Chapter 2 - The Fire in My Office
Cosimo’s driver took Lake Shore Drive at a speed that made the city lights smear across the windows.
I sat beside Cosimo in the back seat, staring at Sofia’s message as if it might rearrange itself into something less terrifying.
UNCLE MATTEO IS IN YOUR OFFICE.
HE’S BURNING YOUR FILES.
My office was not really an office.
Not to my father.
To him, it was the little room at the back of the second floor where his strange eldest daughter played with computers and spreadsheets.
To me, it was the nervous system of the Lombardi organization.
Five years of encrypted ledgers.
Corporate maps.
Debt schedules.
Payment histories.
Names my father would not remember until someone stopped paying him.
If Matteo was burning paper, that was theater.
The dangerous question was what he had done to the servers.
I called Sofia.
She answered on the first ring but whispered, “Fran?”
“Where are you?”
“In my room.”
“Lock the door.”
“I already did.”
“Is Matteo still there?”
“I don’t know. I heard him yelling at Sal downstairs. Then I smelled smoke.”
Cosimo turned his head at Sal’s name.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“I couldn’t hear everything. Something about Dominic still being alive. Matteo sounded furious.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
Cosimo’s prediction had been right.
Dominic had not been caught in random chaos.
Someone had tried to silence him.
“Sofia, listen to me carefully. Do not come downstairs. Do not open the door for anyone except me.”
“What about Dad?”
I hesitated.
That hesitation hurt more than I expected.
“Call me first.”
“Fran…”
“I’m coming.”
I ended the call.
Cosimo was watching me.
“You don’t trust your father.”
“I don’t know what I trust.”
“That is not the same answer.”
“No. It’s worse.”
The Lombardi estate sat behind limestone walls in Lincoln Park, an old mansion my father had purchased when I was nine because he wanted everyone who drove past to understand that Carlo Lombardi had arrived.
Tonight, the gates were already open.
Six armed men stood in the drive.
Half were Lombardi.
Half were Ferraro.
That combination had not existed peacefully in front of my childhood home in my lifetime.
As our car stopped, my father came down the front steps.
He had removed his tuxedo jacket. His bow tie hung loose around his collar. His face was furious.
“You brought him here?”
I got out of the car.
“Where is Matteo?”
My father looked past me at Cosimo.
“This is my house.”
Cosimo stepped out slowly.
“I’m aware.”
“You don’t bring armed men onto my property.”
“Then tell your men to stop stealing from me and I won’t need to.”
The air changed.
My father looked at me.
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing he didn’t already know.”
That answer frightened him.
I saw it.
A tiny flicker.
Gone almost instantly.
But I had spent my life studying men who thought silence made them unreadable.
“Where is Matteo?” I repeated.
“He left.”
“When?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Why?”
“I don’t answer to my daughter about my consigliere’s schedule.”
Normally, that sentence would have ended the conversation.
Tonight, I walked past him.
“Francesca.”
I kept going.
He caught my arm.
Cosimo moved so fast my father’s men reached for their weapons.
He did not draw his own.
He simply looked at my father’s hand around my arm.
“Let go of her.”
My father’s jaw tightened.
“I am speaking to my daughter.”
“And she is walking away from you.”
For several seconds, neither man moved.
Then my father released me.
I climbed the stairs.
Smoke hit me before I reached the hallway.
My office door stood open.
The room beyond it was destroyed.
Not burned.
Destroyed.
Drawers had been emptied onto the floor. File boxes had been split open. Two computer monitors lay shattered beneath the desk. The small server cabinet in the corner had been pried open.
And in the stone fireplace, paper burned in a black-orange heap.
I stopped in the doorway.
Something inside me broke very quietly.
Five years.
Five years of staying awake until four in the morning because my father’s accountants had missed a tax exposure.
Five years of rebuilding companies after men twice my age signed contracts they had not read.
Five years of protecting a family that laughed when Dominic called me worthless.
Now the evidence of that work was ash.
Cosimo came up behind me.
He said nothing.
That helped.
My father arrived a moment later.
“I didn’t know he was doing this.”
I turned.
“Matteo?”
“Yes.”
“He entered my office without your permission?”
My father hesitated.
That was answer enough.
“You gave him access.”
“He said we needed to secure sensitive records after the shooting.”
“So you gave him access.”
“He is my consigliere.”
“And I am the person who built those records.”
“Francesca—”
“What did you think I did in here?”
He looked away.
It was such a small movement.
It devastated me.
“You knew,” I whispered.
“Of course I knew you helped.”
“Helped?”
I laughed once.
“You think Luca Bianchi created the current holding structure?”
My father’s face changed.
“You think the accountants found the missing fourteen million in the Cicero project three years ago?”
His eyes narrowed.
“You think someone magically renegotiated the debt on the Milwaukee warehouses before the rate reset?”
“Enough.”
“No. You wanted enough five years ago. You wanted enough every time I kept this family from losing money while you introduced my sisters as your treasures and me as the quiet one.”
“Do not make this about jealousy.”
“It’s not jealousy.”
My voice shook now.
“It’s math.”
Silence filled the hallway.
Cosimo leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, letting me speak.
My father looked older than he had in the ballroom.
“I knew you were talented,” he said finally.
“That is not the same as valuing me.”
“No.”
The word surprised me.
He looked at the wrecked office.
“No, it isn’t.”
Before I could answer, a door opened down the hall.
Sofia ran toward me.
At nineteen, she was the youngest of us, all dark curls and enormous brown eyes. She wore a silver party dress under an oversized sweatshirt, as if she had gotten halfway out of the evening before everything exploded.
She threw her arms around me.
“You’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
She pulled back and looked at Cosimo.
Her eyes widened.
“Oh.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
Cosimo gave her a polite nod.
“Sofia.”
“You know my name?”
“I know everyone in your family.”
“That is somehow not comforting.”
“Smart girl,” he said.
My father made an irritated sound.
Sofia ignored him.
“I took something.”
She reached into the front pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled out a small black USB drive.
My breath stopped.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your desk.”
I stared at her.
“I saw Uncle Matteo go into your office. He told Sal to bring the red case from downstairs. I knew you kept backups, so I looked.”
“How did you get into the drawer?”
She gave me an embarrassed look.
“I know where you hide the key.”
“I don’t hide a key.”
“The fake lipstick tube?”
My mouth opened.
Cosimo coughed suspiciously into his hand.
I glared at him.
“Not one word.”
“I said nothing.”
Sofia handed me the drive.
“I copied the folder labeled February archive before Matteo came upstairs. Then I put the original drive back.”
I turned the USB over in my fingers.
My sister had just saved more evidence than she understood.
I hugged her again.
“You may have saved our lives.”
Her smile vanished.
“Fran, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Sal was bleeding.”
Cosimo straightened.
“Where?”
“His hand. I think. He kept wiping it on a towel.”
“Did you see a gun?” I asked.
She nodded.
“On the kitchen counter.”
My father cursed under his breath.
Cosimo looked toward one of his men.
“Find Greco.”
The man left immediately.
I walked to the remains of my desk and pulled the damaged keyboard aside.
The local computer was useless, but Matteo had made a mistake.
He had assumed the important thing in the room was the hardware.
It wasn’t.
I crouched and pressed my thumb beneath the carved edge of the antique desk my grandmother had left me.
A narrow panel released.
Inside was a folded card with sixteen handwritten words.
Cosimo looked over my shoulder.
“A password?”
“A recovery phrase.”
“For what?”
“The off-site mirror.”
My father stared at me.
“You have another copy?”
I stood.
“I have three.”
Cosimo smiled.
Actually smiled.
“What?” I asked.
“You let Matteo destroy the room while your real records are somewhere else.”
“I didn’t let him do anything.”
“No. But he thinks he won.”
That was true.
And suddenly I understood the advantage.
I slipped the recovery phrase into my clutch.
“Then we shouldn’t correct him.”
Cosimo’s smile disappeared, replaced by something more dangerous.
Approval.
My father looked between us.
“What exactly are you planning?”
I met his eyes.
“For once?”
I picked up the USB Sofia had saved.
“I’m going to find out what your men have been doing with my work.”
“You cannot investigate this family with Ferraro.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is not family.”
I looked at the ashes in my fireplace.
Then at the man who had stood silent while my fiancé humiliated me.
Then at the man beside me who had believed I was innocent before I had even defended myself.
“That argument was stronger before tonight.”
My father flinched.
I walked out.
Cosimo followed.
At the bottom of the stairs, one of his guards entered through the back door.
“We found Greco’s car.”
“Where?” Cosimo asked.
“Two blocks west. Door open. Blood on the driver’s seat.”
“Greco?”
“Gone.”
My father swore.
The guard held up a clear evidence bag.
“But this was under the seat.”
Inside was a hotel key card.
The Drake.
Room 917.
I stared at it.
Nine-seventeen.
The exact minute Dominic had raised his glass and destroyed our engagement.
Cosimo looked at me.
“That isn’t a coincidence.”
“No.”
May you like
My skin went cold.
“It’s a message.”
