant nothing to her.
Luca explained.
During the violent years between organized-crime families, informants sometimes needed to disappear.
Witnesses.
Relatives.
People who knew too much.
The Morettis had safe apartments, doctors, drivers, forged documents.
At first, Shepherd was allegedly a protection system.
“You're telling me organized crime ran witness protection.”
“In a crude way.”
“For free?”
“No.”
“Of course.”
People paid.
Money.
Information.
Property.
Favors.
Then Antonio Moretti discovered something more profitable.
A person who could disappear could also become someone else.
And a person declared dead left behind things.
Accounts.
Insurance.
Property.
Identities.
“Your father stole identities?”
“My father built the infrastructure.”
Grace stared.
“How many people?”
“I don't know.”
“That's convenient.”
“I have spent nine years trying to learn.”
Something in his voice made her believe him.
“What does this have to do with Samuel?”
“Your father found Titan in one of those transport crates.”
Grace remembered the puppy.
Terrified.
Cut.
Samuel refusing to explain.
“Why would a dog lead him there?”
“Titan had escaped.”
Samuel found him near an Albany highway.
The puppy wore a numbered transport tag.
Samuel noticed dried blood inside the crate he'd apparently escaped from.
Human blood.
Samuel followed the tag.
He eventually traced it to a veterinary contractor connected to Moretti shipping.
“He should have called police.”
“He did.”
“And?”
“The detective he spoke to worked for us.”
Grace's face went cold.
“Your family.”
“Yes.”
Samuel's report went directly to Antonio Moretti.
Three days later, men came looking for him.
That was when Samuel removed Titan from Grace's home.
“He told me Titan was adopted.”
“He was protecting you.”
“By lying to me.”
“Yes.”
Grace hated how easily Luca said it.
“He gave Titan to you?”
“Not exactly.”
On the night of the warehouse fire, Samuel followed one of Moretti's vehicles.
Luca arrived separately.
Both walked into a trap.
Somebody had set fire to the building and ordered Luca killed.
Samuel dragged him through a loading door after Luca was shot.
Titan, still a puppy, led them through smoke toward an exit.
“Who tried to kill you?”
“I thought it was a rival family.”
“You don't anymore.”
“No.”
“Your father?”
Luca didn't answer.
Grace remembered the collar message.
LUCA DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HIS FATHER DID.
“What happened afterward?”
“Samuel disappeared.”
“Before or after his car burned?”
“Before.”
Grace stood.
“What?”
Luca turned.
“The vehicle wasn't Samuel's.”
Her heart stopped.
“What?”
“The truck belonged to a Moretti subcontractor. It was made to look like his.”
“His wallet was inside.”
“Placed there.”
“His watch.”
“Placed there.”
“Police told me—”
“Corrupt police.”
Grace stared at him.
“You knew?”
“Not immediately.”
“When did you learn?”
“Three years later.”
“And you never told me?”
Luca's silence was enough.
Grace slapped him.
Hard.
Victor appeared in the doorway almost instantly.
Luca raised a hand before he entered.
“Leave.”
Victor hesitated.
“Now.”
He closed the door.
Grace's hand burned.
Luca's cheek reddened.
“You deserved that.”
“I know.”
“You knew I buried my father.”
“I knew you buried an empty coffin.”
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“For nine years?”
“Yes.”
Grace had never wanted to hit another human being twice.
She came close.
“Why?”
“Because Samuel asked me not to tell you.”
That stopped her.
“When?”
“Three years after he disappeared.”
Grace couldn't breathe.
“You saw him?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Montreal.”
“My father was alive in Montreal?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't he come home?”
“He believed people were watching you.”
“They were watching me for twelve years?”
“At least for some of them.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
Grace laughed bitterly.
“You say that a lot for a man everyone thinks controls half of New York.”
“Power and knowledge are not the same thing.”
“Then what did Samuel tell you?”
Luca opened a safe drawer.
He removed an envelope.
Grace recognized Samuel's handwriting again.
Luca handed it to her.
It was dated nine years earlier.
Luca,
If Grace believes I'm alive, she will look for me.
If she looks for me, they will follow her.
If they follow her, what happened to Helen will happen to Grace.
Do not tell her.
Even if she hates you someday for it.
Grace stopped.
Helen.
Her mother.
Grace's mother died when Grace was seven.
At least, that was what she had always been told.
A cerebral aneurysm.
Fast.
Unexpected.
Samuel barely spoke about it.
Grace read the sentence again.
“What happened to Helen?”
Luca did not answer.
Grace looked up.
“Do not tell me you don't know.”
“I know part.”
“Then start with that.”
Luca sat.
“Your mother's name was not Helen Walker.”
Grace felt the floor disappear beneath her.
“What?”
“Helen Walker did not exist before twenty-six years ago.”
Grace stared at him.
“That's impossible.”
“No birth record. No school records. No driver's history before age twenty-two.”
“My mother was from Vermont.”
“No.”
“You're lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“Then who was she?”
Luca walked to the desk.
He placed another photograph in front of Grace.
The image showed Antonio Moretti standing beside a young woman.
Dark hair.
Familiar smile.
Grace recognized her mother instantly.
Except she was wearing a formal black dress and standing beneath a Moretti family crest.
On the back:
LUCIA MORETTI — 1994.
Grace's throat closed.
“Moretti.”
Luca nodded.
“My father's younger sister.”
Grace stared.
That made Luca—
“My cousin,” he said quietly.
Grace sank into the chair.
“My mother was a Moretti.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't Samuel tell me?”
“Because Lucia Moretti was officially dead four years before Helen Walker supposedly met Samuel.”
Grace looked at Titan.
Nothing in her life felt solid anymore.
“How many times did my parents die?”
Luca didn't answer.
Grace looked back at the photograph.
Then noticed something.
Behind Lucia stood another man.
Samuel.
Young.
Already watching her.
On the far edge of the frame stood Antonio Moretti.
And beside him, smiling directly at the camera, was a man Grace had met that morning.
Victor Reyes.
Except twelve years ago, Victor should have been far younger.
Grace looked closer.
Not Victor.
His father.
Same eyes.
Same posture.
She turned the photograph over.
Four names were handwritten beneath it.
Antonio Moretti.
Lucia Moretti.
Samuel Walker.
Gabriel Reyes.
Luca stared at the final name.
“My security chief's father.”
“What happened to him?”
“He disappeared the same year your mother did.”
Grace looked toward the library door.
Victor stood somewhere beyond it.
Suddenly another family was inside the secret.
Then Titan rose.
His head turned toward the wall.
A low growl came from his chest.
Grace stood.
“What is it?”
Luca moved toward a bookshelf.
Titan growled again.
Behind the shelf was a narrow service corridor.
Victor's men searched it.
Nobody.
But on the floor they found a photograph.
Fresh.
Grace at eight years old.
Samuel beside her.
Helen—Lucia Moretti—kneeling behind them.
On the back, new ink:
SHE WASN'T THE FIRST MORETTI WOMAN THEY ERASED.
Grace stared at the words.
Then at Luca.
“Who is they?”
May you like
Luca's expression hardened.
“That is what Samuel spent twelve years trying to prove.”
