Chapter 3 - The Father Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
The man claiming to be my father was named Adrian Vane.
That was the first problem.
Because Adrian Vane was the name on my birth certificate.
It was also the name carved into a cemetery marker outside Rockford.
I had stood in front of that marker every year on Father's Day until I was fifteen.
Mom used to bring white lilies.
She would set them beside the stone and tell me that my father had been brave, kind, and unlucky.
A construction accident, she said.
A collapse at a job site when I was two.
No body recovered.
The company had paid for a memorial.
I had believed every word.
Now Marco was telling me Adrian Vane was alive in a private medical room three floors below us.
"I want to see him," I said.
Dante looked at Sasha.
"Both of you?"
Sasha was pale, but she lifted her chin.
"If he's really our father, yes."
Dante nodded once.
We left the hotel through a private garage and rode in a black SUV to a lakefront estate behind iron gates.
Calling it a house would have been ridiculous.
It was a stone mansion large enough to have its own east and west wings, with security cameras built into the walls and men at every entrance.
Sasha stared through the window.
"Do you live here alone?"
Dante sat opposite us.
"No."
"How many people live here?"
"Depends how many relatives are angry with each other."
I looked at him.
He looked back.
Sasha whispered, "I like him."
"You don't know him."
"Neither do you, but apparently you proposed to him in an elevator."
"I did not propose."
Dante's mouth twitched.
"For the record, I also did not accept."
"Can everyone stop talking about that?"
For the first time since the message from Sasha, she laughed.
It lasted only a second.
But I was grateful for it.
Inside the mansion, we were taken not to a dungeon or some sinister underground room, but to a bright guest suite guarded by two security men.
A doctor stepped out as we approached.
"Two cracked ribs," she told Dante. "Mild concussion. Deep cut on the scalp. Whoever attacked him wanted information, not a corpse."
"Is he conscious?"
"Yes."
Dante looked at me.
"You don't owe him anything."
I swallowed.
"I need answers."
He opened the door.
The man in the bed turned his head.
My first thought was that he looked nothing like the faded photograph Mom kept in a kitchen drawer.
My second was that he looked exactly like Sasha.
Same narrow nose.
Same gray-blue eyes.
Same little line between his eyebrows when he was frightened.
He was in his late fifties, with dark hair gone mostly silver and bruises spreading down one side of his face.
When he saw me, his lips parted.
"Nerissa."
My body rejected the sound of my name in his voice.
I stopped at the end of the bed.
Sasha stood beside me.
He looked at her and began to cry.
Not dramatically.
Silently.
Like a man who had forgotten he was capable of it.
"Sasha," he whispered.
She grabbed my hand.
"Prove it," I said.
Adrian looked back at me.
"You were born at Mercy Hospital at 4:12 in the morning. Your mother wanted to name you Marina, but when she saw your hair, she said you looked like a sea spirit from one of her grandmother's stories. Nerissa."
My chest tightened.
Mom had told me the Marina story.
Nobody else knew it.
He continued.
"When you were eighteen months old, you bit through your lower lip falling off a red plastic chair. You still have the scar."
My fingers rose to my lip before I could stop them.
"You hated peas. Loved strawberries. You used to sleep holding the left ear of a stuffed rabbit named Buttons."
My eyes burned.
"Stop."
He stopped.
Sasha's grip on my hand tightened.
"Where were you?" she asked.
His face crumpled.
"Trying to stay alive."
I laughed bitterly.
"For twenty years?"
"Nerissa—"
"No. Don't say my name like you earned it."
Dante stood near the door, silent.
Adrian looked at him.
"Salvatore's son."
Dante's voice was cold.
"You remember me."
"You were fifteen the last time I saw you."
"And you disappeared the week Elena died."
Adrian closed his eyes.
"Because she told me to."
I stepped closer.
"Tell me everything."
For the next hour, the dead came back to life in pieces.
My mother had met Salvatore DeLuca while working as a junior accountant at a firm that audited one of his legitimate companies. She found irregular transfers and, instead of ignoring them, brought them directly to him.
Salvatore had been impressed.
Then he had hired her privately.
Not to hide money.
To find where it was disappearing.
Millions were being siphoned from DeLuca companies through shell corporations and bogus construction contracts.
At the center of it was Victor Bellini, Salvatore's financial adviser and childhood friend.
But Bellini was not working alone.
"Who was with him?" Dante asked.
Adrian looked toward the door.
"I never knew for certain. Elena did."
"And the notebooks?"
"Codes. Decoys. Fragments. She never kept the full evidence in one place."
I thought of the black books stacked in an old shoebox beneath my bed.
"Why did Mom tell us you were dead?"
Adrian's eyes filled with shame.
"Because Bellini found out I was helping her. He threatened you. You were two years old, Nerissa. Your mother was pregnant with Sasha. We staged my death so I could disappear and continue gathering evidence from outside Chicago."
Sasha stared at him.
"Mom was pregnant with me when you left?"
He nodded.
"I saw you once after you were born. From across the street. Elena would not let me come closer."
Sasha turned away.
That hurt her more than if he had never seen her at all.
"Then Mom died," I said. "Why didn't you come back?"
Adrian's eyes closed.
"Because I was a coward."
The bluntness silenced me.
"Bellini sent me photographs of you girls leaving school. Sleeping beside a window. Playing in a park. He knew where you were every day. The message was simple. If I appeared, you died."
"So you let us believe you were dead."
"Yes."
"You let Mom work two jobs."
"I sent money through anonymous accounts."
"We were broke."
His brow furrowed.
"That's impossible."
I stared at him.
"We had eviction notices. Mom skipped meals. After she died, I dropped out of community college to work. Sasha and I have spent twelve years counting every dollar."
Adrian looked genuinely horrified.
"I sent eight thousand dollars every month."
Sasha let out a shocked laugh.
"We never saw eight dollars from you."
Dante moved away from the wall.
"Where did you send it?"
Adrian gave him a bank name and account number.
Dante texted someone.
Thirty seconds later, his phone buzzed.
He read the message.
His face turned hard.
"The account was closed eleven years ago. Funds were rerouted before closure through a Bellini-owned trust."
Adrian whispered a curse.
I felt sick.
Even after Mom died, Bellini had stolen from us.
Not just evidence.
Food.
Heat.
School.
Years.
"Why come back now?" I asked.
Adrian looked at the notebook in my hands.
"Because two weeks ago someone accessed an old storage unit Elena rented under a false name. Bellini's people noticed. I followed them. They found nothing, but I knew it meant somebody was searching for what she left behind."
"Who accessed it?"
"I don't know."
Dante's phone buzzed again.
He read a message and looked at me.
"Your apartment has been cleared. No attacker inside. The notebooks are intact."
Relief loosened something in my chest.
"And my mother's coat?"
He paused.
"What coat?"
"Brown wool. Old. I keep it in the hall closet."
Adrian's head snapped toward me.
"You still have Elena's winter coat?"
The urgency in his voice made everyone look at him.
"Yes. Why?"
He tried to sit up and winced.
"Nerissa, listen to me carefully. The last time I spoke to your mother, she said, 'If anything happens to me, the winter will tell the truth.' I thought it was a code for a storage location. I spent years trying to decode it."
I stared at him.
The old coat.
One of the only things I had refused to sell.
Dante was already dialing.
"Marco, find the brown wool coat in the hall closet. Do not open, cut, scan, or alter it. Bring it here exactly as it is."
Adrian sank back against the pillow.
"If Elena hid the master ledger in that coat, Bellini will burn Chicago to get it."
I looked at Dante.
"Then why hasn't he taken it already?"
Dante's eyes narrowed.
"Because he didn't know you still had it."
A cold thought formed.
"Until tonight."
"Until tonight," he agreed.
Sasha rubbed her arms.
"So the delivery wasn't random."
We all looked at her.
"What?" I asked.
"Think about it. Nerissa never does hotel deliveries. Paul always sends Mike or Travis. Tonight he specifically sent her to a DeLuca event. Then Bellini sees her with Mom's notebook."
I remembered my manager's words.
The Langham. Presidential suite.
And don't embarrass us in front of the wealthy.
Dante took out his phone.
"What's your manager's full name?"
"Paul Grady."
He sent it to Marco.
My stomach tightened.
"You think Paul works for Bellini?"
"I think someone made sure you entered that hotel tonight."
"Why?"
"Maybe to confirm your identity. Maybe to see what you carried. Maybe because they expected you to lead them to something."
Adrian whispered, "Or to me."
Silence.
I understood.
If Adrian had been watching Bellini's people, Bellini might have been watching him too.
Maybe Bellini knew a reunion was coming.
Maybe the entire night had been arranged to pull every surviving piece of my mother's secret into one place.
Dante's phone rang.
He answered.
"Marco."
He listened.
His face changed.
"Say that again."
My heart accelerated.
He turned away from us.
"Lock the property. Nobody in or out until I clear them personally."
He hung up.
"What happened?" I asked.
Dante looked at me.
"Your manager is gone. Bakery cameras show he left ten minutes after you did. His apartment is empty. His phone is disconnected."
Sasha whispered, "Oh my God."
"There's more," Dante said.
"Of course there is."
"The bakery never received an order from the DeLuca family tonight."
I stared at him.
"But I delivered pastries to your suite."
"Someone placed a fake order, paid cash, and used my name."
I looked down at the black notebook.
The elevator.
The ballroom.
Dante.
Bellini.
None of it had been an accident.
Someone had placed me exactly where they wanted me.
And suddenly I wondered if the only truly accidental thing that night had been the elevator stopping.
And the stupid, humiliating confession that had made Dante remember me.
If he had not noticed me...
If he had not stopped me in the ballroom...
I might have gone straight home.
Straight into the arms of whoever had kicked down our door.
Dante seemed to follow the same thought.
"Your bad luck in that elevator may have saved your life."
I looked at him.
"My bad luck?"
A faint smile returned.
"You called a stranger your dream man in public. I'd call that unfortunate."
Despite everything, I laughed.
A real laugh.
It startled all of us.
Dante stared at me for half a second too long.
Then a security alarm began screaming through the mansion.
Red lights flashed above the hallway doors.
Dante moved immediately.
"Stay here."
"What's happening?"
He drew a handgun from beneath his jacket.
The sight of it turned my blood cold.
May you like
His face was no longer amused.
"Someone just breached the east gate."
