Chapter 2 - The Memory Leo Buried
I called Leo so quickly that I nearly dropped the phone.
He answered on the third ring.
“Tess?”
His voice sounded strained.
“Where are you?”
“At the rehab center.”
“Are you alone?”
A pause.
“My therapist is outside.”
“Lock the door.”
“What?”
“Leo, lock the door now.”
Roman was already moving.
He picked up his coat, spoke into his own phone, and ordered two men to the rehabilitation center before I even finished my sentence.
“Tess, you're scaring me.”
“I'm coming to you.”
“Wait.”
I froze.
“I remembered something,” Leo said.
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“What?”
“The night of the accident.”
Roman looked at me.
I put the call on speaker.
Leo continued.
“I didn't just get hit crossing the street.”
My heart pounded.
“I know.”
“No, you don't.”
His breathing grew uneven.
“I was running.”
“From who?” Roman asked.
Silence.
Leo knew Roman's voice.
Everyone at Caldwell Holdings knew Roman's voice.
“Tessa?”
“It's okay,” I said. “Tell us.”
Leo swallowed loudly.
“Three years ago, I got a call from a man who said he knew Dad.”
My skin prickled.
“He said Dad had left something for us. He told me not to tell you because you were already overwhelmed after I lost my construction job.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course Leo hadn't told me.
He had always tried to protect me, even when he was the one who needed help.
“Where did he tell you to go?” Roman asked.
“A storage building near Pier Nineteen.”
Roman's head lifted.
His expression changed.
“What?” I asked.
“That property belonged to my father.”
Leo continued.
“I went there. A man gave me a key.”
“What kind of key?”
“Small. Brass. It had H-17 stamped on it.”
Roman and I looked at each other.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“I left. I thought someone was following me. Then I saw a black SUV at the corner.”
His voice shook.
“I remember the headlights coming toward me.”
I gripped the edge of Roman's desk.
“It wasn't an accident?”
“No.”
My eyes filled.
“Leo…”
“It turned toward me.”
He stopped.
I could hear his breathing.
Then he whispered something I would never forget.
“I saw Carlo.”
Roman went still.
Not surprised.
Worse.
Confirmed.
“Where?” Roman asked.
“In the passenger seat.”
My entire body went cold.
“Are you sure?”
“I didn't remember until this morning. They had me doing memory exercises during therapy. Images, sounds, sequences.”
His voice cracked.
“And then I remembered his ring.”
Roman's face changed.
“What ring?”
“A gold signet ring. Black stone. A snake around a crown.”
Roman closed his eyes for one second.
When he opened them, whatever doubt remained was gone.
“Carlo's family crest,” he said.
I couldn't breathe.
The man who had hired me had been inside the vehicle that destroyed my brother's life.
And then he had spent three years smiling at me in hallways.
Asking how Leo was doing.
Sending Christmas baskets.
Once, he had even given me a hundred-dollar grocery card and told me, “Family comes first.”
I felt sick.
“Roman,” I said, “we need to get Leo out of there.”
“We are.”
He spoke into his phone again.
Then he looked at me.
“You're coming with me.”
It wasn't a question.
For once, I didn't argue.
Twenty-five minutes later, Roman's car pulled into the underground garage beneath the rehabilitation center.
Two Caldwell security men were already waiting.
I recognized both.
Neither looked like they had come to discuss physical therapy.
Roman walked beside me through a private service corridor.
When we reached Leo's room, I pushed through the door.
My brother was sitting beside a treatment table, his damaged wheelchair next to him.
His face relaxed when he saw me.
Then he noticed Roman.
“Well,” Leo said weakly. “This is either very good or very bad.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Then I knelt and hugged him.
He wrapped one arm around me.
“I should've told you about the call,” he whispered.
“You were twenty-three.”
“I thought I could help.”
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
I pulled back.
“Do you remember what happened to the key?”
Leo frowned.
“I had it in Dad's backpack.”
“The blue one?”
He nodded.
“I put it in a tear in the inside lining because the zipper on the small pocket was broken.”
Roman stepped closer.
“The backpack wasn't recovered.”
Leo looked confused.
“Yes, it was.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“The hospital gave it back to you.”
“No, they didn't.”
Leo shook his head.
“I saw it at the apartment months later.”
My pulse jumped.
“Where?”
“In the hall closet. Top shelf. Behind Dad's old winter coat.”
I tried to picture our closet.
Coats.
Boxes.
Cleaning supplies.
Things I had moved a hundred times without really seeing.
Roman took out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Sending someone to retrieve it.”
“No.”
His gaze shifted to me.
“If Carlo is behind this, I don't want anyone connected to him touching that bag.”
Roman understood immediately.
“Then we go ourselves.”
Leo looked between us.
“Maybe someone could explain why Roman Caldwell is suddenly helping with my old backpack.”
I exhaled.
“It's a long story.”
Leo looked at Roman.
“Did you make my rehab disappear?”
Roman said nothing.
Leo's eyebrows rose.
“Oh.”
I turned.
“You told him?”
“No,” Roman said.
Leo shrugged.
“Anonymous rich benefactor, private Caldwell-affiliated program, and three men in suits outside my therapy room. I can still do math, Tess.”
Roman almost smiled.
Almost.
“I owed your sister an apology,” he said.
Leo looked at me.
“What did he do?”
“Followed me home with a gun because he thought I stole twenty thousand dollars.”
Leo stared at Roman.
Roman stared back.
Finally Leo said, “That's a terrible apology.”
I covered my mouth.
Roman actually smiled then.
It lasted less than a second.
But I saw it.
And somehow that tiny moment made everything more dangerous.
Because Roman Caldwell wasn't supposed to feel human to me.
He was my employer.
A criminal boss.
A man people crossed streets to avoid.
And I had just discovered that beneath the fear surrounding him was someone capable of guilt.
Someone capable of protecting my brother.
Someone who had spent his morning trying to undo the damage caused by his own suspicion.
That did not make him safe.
But it made him complicated.
And complicated men were often the hardest ones to escape.
We moved Leo that afternoon to a private Caldwell property in Westchester.
I objected to the marble floors, the security gates, the staff, and the fact that the guest suite was larger than our entire apartment.
Leo took one look at the accessible shower and said, “You can argue after I use that.”
I lost.
By evening, Roman and I returned to my apartment with two security men.
The damage was worse than I'd imagined.
Drawers overturned.
Mattress cut open.
Cabinet doors ripped from hinges.
Old photographs scattered across the floor.
My father's winter coat lay in the hallway.
The closet had been emptied.
“Top shelf,” I said.
Roman lifted a broken storage box.
Nothing.
My stomach dropped.
“They found it.”
“Maybe.”
Roman crouched near the wall.
“What?”
He reached behind a loose section of baseboard and pulled out a strip of blue canvas.
I recognized it immediately.
The backpack.
Or what was left of it.
Someone had cut it apart.
But they had missed the inner lining.
I dropped to my knees beside Roman.
There was a narrow tear in the fabric.
I slid two fingers inside.
Metal touched my skin.
I pulled out a small brass key.
H-17.
Roman exhaled slowly.
Then we heard a sound from the bedroom.
A floorboard.
Roman moved instantly.
He pushed me behind the hallway wall and drew his weapon.
One of his men stepped forward.
The bedroom door swung open.
A figure crashed through the window onto the fire escape.
Roman went after him.
“Roman!”
He disappeared through the bedroom.
Seconds later, I heard running metal steps.
Then a gunshot from somewhere below.
My heart stopped.
I rushed to the window before one of the guards caught my arm.
Roman stood on the fire escape two floors down.
Alive.
He looked up.
“Stay inside!”
The figure had escaped into the alley.
But he had left something behind.
A phone.
Its screen was cracked.
Roman brought it upstairs.
Most of the data was locked.
One message was still visible on the screen.
A text sent less than an hour earlier.
FIND THE KEY BEFORE CALDWELL DOES.
Below it was a second message.
IF THE GIRL REMEMBERS HER FATHER, END IT.
I stared at the words.
Roman's voice became deadly quiet.
“No one is touching you.”
I looked at him.
“You can't promise that.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Because you're Roman Caldwell?”
“No.”
He stepped closer.
“Because I made the mistake of doubting you once. I won't make another mistake where you're concerned.”
The way he said it made my pulse stumble.
I hated that.
I hated even more that part of me believed him.
Then his phone rang.
One of his investigators had traced the brass key.
H-17 belonged to an old private vault facility in Brooklyn.
The account attached to it had not been opened in nine years.
The registered owner was Thomas Hayes.
My father.
The drive to the rehabilitation center was the longest twenty-five minutes of my life.
Roman sat beside me in the back seat, speaking quietly into his phone while the city moved outside the tinted windows.
I heard fragments.
Two men at the front entrance.
One at the garage.
Check every transport vehicle.
Do not alarm the medical staff.
The efficiency should have reassured me.
Instead, it reminded me that Roman lived in a world where protecting someone required contingency plans before breakfast.
I looked at his coat.
There was a shape beneath it.
The gun from the night before.
“You're carrying it now?” I asked.
He ended the call.
“Yes.”
“Did you sleep with it beside you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever go anywhere without one?”
“Occasionally.”
“Where?”
He considered.
“The shower.”
I stared at him.
“That was a joke.”
“You make jokes?”
“Rarely. Don't spread it around.”
Against my will, I smiled.
Then guilt immediately followed. Leo was in danger. My apartment had been searched. My father had kept secrets from me until his death. I should not have been smiling in the back seat of a mafia boss's car.
Roman seemed to read the thought on my face.
“You're allowed to breathe, Tessa.”
I looked at him.
“That sounds suspiciously healthy.”
“Marcus says I'm improving.”
“Marcus lies to keep his job.”
Roman's mouth shifted.
Then his voice softened.
“Your brother is alive. We know more today than we did yesterday. Hold on to that.”
I looked out the window.
May you like
He was right.
And that frightened me almost as much as everything else.
