Chapter 4 - The Truth My Mother Buried With Herself
Victor hit the floor with me beneath him as a second bullet tore through the office wall.
Dust rained into my hair.
"Stay down," he ordered.
"I know this building better than you do."
"Lily—"
"There's a corridor behind the old equipment room."
Another shot cracked through the gym.
Adrian fired back from somewhere near the hallway.
Victor's hand closed around my wrist.
"Where does it go?"
"Rear stairwell. Then the alley."
His gray eyes locked on mine.
"Show me."
We crawled behind the office wall, keeping low until we reached the equipment room. I pushed aside a warped wooden cabinet and found the narrow door my father used when he wanted to sneak fighters out after late-night training sessions without reporters seeing them.
The hinges groaned.
Victor glanced at me.
"Subtle."
"It was built in 1948. Give it a break."
Even then, with someone shooting at us, his mouth almost curved.
We slipped into the corridor.
The passage was barely wide enough for Victor's shoulders.
At the rear stairwell, he stopped.
"You stay here."
"No."
"This is not a debate."
"Then stop saying things that sound debatable."
He stared at me.
I stared back.
A gunshot echoed from the gym.
Victor muttered something in Italian that I was fairly sure wasn't a compliment.
Then he moved down the stairs.
I followed.
We reached the alley and circled toward the side entrance.
Victor's driver was already there, weapon drawn.
"Shooter's still inside," the man whispered.
Victor motioned toward the roof access.
They moved like people who had done this before.
I moved like a waitress who had made several terrible life choices in one night.
But I knew the building.
That mattered.
I pointed toward a cracked basement window beneath the loading ramp.
"There's another way in."
Victor looked at me.
"Of course there is."
"My father hated fire codes."
We entered through the basement.
Above us, footsteps crossed the gym floor.
Slow.
Deliberate.
The shooter thought we were trapped in the office.
Victor climbed the stairs first.
When he reached the top, he waited beside the door.
The footsteps came closer.
I saw a shadow move across the frosted glass.
Victor opened the door hard.
It struck the gunman in the shoulder.
The weapon fired into the ceiling.
Victor drove him into the wall.
The man swung back, but Victor caught his arm and slammed it against the doorframe until the pistol dropped.
Adrian appeared from the hallway and kicked it away.
Within seconds, the shooter was on his knees with his hands restrained behind him.
I recognized him.
He had been at table nine.
One of the five men who abandoned Victor.
"Nathan," Victor said.
The betrayal in his voice was colder than anger.
Nathan Hale looked up.
Blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow.
"You should've left the restaurant when we did."
"Who ordered you out?"
Nathan laughed.
"You know who."
Victor crouched in front of him.
"Say his name."
Nathan's eyes moved to me.
"She doesn't belong in this."
"You fired at her."
"I fired at the reader."
My stomach tightened.
"Why?"
Nathan's gaze stayed on me.
"Because the old man was right. The book was never the real problem."
I stepped closer.
"What does that mean?"
"It means Salvatore spent eight years looking for the wrong thing."
Victor's expression sharpened.
"And what should he have been looking for?"
Nathan smiled at me.
"Her memory."
A chill went through me.
"I don't remember anything."
"That's what your mother was counting on."
I took another step.
"What happened the night my father died?"
Nathan's smile disappeared.
"Ask Eleanor."
A voice came from behind us.
"She just did."
I turned.
A woman stood in the broken doorway of the gym.
Gray coat.
Dark hair threaded with silver.
A small pistol held steady in both hands.
My mother.
For a second, my mind refused to connect the woman in front of me with the person I had buried.
She looked older, of course.
Thinner.
There was a pale scar along the left side of her jaw that I didn't remember.
But her eyes were exactly the same.
Hazel with a ring of green around the center.
My eyes.
"Mom."
The word broke in the middle.
Her weapon lowered.
"Lily."
I crossed the gym before I knew I was moving.
She opened her arms.
I stopped three feet away.
The pain arrived before the relief.
Eight birthdays.
Eight Christmas mornings.
College graduation.
My first apartment.
Every time I had reached for a phone to call a woman who was supposed to be dead.
I slapped her.
The sound echoed across the empty gym.
My mother closed her eyes.
No one moved.
Then I hit her chest with both fists.
"You were alive."
"I know."
"You were alive!"
She let me hit her again.
And then my strength disappeared.
I folded into her.
She wrapped both arms around me.
The sound that came out of me did not feel human.
It was eight years of grief leaving all at once.
She held the back of my head the way she had when I was a child.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, baby."
I cried until I couldn't breathe.
When I finally stepped back, Victor was turned away, giving us the privacy of pretending he hadn't seen.
Nathan remained on his knees beside Adrian.
My mother looked at him.
"He works for Salvatore."
Victor turned.
"He worked for me."
"That's how Salvatore survives. He puts his people close to the men he plans to bury."
Nathan spat blood onto the floor.
"Careful, Eleanor. You're not dead enough anymore."
My mother raised the gun.
I grabbed her wrist.
"No."
She looked at me.
"He helped kill your father."
"Then he can live long enough to explain it."
Victor's eyes met mine.
Something like approval passed through them.
My mother lowered the weapon.
We moved Nathan into the old locker room and left Adrian with him while Victor, my mother, and I returned to my father's office.
The damaged reader lay on the floor.
The storage card was split at one edge.
Victor picked it up carefully.
"Can this be recovered?"
"Maybe," Adrian called from the hallway. "Our lab can try."
My mother stared at the card.
"Thomas made more than one copy."
I turned on her.
"Then start talking."
She sat in my father's old chair.
For the next hour, she dismantled my childhood.
My father had not simply worked security for Marco Castellano.
He had become Marco's most trusted outside investigator.
Marco suspected Salvatore was using Castellano businesses to hide crimes even he considered unforgivable. Thomas followed money, photographed meetings, copied documents, and built the red ledger with Marco.
"Why would a mafia boss collect evidence against his own brother?" I asked.
My mother looked at Victor.
"Because Marco finally understood that Salvatore wasn't protecting the family. He was building his own kingdom inside it."
Victor stood near the window, face hard.
"My father never told me."
"He wanted you clean of it until he knew who he could trust."
Victor laughed once, bitterly.
"That worked well."
My mother continued.
Three nights before my father's death, Salvatore came to the gym after midnight.
He brought Darius Kane.
I felt the room narrow.
"I was here?"
My mother nodded.
"You had fallen asleep upstairs while waiting for your father to finish."
A memory flickered.
A blanket.
The smell of dust.
Voices below.
A man's ring hitting wood.
I pressed my fingers to my temple.
"I remember arguing."
"You woke up. You came downstairs."
My pulse quickened.
"What did I see?"
My mother swallowed.
"Salvatore had your father against that wall."
She pointed beside the office door.
"Darius was holding him. Marco arrived unexpectedly. He accused Salvatore of arranging murders behind his back. Salvatore told Marco the family had become weak because he had started listening to men like Thomas."
Victor's face had gone white beneath his controlled expression.
"And Lily?"
"Thomas saw her before they did. He knocked over a lamp and shouted for her to run. She hid in the storage closet."
My chest tightened.
The storage closet.
Suddenly I could smell bleach.
Leather gloves.
I could hear my own breathing.
A deep male voice.
Then a sentence surfaced from the darkness.
A sentence I had spent eight years believing belonged to a nightmare.
"A crown is only safe when everyone who saw the blood is buried."
My mother went still.
Victor looked at me.
"What did you say?"
I repeated it.
My mother's eyes filled.
"That was Salvatore."
My knees weakened.
More memory came.
A silver ring.
A black stone engraved with a lion.
My father shouting.
Marco cursing.
Darius dragging someone.
Then my mother pulling me through the rear corridor and into the rain.
"I saw him," I whispered.
"Yes," she said.
"I saw Salvatore."
"Yes."
"Why don't I remember?"
"Because I spent six months telling you that you had dreamed it."
I stared at her.
Her face broke.
"He knew a teenage girl had been in the building. We didn't know if he knew it was you. I thought if you forgot, if you stopped asking questions, you might survive."
"And then you died."
"I staged my death."
I laughed sharply.
"You say that like it's a canceled appointment."
She flinched.
"A federal investigator helped me. We discovered Salvatore had someone inside the task force. Witness protection wasn't safe. Your aunt took you. I disappeared."
"For eight years."
"For eight years, I watched from a distance."
"That's supposed to make it better?"
"No."
Tears slipped down her face.
"Nothing makes it better."
I turned away.
Victor spoke quietly.
"Why come back now?"
My mother looked at him.
"Because Salvatore found Lily first."
"The restaurant job."
"Yes. Marcus was paid to hire her. Darius was told to kill you and take Lily alive."
I looked at her.
"Why take me?"
"Because Salvatore learned Thomas left you something. He thinks you know where the original red ledger is."
"I don't."
"I know."
"Do you?"
My mother reached into her coat.
Victor's hand moved toward his weapon.
She stopped.
"Relax."
Slowly, she removed a faded photograph.
It showed my father kneeling beside me on my sixteenth birthday.
I wore a ridiculous paper crown from the bakery.
He was holding a small red gift box.
I stared at it.
"What is that?"
"The last gift your father gave you."
I remembered.
A music box.
Red lacquer.
Tiny gold stars on the lid.
I had hated it because I thought it was childish.
After my mother's supposed death, I packed it away with everything else from my parents.
My heart started pounding.
"It's in my apartment."
Victor swore under his breath.
My mother stood.
"Then Salvatore may already have it."
His phone rang.
Adrian answered from the hallway first.
His voice hardened.
"Boss, we have a problem."
Victor stepped out.
"What?"
Adrian held the phone toward him.
On the screen was a live video feed.
My apartment.
The front door hung open.
Furniture had been overturned.
Drawers were dumped across the floor.
And in the center of my living room stood Darius Kane, the giant from the restaurant.
He looked directly into the camera someone had placed there.
Then he lifted my red music box in one massive hand.
"Looking for this, Lily?"
May you like
He smiled.
And smashed it against the wall.
