Chapter 5 - The Mother Who Came Back From the Dead
The address led to a church in Brooklyn.
Elias refused to let me come.
I came anyway.
Not inside.
I waited in the car with Marco and enough armed men to invade a small country.
Twenty-three minutes passed.
Then forty.
At fifty-one minutes, Elias finally emerged.
A woman walked beside him.
She was sixty-two.
Dark hair streaked with silver.
Elegant posture.
And Elias’s eyes.
Isabella Russo was alive.
Elias looked like a man who had found a ghost and wished he hadn’t.
She entered the car.
Her gaze moved to me.
“Thomas’s daughter.”
I stiffened.
“You knew my father.”
“He saved my life.”
“Then why did someone working for you hire Derek?”
Pain crossed her face.
“I didn’t hire him to hurt you.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“He was supposed to watch you.”
“For seventeen years?”
“No. Five.”
My stomach turned.
“The exact length of my relationship with him.”
“Yes.”
Elias’s voice became lethal.
“You put that man in her life?”
“I told an investigator to find someone close enough to determine whether Patricia Bennett had passed Thomas’s evidence to her daughters.”
“You chose Derek.”
“No. A contractor chose him.”
“You continued using him after he started hurting her.”
Isabella looked sick.
“I didn’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
It was the first time I had heard Elias swear at his mother.
She accepted it.
“I knew he was controlling. I did not know he was violent.”
“That makes it better?”
“No.”
I leaned forward.
“Why did you want the ledger?”
“Because Thomas recorded every person involved in Vincent’s trafficking network.”
“So?”
“Some of those people are still powerful.”
“Politicians.”
“Yes.”
“Police.”
“Yes.”
“Judges?”
Her silence answered.
Elias looked out the window.
“And you’ve spent twenty-one years hiding.”
“I spent twenty-one years gathering proof.”
“While your son thought you were dead.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I believed it was the only way to keep you alive.”
“You don’t get to call abandonment protection.”
The words cut.
Isabella nodded.
“No.”
That surprised him.
“I don’t,” she said.
We drove to a safe house in Connecticut.
There, Isabella showed us everything.
Files.
Recordings.
Bank transfers.
Photographs.
Names.
My father had created a ledger documenting the original criminal network.
But he had hidden a second piece of evidence.
A microcassette containing Vincent Russo discussing payments to public officials.
The wooden star box had a hidden compartment.
Derek had apparently found the box.
But not the cassette.
“Why not?” I asked.
Isabella placed a photograph on the table.
My father had made two identical boxes.
One for me.
One for Sophie.
I stared.
“Sophie’s box is still at Mom’s house.”
“No,” Sophie said.
She had joined us that afternoon.
“Mom gave it to me when I turned eighteen.”
“Where is it?”
She looked embarrassed.
“In my storage unit in Jersey.”
Three hours later we were standing inside the unit.
The box was there.
Elias examined it.
Nothing.
Then I remembered the note.
The key is where Khloe keeps her stars.
Not box.
Stars.
When I was eight, I collected glow-in-the-dark plastic stars and kept them inside a secret drawer my father built beneath my jewelry case.
I turned the box upside down.
Pressed the left rear corner.
A wooden panel slid open.
Inside was a tiny brass key.
Sophie gasped.
“What does it open?”
Isabella went pale.
“I know.”
The key belonged to a private vault company that had closed fifteen years earlier.
Its records had been acquired by another bank.
After hours of calls, lawyers, threats, and paperwork, Elias located the box.
It was still active.
Paid automatically every year through a trust established by my father.
The next morning, we opened it.
Inside were three things.
A cassette.
A ledger.
And a letter addressed to me.
My hands shook as I unfolded it.
Khloe,
If you are old enough to read this without your mother, then I am sorry.
I hoped you would never learn what I became involved in.
I told myself I was only keeping books.
Only moving numbers.
Only helping men who would commit crimes whether I helped them or not.
That was cowardice.
Then I saw children come out of a container.
After that I could not pretend.
If I fail, I need you to know something.
You are not responsible for finishing my fight.
You do not owe me revenge.
You do not owe anyone courage.
Live.
Love your sister.
Be kind without becoming easy to control.
And when someone tells you fear is the same thing as love, walk away.
Dad
I cried until I could no longer see the page.
Elias stayed beside me.
He didn’t touch me.
He waited.
Finally, I reached for his hand.
He held mine.
That was the first time I chose his touch.
The cassette contained Vincent Russo’s voice.
And another voice.
A man currently serving as a United States senator.
A third belonged to New York Supreme Court Judge Adrian Cole.
A fourth belonged to Police Commissioner Daniel Mercer.
The network had survived Vincent.
It had simply evolved.
May you like
And now they knew we had the evidence.
That evening, the safe house exploded.
