Chapter 2 - The Name That Was Buried in Sicily
Lorenzo did not ask permission before pulling Sophie into the Escalade.
Under normal circumstances, she would have fought him.
But normal circumstances had ended the moment the first bullet struck the passenger door.
Mateo appeared beside them with a handgun drawn, shouting for the driver to move. Tires screamed against wet pavement as the Escalade accelerated downtown.
Sophie sat pressed against the leather seat, breathing through a tightness in her chest that felt almost painful.
Lorenzo sat opposite her.
He had changed completely.
At Leveta, he had been composed, arrogant, almost bored.
Now every part of him looked sharpened.
"Plate?" he asked Mateo.
"Covered."
"Vehicle?"
"Dark Audi. Probably stolen."
"How many?"
"Driver and shooter. Maybe more."
Lorenzo turned toward Sophie.
"Who knows you're alive?"
"No one."
"Wrong answer."
"It's the truth."
"Someone just fired three rounds at your head twenty minutes after you told me your real name."
"Maybe they were aiming at you."
"They weren't."
Sophie looked at the damaged side window.
"How can you possibly know that?"
"Because if they wanted me dead, they would have used rifles and two vehicles."
The matter-of-fact answer disturbed her more than reassurance would have.
The Escalade crossed into Brooklyn.
Sophie realized where they were going only when iron gates opened in front of a massive limestone house overlooking the harbor.
"No."
Lorenzo did not look at her.
"What?"
"I'm not going into your house."
"You are already in the driveway."
"Turn around."
"No."
She reached toward the door.
The locks clicked.
Sophie glared at him.
"Kidnapping doesn't become legal just because your upholstery is expensive."
Mateo glanced toward the windshield to hide a smile.
Lorenzo's expression remained blank.
"Someone tried to kill you."
"And you're helping?"
"For tonight."
"Why?"
That was the question.
Lorenzo looked away.
He had known the name Antonio Vitale since childhood.
Before the betrayal.
Before the blood.
Before adults began changing conversations whenever twelve-year-old Lorenzo entered a room.
Antonio had once come to the Moretti estate every Sunday.
Lorenzo remembered broad hands, a booming laugh, and a little girl with dark braids who used to chase him through his grandmother's garden.
Sofia.
She had been four years younger.
Lorenzo had barely remembered her until now.
But the broken olive branch tattoo had opened a door in his memory.
Antonio used the symbol on letters and family seals.
A branch split through the center.
Peace broken by betrayal.
The Escalade stopped.
Lorenzo stepped out.
Sophie remained seated.
"I said no."
He leaned toward the open door.
"Fine. Walk home."
She looked beyond him.
There were armed men near the gates.
Another vehicle arriving behind them.
And, somewhere in New York, at least one person who apparently knew exactly who she was.
Sophie got out.
"Temporary."
"Everything is temporary."
Inside, the Moretti house was unexpectedly quiet.
No gold statues.
No obvious display of gangster wealth.
Dark wood.
Old photographs.
Books.
Paintings that looked inherited rather than purchased.
Sophie hated that it felt like a home.
She hated more that several photographs on the wall contained faces she recognized from childhood.
Lorenzo noticed where she was looking.
One photograph showed his father, Carlo Moretti, standing beside Antonio Vitale on a dock in Sicily.
They were young.
Smiling.
Arms over each other's shoulders.
Sophie stared.
She had never seen the picture.
"My father kept it," Lorenzo said.
"Your father murdered mine."
"We don't know that."
"I know exactly what I saw."
Lorenzo faced her.
"What did you see?"
Sophie remained silent.
"Ten years you've been hiding," he said. "And tonight someone found you. If you want to stay alive, stop protecting ghosts."
Her eyes flashed.
"Don't talk about my father."
"Then tell me what happened."
The anger kept Sophie from breaking.
She walked toward the window.
"When I was fourteen, my father took me to a farm outside Palermo. He said we were leaving Italy that night. I knew something was wrong because he had burned documents that morning."
Lorenzo listened.
"There were men waiting near the olive grove."
"How many?"
"Four. Maybe five."
"Faces?"
"Most were covered."
"Your father?"
"He knew them."
She swallowed.
"They argued. My father kept saying he had proof. He said Carlo needed to see it."
Lorenzo stiffened.
"My father?"
"Yes."
"What proof?"
"I don't know."
Sophie remembered more than she wanted.
Antonio shouting.
One man insisting there was no longer time.
Another voice saying Carlo had made his decision.
Then the first shot.
"My father pushed me behind a tractor. He told me not to come out, no matter what I heard."
Sophie stopped.
Lorenzo waited.
"They shot him twice."
Her voice was quieter now.
"Then one man walked over and shot him again."
"In the head?"
"No."
"The chest?"
Sophie nodded.
"I waited until dark."
"Why didn't they search for you?"
"They did."
"How did you escape?"
"My grandmother."
That surprised him.
"Elena Vitale?"
Sophie looked back.
"You remember her?"
"Everyone remembered Elena."
Her grandmother had been a small woman who terrified men twice her size.
"She found me before they did. We left through an irrigation tunnel. Two days later, we were on a cargo ship."
"To America."
"Yes."
"Elena created Sophie Miller?"
"No. Someone here did."
"Who?"
Sophie hesitated.
"Father Gabriel Santoro."
Lorenzo knew the name.
An elderly priest in Queens with connections to nearly every old Sicilian family in New York.
"Gabriel is alive?"
"He was when I last saw him six years ago."
Lorenzo turned toward Mateo.
"Find him."
Mateo nodded and left.
Sophie crossed her arms.
"Now you know."
"No."
Lorenzo moved closer.
"I know how you escaped. I don't know why Antonio was killed."
"You tell me."
"I was nineteen."
"Your father wasn't."
The words landed.
Lorenzo accepted them.
"Carlo died believing Antonio betrayed him."
"My father would never betray anyone."
"So every daughter says."
Sophie stepped forward.
"And every son defends his father."
Lorenzo's expression hardened.
For several seconds they stood almost chest to chest.
Then an older woman's voice came from the hallway.
"Lorenzo?"
Both turned.
Teresa Moretti entered with a cane.
Lorenzo's seventy-eight-year-old grandmother had once been one of the most formidable women in Brooklyn's Italian community.
Age had bent her shoulders but not her gaze.
She looked first at Lorenzo.
Then Sophie.
The cane slipped from her hand.
Sophie froze.
Teresa whispered one word.
"Sofia?"
Lorenzo stared at his grandmother.
Sophie forgot how to breathe.
Teresa crossed the room with surprising speed and lifted both trembling hands to Sophie's face.
"My God."
Tears filled the elderly woman's eyes.
"My God, you lived."
Sophie had expected suspicion.
Fear.
Maybe hatred.
Not this.
Teresa pulled her into an embrace.
Sophie remained rigid.
Lorenzo stared.
"Nonna."
Teresa ignored him.
She touched Sophie's hair, cheeks, shoulders as though confirming she was real.
"Elena told me you were dead."
"She believed telling people that was the only way to protect me."
Teresa's face crumpled.
"She was right."
Lorenzo stepped forward.
"What do you know?"
His grandmother looked at him.
Too much passed across her face.
Fear.
Regret.
And guilt.
"Nonna."
Teresa sat slowly.
"Your father made me promise."
Lorenzo's voice became colder.
"He's been dead seven years."
"Some promises survive the people who made them."
"Not tonight."
Teresa closed her eyes.
Then looked at Sophie.
"Antonio did not betray the Morettis."
Sophie felt her knees weaken.
Lorenzo's face became stone.
Teresa continued.
"He discovered someone inside our family was selling shipping routes, names, and police schedules to the Russians. Antonio gathered evidence. He planned to bring it to Carlo."
"Who?" Lorenzo asked.
"I don't know."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I know what Carlo told me."
"Which was?"
Teresa looked at Sophie.
"Antonio never reached him."
Sophie frowned.
"He said he needed Carlo to see the proof."
"He had a meeting scheduled at midnight."
"He was dead before sunset."
Lorenzo's eyes narrowed.
"Then someone intercepted him."
Teresa nodded.
"And convinced my father Antonio was the traitor."
"Yes."
"Who convinced him?"
Teresa's fingers tightened around the handle of her cane.
"That is what Carlo spent the final years of his life trying to discover."
Lorenzo turned away.
His entire understanding of the past was moving beneath his feet.
Sophie felt no satisfaction.
Only a deep, exhausted grief.
"My father died because your family believed a lie."
Teresa looked at her.
"Your father died because someone needed that lie to live."
The front door opened.
Mateo entered quickly.
He no longer looked relaxed.
"Boss."
Lorenzo turned.
"Father Gabriel?"
"Alive."
Sophie released a breath.
"But there's a problem."
"What?"
"We weren't the first people looking for him."
Mateo placed a photograph on the table.
It had been taken by a security camera outside Gabriel's parish.
Two men were entering through the side door.
Sophie recognized one immediately.
Her stomach dropped.
Lorenzo noticed.
"You know him."
She could barely speak.
"Yes."
The man in the photograph was older.
He had gray hair now.
But Sophie remembered his eyes.
She had seen them through the gap beneath the tractor ten years earlier.
"That man was in the olive grove."
Lorenzo picked up the photograph.
"Which one?"
She pointed.
Mateo stared.
Lorenzo did not.
Because Lorenzo already knew the face.
Everyone in the Moretti family knew it.
Sylvio Barone.
His consigliere.
The man who had sat beside him at Leveta only hours earlier.
May you like
The man who had laughed when Sophie was insulted.
And the man Lorenzo had trusted with nearly every secret he possessed.
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