Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Red Coat
For the next forty-eight hours, Vincent’s mansion became a sealed fortress.
Nobody entered without being searched.
Nobody left.
Even the kitchen deliveries stopped.
Food arrived through one trusted driver and was inspected by two guards before entering the house.
Vincent barely slept.
Neither did I.
Dr. Hart returned twice to treat the infection inside his ear and remove a small piece of foreign material near the canal wall.
She warned that the embedded metallic anchor deeper inside would require surgery.
Vincent refused to schedule it until he knew who had placed the device.
“You’re thinking like a crime boss instead of a patient,” she told him.
He read her lips.
Then typed:
I AM BOTH.
She rolled her eyes.
I liked her immediately.
The strangest thing was how quickly my fear of Vincent changed.
Not disappeared.
Changed.
He was still dangerous.
Men obeyed him too quickly for him to be anything else.
I saw the way guards straightened when he entered a room.
I watched businessmen lower their voices when his name appeared on their phones.
Once, through a half-open office door, I saw Vincent silently place photographs on a table in front of two men.
Whatever the photographs showed made both men pale.
Vincent said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
Yet with me, he remained almost painfully careful.
He still slept downstairs.
He still knocked before entering my room.
He still asked whether I was comfortable.
The more I learned about my father’s betrayal, the more those small acts mattered.
On the third morning of lockdown, I was making coffee when Vincent entered the kitchen.
He placed a small envelope beside my mug.
Inside was a bank card.
I frowned.
He typed:
YOUR MONEY.
I stared at him.
“What money?”
He pointed toward the card.
He had opened an account in my name.
Inside was every dollar my father had taken from me over the previous five years.
At least, every dollar Vincent’s accountants could prove.
Forty-eight thousand, six hundred and twenty dollars.
I nearly dropped the card.
HOW?
Vincent typed:
YOUR FATHER KEPT RECORDS.
OF STEALING FROM ME?
GAMBLERS KEEP RECORDS OF EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE DAMAGE.
I laughed despite myself.
Vincent smiled.
It was the first time I saw him smile.
Not politely.
Actually smile.
It transformed his face.
Then the expression disappeared when one of his guards entered.
Marco Bellini.
Head of security.
Tall, muscular, early forties.
Unlike Vincent, Marco spoke loudly whenever he addressed him, an instinct many hearing people had around deaf people even when it made no difference.
He placed a photograph on the counter.
A woman in a red coat stood outside Dr. Kline’s medical office.
Taken two days before Kline vanished.
Vincent studied her.
Then his entire body stiffened.
I noticed.
“Who is she?”
Marco answered.
“We’re not sure.”
Vincent grabbed his phone.
ZOOM.
Marco enlarged the image.
The woman was probably in her sixties.
Silver hair.
Dark glasses.
Red coat.
Something about her posture looked familiar to Vincent.
His face changed.
He took the photograph closer to the window.
Then typed:
FIND EVERY CAMERA WITHIN SIX BLOCKS.
Marco nodded.
I looked at Vincent.
“You know her.”
He shook his head.
But he wasn’t convincing.
Hours later, the security team traced the woman through downtown Chicago.
She had used buses.
Walked through crowded buildings.
Changed coats twice.
Whoever she was, she knew surveillance.
Finally, a camera captured her entering a church in Little Italy.
St. Anthony’s.
She never appeared leaving.
Marco sent men.
They found nothing.
But one older priest remembered her.
Father Paul.
He had known the Moretti family for decades.
When Vincent arrived at the church, I went with him.
He didn’t ask me to.
I simply got into the car.
He raised one eyebrow.
I typed:
YOU SAID I WASN’T A PRISONER.
His mouth twitched.
Then he let me stay.
Father Paul was eighty-one years old.
When he saw Vincent, sadness crossed his face.
“You look like your mother.”
Vincent watched his lips carefully.
The priest spoke slowly.
Then he noticed me.
“And you must be Claire.”
I stiffened.
“How do you know my name?”
He smiled sadly.
“Because Sofia knew it.”
Vincent froze.
I looked at him.
“Who is Sofia?”
Father Paul stared between us.
Then his face changed.
“You don’t know?”
Vincent grabbed his phone.
WHO IS SOFIA?
The priest looked stunned.
“Your aunt.”
Vincent stared at him.
Father Paul whispered, “Dear God.”
He motioned us toward a private room behind the sacristy.
Then he told us a story Vincent had never heard.
Vincent’s mother, Isabella Moretti, had a younger sister.
Sofia Russo.
After Isabella married Vincent’s father, Anthony Moretti, Sofia became suspicious of the family business.
She believed Anthony’s younger brother, Dominic, was stealing from the organization and arranging unauthorized deals with rival crews.
When Isabella died in the car crash, Sofia accused Dominic publicly.
Then she disappeared.
Vincent had been told Sofia died overseas.
That was a lie.
“She came here three days ago,” Father Paul said.
Vincent’s hands trembled slightly.
“Why?”
“She asked if you were still seeing Samuel Kline.”
Vincent typed.
WHY?
Father Paul reached inside a drawer.
He removed a sealed envelope.
“She told me to give this to you if anything happened to her.”
Vincent opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
A hospital room.
A boy lying unconscious in bed.
Vincent.
Eight years old.
Beside the bed stood Dr. Kline.
Dominic Moretti.
And a woman in a red coat.
Sofia.
On the back were six handwritten words.
You were hearing when this was taken.
Vincent stopped breathing.
He read it again.
Then again.
Father Paul continued.
“Sofia said you woke after the crash able to hear from your left ear and partially from your right.”
Vincent shook his head violently.
No.
He remembered silence.
He remembered waking to silence.
Father Paul’s voice softened.
“You were sedated for several days after the accident.”
Vincent typed:
WHY WOULD THEY MAKE ME DEAF?
The priest looked toward me.
Then back to Vincent.
“Because you heard something in the car before it crashed.”
Vincent’s face emptied.
A memory moved behind his eyes.
Rain.
His mother.
Voices.
He gripped the table.
I reached toward him.
This time he let me touch his hand.
Father Paul said:
“Sofia believed the crash wasn’t an accident.”
The room felt suddenly too small.
Vincent’s mother had not died because of weather.
Someone had killed her.
And afterward, someone had damaged an eight-year-old boy’s hearing to make sure he could never tell anyone what he had heard.
Vincent typed:
DOMINIC?
Father Paul’s eyes filled with regret.
“I don’t know.”
Vincent’s uncle Dominic was seventy now.
He had helped raise Vincent after Anthony Moretti died.
He had taught Vincent the business.
He called him son.
He ate dinner at the mansion every Sunday.
He had been there at our wedding.
The idea that he might have destroyed Vincent’s hearing was almost impossible to process.
Then a sound came from the front of the church.
Glass breaking.
Marco reached beneath his jacket.
Two shots followed.
People screamed.
Vincent couldn’t hear them.
But he saw our faces.
Marco pushed us behind the stone wall.
“Stay down.”
A guard ran into the room.
“Shooter outside.”
Vincent’s expression changed instantly.
Cold.
Focused.
He pulled me behind him.
I wanted to tell him not to do that.
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t worth taking a bullet for.
Then I remembered that was my father’s voice inside my head.
Not mine.
Another shot struck stone.
Vincent moved us toward a side exit.
Marco’s men returned fire.
Within thirty seconds, it ended.
The shooter escaped.
But Father Paul had been hit.
The bullet grazed his shoulder.
As paramedics treated him, he grabbed Vincent’s sleeve.
“There’s one more thing.”
Vincent leaned close.
“Sofia said not to trust the man who taught you silence.”
Vincent frowned.
Then his eyes slowly lifted.
Samuel Kline had treated him.
Dominic had raised him.
But there was only one man who had taught Vincent sign language after the crash.
A man who had been beside him almost every day for thirty years.
Luca DeSantis.
Vincent’s attorney.
His adviser.
May you like
The man who had stood beside us at our wedding.
The man currently alone inside the Moretti mansion with access to every security code we possessed.
