Chapter 3 - The Uncle Who Raised a Mafia Boss
Vittorio Moretti had taught Gabriel how to shoot when he was twelve.
I learned that at lunch.
He had also attended every school play Elena ever performed in, paid the mortgage on their mother's house after Gabriel's father died, and sat beside Gabriel through three nights in a hospital when a car bombing nearly killed him at twenty-seven.
In other words, Vittorio was not the convenient villain I wanted him to be.
He was family.
That made everything worse.
We returned to the hill house shortly after noon. Gabriel disappeared into his study with Matteo Ricci, whose shoulder was bandaged beneath a gray sweater. Matteo was in his forties, heavy-set, calm, and visibly unhappy that I existed.
"She shouldn't be here," I heard him say through the half-open door.
"She is here because someone followed my shirt to her workplace," Gabriel answered.
"Then move her out of state."
"And if the person tracking us controls the route?"
Silence.
"Exactly," Gabriel said.
I stepped away before they caught me listening.
Elena found me ten minutes later in the library.
"You heard them."
"Your house has terrible doors for secret criminal conversations."
"My brother renovated for security, not acoustics."
I looked at the rain beyond the windows.
"Is your uncle really capable of this?"
Elena took a long breath.
"Anyone is capable of something. That's the problem with families like mine. We grow up being told loyalty is blood, then spend adulthood learning blood is just another thing people spill."
"That sounds cheerful."
"We have complicated holidays."
I looked at her.
"Why are you being nice to me?"
"Because you look like someone trapped in a room where everyone else knows the rules. I know what that feels like."
Before I could answer, the front doors opened.
A man's voice carried through the foyer.
"Gabriel!"
Elena froze.
Her expression told me who had arrived before she said his name.
"Uncle Vittorio."
He was not what I expected.
No expensive overcoat. No dramatic bodyguards. He was sixty-three, silver-haired, broad through the shoulders, wearing a dark green rain jacket and carrying a paper bag from a bakery.
He kissed Elena on both cheeks.
"You never eat when you're frightened," he said. "So I brought almond pastries."
Then he saw me.
His attention sharpened instantly.
"And you must be Hannah Wells."
My stomach tightened.
"How do you know my name?"
Vittorio looked at Gabriel.
"Because your nephew's laundromat being attacked is not subtle news in my line of work."
"She's not my anything," Gabriel said.
Vittorio's brows rose.
"You brought her into this house. That makes her something."
Gabriel did not respond.
Vittorio turned back to me.
"I'm sorry for what happened to your business."
"It wasn't my business. I just worked there."
"Then I am sorry for the destruction of the place you worked."
He sounded sincere.
That irritated me, because suspicion was easier when people acted guilty.
Vittorio set the bakery bag on the table and pushed it toward me. "Eat. You look pale."
"I'm having a strange morning."
"In this family, that is rarely improved by low blood sugar."
I took a pastry despite myself. The absurd normality of it unsettled me more than another threat might have. Men were dead. My workplace had burned. Someone had tagged Gabriel's shirt like a package. And his uncle was standing in a fortified house offering me almond pastry as if we had gathered for brunch.
Gabriel watched me take one. "Satisfied?" he asked Vittorio.
"Temporarily."
"You realize she suspects you."
Vittorio looked at me. "Do you?"
"I suspect everyone whose name appears near fluorescent tracking chemicals."
He nodded thoughtfully. "Reasonable."
That answer bothered me too. Guilty people in stories protested. Innocent people became offended. Vittorio simply accepted that suspicion was the price of access.
Maybe that was what years around secrets did to a person.
Gabriel placed the laboratory report on the table between them.
"Northbank bought the tracer."
Vittorio read the first page.
He did not flinch.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Cargo theft. We mark high-value shipments moving through private warehouses."
"Who has access?"
"Eight supervisors. Four technicians. Me."
"Names."
Vittorio's face changed.
"You think I tagged you?"
"I think a compound purchased by your company was put on my shirt after an ambush."
"And I think if I wanted you dead, I wouldn't need glowing dust to find you."
The room went silent.
Gabriel's eyes narrowed.
Vittorio looked suddenly older.
"I held your father's hand while he died," he said quietly. "He made me promise I would keep you and Elena alive. I have failed at many things in my life, Gabriel. I have not failed at that."
"Then help me understand how your tracer reached my shirt."
Vittorio pulled out his phone.
"I will give you every access log Northbank has."
"Now."
"Now."
Ten minutes later, a secure file arrived.
The logs showed three authorized removals of the fluorescent compound in the last month. Two were tied to cargo operations. The third had been signed out six days earlier by a technician named Paul Mercer.
Matteo frowned.
"Mercer died yesterday."
I looked at him.
"How?"
"Car accident on I-84."
Vittorio stared at the screen.
"No."
"What?" Gabriel asked.
"Mercer didn't have access to the secure cabinet without a supervisor code."
"Whose code was used?"
Vittorio enlarged the entry.
The code belonged to a man named Adrian Cole.
No one spoke.
Finally, I said, "Who is Adrian Cole?"
Matteo answered.
"Dominic Rinaldi's brother-in-law."
The room seemed to change temperature.
Gabriel turned toward the five shirts draped in protective sleeves on a side table.
Dominic's shirt.
The blood that seemed older.
The tracer on Gabriel's cuff.
All of it suddenly pointed in one direction.
"Where is Dominic?" Gabriel asked.
Matteo checked his phone.
"He left the hospital forty minutes ago. Said he was going home."
"Find him."
Matteo made the call.
No answer.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
Vittorio stepped closer to Gabriel.
"Do not decide guilt because the trail is convenient. Convenient evidence is how intelligent men get buried."
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
"You think Dominic is being framed?"
"I think whoever planned this knew exactly what would happen when you saw Northbank on that report."
I felt a cold pulse move through me.
"They wanted you to suspect your uncle."
Vittorio nodded.
"And perhaps Dominic next."
Elena looked at the access log.
"Then what's the point?"
I stared at the five shirts.
Something had been wrong from the beginning.
The fourth shirt was tagged.
Dominic's carried older blood.
But why send all five together?
Why risk allowing anyone to compare them?
Unless the comparison itself was part of the plan.
I walked toward the table.
"Do you have a black light?"
Gabriel gave me one.
I switched off the nearest lamp and scanned the shirts.
Nothing on the first.
Nothing on the second.
A faint trace on the fourth cuff, where my cleaning had not completely removed the compound.
I moved to Dominic's shirt.
At first, nothing.
Then a tiny blue line appeared along the inside hem.
I stopped.
"There."
Gabriel stepped beside me.
"More tracer?"
"Maybe."
I turned the hem outward.
The fluorescence formed a narrow rectangular smear, too straight to be accidental.
I asked for tweezers and a clean sheet of white paper. Gabriel found both in a desk drawer. The more carefully I examined the seam, the more deliberate it looked. The thread on one side was slightly brighter than the original stitching, newer polyester against older silk. Whoever had opened it wanted the repair to pass casual inspection, not close examination.
"People think expensive clothing is fragile," I said. "It isn't. Good tailoring is basically engineering with better marketing."
Vittorio gave me a surprised look. "My father would have liked you."
Gabriel glanced at him. "Your father disliked everyone."
"He respected competent people. That's not the same thing."
I pressed the seam flat. "This was opened recently. See the needle holes? The silk hasn't relaxed around them yet."
Gabriel leaned close enough that I caught the clean scent of his cologne beneath the smoke still clinging to his coat. I became abruptly aware of how near he was and immediately resented my nervous system for choosing that moment to behave like I was in a completely different kind of story.
He noticed me shift away. His eyes flicked to mine, but he said nothing.
Good.
I had enough problems without discovering the mafia boss had cheekbones.
"Something was kept in this pocket," I said.
Dominic's shirt had no visible chest pocket.
But inside the lining, there was a small concealed compartment.
Gabriel's face hardened.
He reached in.
Empty.
I examined the stitching.
One thread had been cut and resewn badly.
"Someone opened this after it was made."
Vittorio leaned closer.
"What would Dominic carry there?"
Gabriel answered without looking up.
"An emergency key."
"To what?" I asked.
He met my eyes.
"The Moretti archive."
Elena inhaled sharply.
"The one under Hawthorne?"
Gabriel nodded.
I had no idea what Hawthorne was.
But everyone else in the room suddenly looked afraid.
"What's in the archive?" I asked.
Gabriel's voice was flat.
"Enough financial records, names, debts, and old agreements to destroy my family and half the men who have ever done business with us."
Vittorio swore.
Matteo was already reaching for his phone.
Gabriel looked at Dominic's empty hidden pocket.
"This was never about tracking me home."
I understood.
The tracer had been bait.
The bloody shirts had been bait.
My laundromat had been bait.
Everything was designed to create chaos while someone took the one thing that mattered.
"The key," I whispered.
Gabriel's phone rang.
He answered.
The person on the other end spoke for less than five seconds.
Gabriel's face lost all color.
"When?"
Another pause.
Then he lowered the phone.
"The Hawthorne archive was opened sixteen minutes ago."
Elena whispered, "By Dominic?"
Gabriel looked at the empty pocket.
"No."
May you like
"How do you know?"
"Because Dominic Rinaldi was just found dead in his car."
