Chapter 4 - What Was Hidden Beneath The Floorboards
The Carmine Street house looked different at night.
The garment workers had gone.
The street below was wet and nearly empty.
Dante moved through the building with five men behind him.
Mara followed.
She held the brass key so tightly it left an imprint in her palm.
"What was your father like?" she asked.
Dante kept walking.
"Complicated."
"That's a politician's answer."
"My father was a criminal."
She stopped.
Dante stopped too.
"He was the one who started the Bell organization."
Mara's face changed.
"I thought your family had been in business."
"We were."
"What kind?"
"The kind where bad men paid us to stop worse men from taking what belonged to them."
"That's not exactly legal."
"No."
"Then why tell me?"
"Because you're already involved."
They continued.
At the third floor, Dante unlocked an old storage room.
He pointed to the floor.
"Leo said beneath the floorboards."
Mara knelt.
She examined the wood.
"This isn't original."
"How do you know?"
"The nails."
She ran her fingers over the edge.
"Someone replaced this section."
Dante crouched beside her.
"Can you open it?"
"Give me three minutes."
"Take two."
"You're impossible."
"I've been told."
Mara smiled despite herself.
For the first time, Dante smiled back.
It lasted less than a second.
Then she saw something in his eyes.
Not the coldness everyone talked about.
Exhaustion.
He was tired of being feared.
But he had no idea how to be anything else.
Mara pried open the board.
Beneath it was a metal box.
She inserted the brass key.
The lock clicked.
Inside was an old leather ledger.
Several photographs.
A packet of letters.
And a velvet pouch.
Dante touched the ledger.
His hand trembled.
Mara noticed.
"Your father?"
"Yes."
He opened it.
Names filled the pages.
Payments.
Dates.
Addresses.
Deals.
Police officials.
Judges.
Business owners.
Politicians.
And beside some names were red marks.
Dante flipped through quickly.
Then stopped.
Mara saw the expression on his face.
"What?"
He turned the book.
There was an entry from fifteen years earlier.
Bell Family Trust.
Recipient: Crane Holdings.
Amount: $450,000.
Purpose: Protection.
Dante's jaw tightened.
"My father paid Crane."
"For what?"
"I don't know."
Then Mara saw another page.
Her own last name.
Voss.
Her heart stopped.
"No."
Dante read the entry.
"Mara Voss."
There was an amount.
A date.
And one sentence.
"Collateral."
Mara recoiled.
"What does that mean?"
Dante's face hardened.
"I don't know."
"You said you knew about my brother."
"I knew about the debt."
"This says collateral."
"I know what it says."
She stepped away from him.
"You knew more than you told me."
"I knew someone was using Leo's debt to control you."
"You knew."
"I suspected."
"You suspected what?"
"That your family was connected to my father's operation."
Mara stared at him.
"How?"
Dante looked at the ledger.
"Because I remember your mother."
Mara went still.
"What?"
"I saw her when I was a child."
"When?"
"At my father's office."
Her voice became almost inaudible.
"My mother never worked for your father."
"Maybe not."
"Then why was she there?"
Dante didn't answer.
He turned another page.
A photograph slipped from the ledger.
It landed face up.
Mara picked it up.
Her mother stood beside a younger Dante Bell.
But there was someone else in the photograph.
A man Mara had spent four years trying to forget.
Silas Crane.
Her breath caught.
"No."
Dante looked at her.
"You know him."
Mara couldn't speak.
The scars on her hands began to ache.
She remembered a basement.
A metal chair.
A man's voice.
A ring tapping against a table.
"Your brother owes us."
Then the sound of a lighter.
The smell of gasoline.
And her mother's old silver sewing scissors placed neatly on the table.
Mara dropped the photograph.
"I need air."
She turned.
Dante blocked the doorway.
Not aggressively.
Just enough to stop her from running into the dark.
"Mara."
"Move."
"You don't have to tell me everything."
"Then move."
He did.
She walked past him.
At the top of the stairs she stopped.
"Dante."
He looked at her.
"Why was my mother in that photograph?"
He had no answer.
And that was the first time Mara realized they might both have been lied to about their parents.
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The difference was that Dante had power to find the truth.
Mara had spent four years being punished for it.
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