Chapter 2 - THE BROTHER WHO HAD BEEN BURIED TWICE
-2
My first instinct was to take Luca home.
That was how naive I still was.
I looked around the freezing basement, at the cracked walls and the medicine lined carefully beside an old mattress, and thought the problem was poverty.
My brother was alive.
Therefore I could fix this.
Doctors.
A secure house.
Money.
Food.
Heat.
Men guarding every door.
Luca laughed when I suggested it.
“You really learned nothing.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“You want to take me into a Bellini property.”
“Yes.”
“That’s where they kept me.”
I stopped.
“Winter House wasn’t mine.”
“Everything became yours.”
“Not everything.”
“You signed papers.”
Again.
The accusation.
“What papers?”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“After the warehouse fire, Father came to you.”
I remembered.
Barely.
Those days had been a blur of smoke, detectives, relatives, flowers and rage.
Luca had supposedly died after going to inspect a warehouse we used for legitimate freight.
An electrical fire began after midnight.
Two bodies were recovered.
One identified as Luca.
The other as night supervisor Patrick Sloan.
I spent the first forty-eight hours trying to murder someone who did not exist.
I demanded names.
Father stopped me.
Then, three days after the funeral, he brought documents into my office.
Estate matters, he said.
Continuity.
Transfers.
Luca’s minority interests returned to the family holding company because he had died without children.
I signed where Father pointed.
“I signed estate transfers.”
Luca stared.
“You signed more.”
“What?”
“Final disposition authorization.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“You authorized Bellini Security to take custody of any sensitive company material or personnel connected to my investigation.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“That was the language.”
“I would remember.”
“Would you?”
The question was cruel.
Because maybe I wouldn’t.
In our family, documents came in stacks.
Attorneys summarized.
Father pointed.
I signed.
Trust was efficient.
That was how dynasties functioned.
Until trust became camouflage.
“What did that authorization do?”
Luca rubbed the scar near his mouth.
“It gave Lorenzo authority to move me.”
My stomach twisted.
“Where?”
“Winter House.”
Beatrice crouched to gather the food from the floor.
Luca stopped her.
“Leave it.”
“It’s all you have tonight.”
“I’m not eating concrete potatoes.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
That sounded like him.
Then the moment vanished.
“Come somewhere safer.”
“No.”
“Luca.”
“No.”
“I’m not asking.”
He looked at me.
“There he is.”
“What?”
“The brother who became Father.”
The words struck cleanly.
I lowered my voice.
“I followed Beatrice here alone. Lorenzo wanted her punished. I didn’t do it.”
“Congratulations.”
“You think that means nothing?”
“I think it means you had one decent instinct in twelve years.”
I wanted to hit him.
I wanted to hug him.
Instead, I sat on an overturned wooden crate.
“Tell me everything.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll go home.”
“Yes.”
“To Lorenzo.”
I didn’t answer quickly enough.
Luca laughed.
“Exactly.”
“He is my second.”
“He was Father’s second too.”
“He has saved my life.”
“So have snakes before they bite.”
Beatrice finally spoke.
“He can’t know you found Luca.”
“Why?”
“Because the last person who knew disappeared three months ago.”
“Who?”
“A shelter volunteer named Raymond.”
Luca looked toward the floor.
“He saw me without the beard. Recognized the Bellini name.”
“What happened?”
“Vanished.”
“You think Lorenzo took him?”
“I know someone did.”
“How?”
Beatrice pulled out her phone.
A photograph showed a middle-aged Black man smiling beside stacked canned goods in a community pantry.
“Raymond helped me get Luca medicine.”
She swiped.
Another image.
A security still.
Two men approaching Raymond outside his apartment building.
One face blurred.
The other visible enough.
I recognized him.
Carlo Denton.
One of Lorenzo’s men.
My man too, technically.
I felt sick.
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“Why didn’t you go to police?”
Beatrice stared at me.
The answer was obvious.
People connected to my organization did not go easily to police.
Especially when they believed the organization itself was hunting them.
I looked at Luca.
“If Lorenzo knows you survived, why hasn’t he found you?”
“He thought I left Illinois.”
“Did you?”
“For years.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
He had escaped Winter House five years after being taken.
Seven years ago.
A nurse helped him.
Nora Gallagher.
Beatrice’s mother.
I looked at Beatrice.
“She worked there?”
“Yes.”
“As what?”
“Registered nurse.”
“For my family?”
“For a private psychiatric contractor.”
“She didn’t know who owned it at first.”
Luca leaned against the wall.
“Winter House wasn’t called Winter House officially. It changed names.”
“Why psychiatric?”
“Because a medical diagnosis can make almost anything look reasonable.”
Isolation.
Sedatives.
Claims that someone was delusional when they said their family had kidnapped them.
I felt my stomach tighten.
“How many?”
“I never knew.”
“Twenty?”
“More.”
“Fifty?”
He said nothing.
That frightened me.
“Why didn’t you contact me after escaping?”
Luca looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious.
“I thought you sent me there.”
“I didn’t.”
“You signed the paper.”
“I didn’t know what it meant.”
“Father told me you did.”
“When?”
“The night Lorenzo took me.”
My blood went cold.
“You saw Father?”
“Yes.”
Luca’s voice became quiet.
“He came to the warehouse before the fire.”
“Why?”
“To convince me to give him the ledger.”
“What ledger exactly?”
“Payments.”
“To whom?”
“Doctors. judges. coroners. private investigators.”
“For Winter House?”
“For the ghost system.”
Luca explained that he had discovered irregular payments while examining a business acquisition Father wanted hidden from me.
One company appeared to employ people who officially did not exist.
Social Security numbers belonged to dead men.
Medical bills were paid for names attached to closed estates.
“I thought it was laundering.”
“Was it?”
“Partly.”
He found a list.
People considered liabilities.
Some had a notation beside their names:
CLOSED.
Some:
TRANSFERRED.
Some:
ACTIVE.
Beside Luca Bellini:
FAMILY / PENDING.
“You were on the list before the fire.”
“Yes.”
That detail chilled me.
“How long before?”
“Four months.”
“So they planned your disappearance.”
“Yes.”
“Why not kill you?”
Luca looked at me.
“Father couldn’t.”
I almost laughed.
“You just accused him of running the place.”
“He could erase strangers.”
His expression became bitter.
“But he couldn’t order his youngest son dead.”
“So he imprisoned you.”
“Yes.”
Family mercy.
The Bellini definition.
I stood and paced.
“What happened the night of the fire?”
“Father met me at the warehouse.”
“You were alone?”
“At first.”
“I told him I had copied the ledger.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Luca.”
“No.”
Fair.
“What happened next?”
“Father offered me a choice.”
“What choice?”
“Leave Chicago permanently and stay quiet.”
“Or?”
“He said the alternative would be worse.”
“You refused.”
“Of course.”
I almost smiled again.
Luca had always been the only son who told Salvatore no without lowering his eyes.
“Then Lorenzo arrived.”
His voice changed.
“He had two men with him. They sedated me.”
“And the fire?”
“I woke inside a van.”
“So someone else died in your place.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
That question would haunt me.
Someone had been burned enough to become Luca.
A family buried another mother’s son beneath our name.
“Father told you I signed the authorization?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“At Winter House.”
“He visited you there?”
“Once.”
“How long after?”
“Six months.”
“What did he say?”
Luca’s eyes became wet.
“He said you had accepted my death.”
My chest tightened.
“He showed me your signature.”
“I believed you were dead.”
“I know that now.”
It was the first concession he had given me.
Small.
Almost nothing.
I held onto it anyway.
“What changed your mind?”
“Beatrice.”
I looked at her.
She stood near the heater, exhausted.
“How?”
“She got into your house.”
“Why would that make him trust me?”
“It didn’t.”
Beatrice answered.
“I spent two years collecting information before applying to work for you.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“To decide whether you were like your father.”
I laughed once.
“And?”
“I still don’t know.”
Fair.
“What did you find?”
“You never used Winter House.”
“I didn’t know it existed.”
“You shut down three protection rackets after taking control.”
“They were sloppy.”
“You stopped your men from collecting from family-owned restaurants.”
“They weren’t worth the trouble.”
“You paid hospital expenses for Vincent Corso’s widow after he died.”
“He worked for me twenty years.”
“You see?”
“No.”
She looked at Luca.
“You always explain decent things as business.”
Luca almost smiled.
Beatrice continued:
“But there was no record of you ordering disappearances.”
“I’ve ordered people hurt.”
“I know.”
“I am not innocent.”
“I know that too.”
Her lack of fear irritated and impressed me.
“Then why trust me at all?”
“Because you followed me.”
I frowned.
“Instead of having Lorenzo take me.”
The original decision.
Tiny.
Almost instinctive.
It had brought me here.
Luca said:
“She thought if you discovered me yourself, you might hesitate before killing me.”
I looked at my brother.
“I would never kill you.”
“Twelve years ago I would have said the same.”
Silence settled.
Then Beatrice picked up the empty grocery bag.
“I have to go back.”
I stared.
“To my house?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“If I don’t, Lorenzo knows something changed.”
She was right.
I hated it.
“You expect to walk back into that mansion with him?”
“Yes.”
“He wanted you punished tonight.”
“Which is why I need to appear frightened and grateful you didn’t.”
Luca looked at me.
“She understands survival better than you do.”
I ignored him.
“What does Lorenzo think I did?”
“Probably followed you a few blocks and lost interest.”
“He knows me better than that.”
“Then give him something believable.”
I thought.
My world had changed in one hour, but Lorenzo could not know.
Not yet.
If he truly knew Luca survived, if he had already made one shelter volunteer disappear, then confronting him without evidence would be stupidity.
Father taught me many bad lessons.
One useful lesson remained:
Never tell an enemy what you know before learning what he fears.
I looked at Beatrice.
“You return first.”
She nodded.
“Twenty minutes.”
“Yes.”
“You say I caught you outside.”
“And?”
“I warned you. Docked your pay.”
Her eyes hardened.
“You’re going to dock my pay?”
“For appearances.”
“I want it back.”
Luca laughed.
A real laugh.
For one second he was twenty years old again.
I almost broke.
“Fine.”
I looked at him.
“You stay here.”
“Obviously.”
“I’ll send food.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You’re not sending anyone.”
“Then Beatrice brings it.”
“She already does.”
I hated that my brother needed leftovers.
I hated more that I was the reason he feared anything else.
At the stairs, I stopped.
“Luca.”
He looked at me.
“I’m going to find out whose body I buried.”
His expression changed.
“Start with the dental records.”
“Why?”
“They were signed by Dr. Elias Halpern.”
I knew him.
Family physician for thirty years.
He had treated my father.
He had treated me.
He had pronounced Salvatore dead eight years ago.
Luca watched recognition spread across my face.
“Still think this is only Lorenzo?”
I said nothing.
When I returned to the mansion, Lorenzo was waiting in my study.
Exactly where I had left him.
Whiskey untouched.
Fire burning low.
He looked at my coat.
Snow melting on it.
“Find out where the maid went?”
I took my time removing my gloves.
“A boyfriend.”
Lorenzo smiled.
“Figures.”
I poured myself a drink.
My hand did not shake.
“What do you want done?”
He leaned back.
“Fire her.”
I looked at him over the rim of the glass.
“Over leftovers?”
“Today it’s food.”
He repeated Father’s old philosophy almost word for word.
“Tomorrow it’s money.”
I smiled.
Not because anything was funny.
Because for the first time, I heard the machinery beneath the lesson.
“Dock her pay.”
Lorenzo frowned.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He studied me.
I studied him.
Then he nodded.
“You’re getting soft, cousin.”
Perhaps.
Or perhaps I had finally become suspicious of hardness sold to me as wisdom.
When Lorenzo left, I locked the study door.
Then I opened the old family safe.
Behind property deeds and bearer bonds sat the death files Father insisted we keep for blood relatives.
I pulled Luca’s.
Death certificate.
Police report.
Coroner summary.
Dental identification.
Dr. Elias Halpern’s signature.
Then I saw another signature.
Authorization for final disposition and transfer of sensitive interests.
Mine.
The date was three days after the warehouse fire.
I had signed it.
Luca had told the truth.
But below my signature, in handwriting I recognized as my father’s, were four words:
WINTER PROTOCOL AUTHORIZED.
May you like
I sat alone until dawn staring at a phrase I had never seen before.
And wondering how many people my name had helped erase while I remained convinced they were already dead.
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