Chapter 7 - The House on Fire
We reached Dante's estate twelve minutes later.
Flames were already visible through the east wing windows.
Fire engines screamed up the private drive behind us, but Dante was out of the SUV before it fully stopped.
I grabbed his coat.
"You cannot go in there."
"Father Michael is inside."
"And Victor wants you to rush in angry."
Dante looked toward the burning windows.
His entire body seemed to pull in that direction.
Then Orion barked once beside me.
The dog was sore from the impact at the warehouse, but the veterinary medic who checked him on the drive back had confirmed the bullet had not penetrated his vest. Dante had wanted Orion taken to an emergency clinic.
Orion had refused to leave the vehicle without us.
Now he stood between Dante and the house, ears forward, watching smoke roll from the roof.
One of Dante's security men ran toward us.
"Sir, east wing only. Fire doors contained most of it. Victor's men entered through the old service tunnel. We have three injured. Father Michael is gone."
Dante's expression changed.
"Gone where?"
"We don't know. They took him before setting the fire."
"The servers?"
"Main rack destroyed. Backup room compromised."
Dante looked at me.
I understood what he was really asking.
The copies.
I reached into my coat and pulled out a small flash drive.
"Still here."
For the first time that night, he breathed.
Before we left for the warehouse, I had copied the ledger, the tape, the photographs, and my father's video onto a drive and tucked it into the lining of my coat.
Dante had called me paranoid.
I had called it growing up with a mother who hid emergency cash inside cereal boxes.
Now paranoia was the reason Victor had not won.
"The attorneys also have encrypted copies," I reminded him.
"Unless Samuel gave Victor their names."
The thought chilled me.
Dante turned to his security chief.
"Call every attorney. Move their families if they agree. Notify the federal contact in Washington. No local offices."
"Yes, sir."
"And find Father Michael."
A firefighter ordered us farther from the house.
We moved toward the stone courtyard.
The library windows burst outward behind us.
Dante flinched.
I had never seen him react to destruction before.
Then I remembered that the library held more than evidence.
It held his father's books.
His mother's paintings.
His family photographs.
His history.
Victor was not merely burning a room.
He was trying to erase the past.
I touched Dante's arm.
"We still have the truth."
He looked at the flames.
"He always takes something."
"Then stop measuring victory by what he destroys."
His eyes turned toward me.
"What should I measure it by?"
"What he cannot take."
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Orion leaned against Dante's leg.
I took his hand.
"He cannot take what your parents meant to you. He cannot take what my father did. And he cannot take the fact that we know who he is now."
Dante looked down at our joined hands.
"You say we very easily these days."
"Do not get sentimental."
"Too late."
That answer landed somewhere inside my chest that I did not want to examine.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
He put it on speaker.
Victor's voice came through over crackling static.
"Beautiful house. Shame about the library."
Dante's face went cold.
"Where is the priest?"
"Alive. For now."
"What do you want?"
"What I have always wanted. The original ledger and every copy."
I almost laughed.
Victor heard me.
"Olivia. I had a feeling you would be listening."
"You burned the wrong copies."
Silence.
That pleased me more than it should have.
"Your mother had that same habit," Victor said finally. "Always pretending she was braver than she felt."
"You were afraid of her."
His voice sharpened.
"I was never afraid of Catherine."
"Then why did you spend twenty-seven years trying to erase her?"
Dante looked at me.
Victor's breathing changed over the line.
I had hit something.
"Your mother made a deal with me," he said. "Did your dead father forget to tell you that?"
My stomach dropped.
"What deal?"
"Ask Dante why Catherine met me after Gabriel disappeared. Ask him what your mother traded to keep you alive."
The call ended.
I stared at the phone.
Dante shook his head.
"Do not let him inside your head."
"The photograph proved she met him."
"That does not prove she betrayed your father."
"It proves she lied to me."
Dante did not argue.
Hours later, after the fire was contained, we moved to a secured townhouse in Manhattan owned under a name Victor did not know.
Samuel had been taken somewhere else under guard. Before he left, Dante questioned him in the back of an armored vehicle. I sat outside with Orion, but the door was open and I heard enough.
"Did you know about my father?" Dante asked.
Samuel's answer came slowly. "I knew Victor wanted him frightened. I did not know he would kill him."
"And my mother?"
Silence.
"Answer me."
"By then I knew what Victor was. I also knew what happened to people who crossed him. I had children."
Dante's voice became colder. "So did my parents."
Samuel began to cry. Not dramatically. Quietly, like an old man who had finally reached the end of excuses.
"I told myself I was protecting the family."
"You were protecting yourself."
There was no shouting. Somehow that made it worse.
When Dante stepped out, his face was empty.
I held Orion's collar while the dog watched him.
"You did not hit him," I said.
"Would that impress you?"
"No."
"Good. I did not do it for you."
He looked back at the vehicle. "I did it because I am tired of Victor deciding what kind of man I become."
That was when I understood the war was already changing. Victor might still have money, men, and hostages. But he was losing the thing he relied on most: the ability to make everyone behave exactly as he expected.
Orion finally allowed a veterinarian to examine him. He had bruising across his ribs but no fractures.
I sat on the kitchen floor beside him while Dante took calls in the next room.
At three thirty in the morning, someone knocked softly.
Dante opened the door with a gun in his hand.
A woman in her sixties stood outside wearing a raincoat and holding a plastic grocery bag.
I recognized her immediately.
"Mrs. Alvarez?"
She had lived across the hall from my mother for twelve years.
She looked at me and started crying.
"Your mother told me to wait until men came asking questions about Thomas."
My heart began to pound.
She held out the grocery bag.
Inside was a sealed tin box.
"Catherine gave me this before she went to hospice," Mrs. Alvarez said. "She told me if anyone searched your apartment, I was to bring it to you and no one else."
I carried the box to the kitchen table.
Dante stood across from me.
Inside were three envelopes.
One said FOR OLIVIA.
One said FOR DANTE MORETTI.
The third said IF VICTOR IS STILL ALIVE.
My hands trembled as I opened mine.
Liv,
There is no version of this letter that makes me a good mother in your eyes. I lied to you about your father. I lied about my name. I lied whenever you asked why I hated thunderstorms, why I checked the locks twice, why I never let anyone photograph you at school events.
I did it because Victor Salvi told me exactly how he would kill you if Gabriel ever came back.
So I made a bargain.
I told Victor that Gabriel had died for real, and I gave him false locations for the ledger. In return, he left us alone.
For years, I met him twice annually and pretended fear had made me loyal.
It had not.
Every meeting gave Gabriel information.
Your father and I never stopped working together.
I pressed my fist to my mouth.
Dante read over my shoulder silently.
The letter continued.
I wanted to tell you when you turned eighteen. Gabriel refused. We fought terribly. He believed ignorance was the only shield strong enough to protect you. I believed lies could become their own kind of prison.
We were both right, and both wrong.
Please forgive us if you can.
There is one more thing Victor does not know.
Gabriel did not die in New York.
He was wounded after recording Victor. Father Michael helped move him to a clinic in Vermont under another name.
He lived for nine more months.
He spent those months writing everything he remembered.
His final notebook is hidden at the cabin where you learned to fish.
Love always,
Mom
I lowered the letter.
The room spun.
The cabin.
A tiny place in Vermont my parents had rented when I was a child.
I had not been there since I was thirteen.
Dante opened the envelope addressed to him.
His letter was shorter.
Dante,
Gabriel believed you could become a better man than the world expected. I hope he was right.
If Olivia is with you, do not confuse protecting her with controlling her. Men in your world often do.
If you care for her, give her choices.
And if she chooses you, understand what that trust costs.
- Catherine
I looked at Dante.
He looked almost offended.
"Your mother never met me."
Despite everything, I laughed.
"She understood you pretty quickly."
He reread the letter.
Then his expression softened.
"The cabin."
I nodded.
"Victor may know about it."
"Then we leave before sunrise."
"And Father Michael?"
Dante's jaw tightened.
"We find the notebook first. If Gabriel documented enough names, we may be able to force Victor into releasing him."
I looked at my mother's third envelope.
IF VICTOR IS STILL ALIVE.
Inside was a single page.
Victor,
If you are reading this, you finally lost.
You spent your life believing fear made you powerful.
It only made everyone around you wait for the day you became weak enough to tell the truth.
That day is here.
- Catherine Vale Marshall
At the bottom, my mother had written an address.
Not in Vermont.
In Brooklyn.
Dante recognized it instantly.
"What is it?"
His eyes lifted to mine.
"The Moretti Foundation ballroom."
"Why would she write that?"
Dante looked toward the burning glow still visible faintly across the river.
"Because tomorrow night Victor is hosting the foundation's annual charity gala."
I stared at him.
"Victor is hosting your family's gala?"
"He took over after my mother died. Every judge, commissioner, developer, donor, and politician he has ever cultivated will be there."
My mother's letter suddenly made sense.
That day is here.
I looked at Dante.
"She did not want us to expose him in a warehouse."
May you like
Dante's eyes darkened with understanding.
"She wanted us to expose him in front of everyone he owns."
