Chapter 4: What a Brother Owes
I didn't sleep.
The room Rosa had given me was clean and quiet, with a window that looked out over the rear grounds.
Two men stood near the tree line below.
Neither of them moved for the entire three hours I sat watching.
At six in the morning, Rosa brought coffee and toast on a tray without being asked.
She set it on the small table near the window, glanced at the untouched bed, and said nothing about it.
"Is he still on the phone?" I asked.
"Mr.
Moretti has been in his office since two," she said.
"He doesn't sleep much when something is wrong."
"Something is very wrong."
"Yes." She straightened the tray.
"It is."
She left.
I drank the coffee and watched the men by the tree line change positions and tried to understand how a single overheard conversation had brought me here.
At half past eight, one of Dante's men appeared in the doorway.
"Mr.
Moretti would like you to join him."
Dante was in a room at the end of the east corridor.
Larger than where we'd spoken the night before.
A desk covered in papers.
A laptop open.
Two phones.
He was standing when I entered, looking at something on the screen, and he didn't stop looking at it when he spoke.
"Nico called me back at four this morning."
I sat in the chair across from the desk.
"What did he say?"
"That he had nothing to do with it." Dante finally turned.
"That Vanessa had approached him three months ago.
That he refused.
That he hasn't spoken to her since."
"Do you believe him?"
"I don't know yet." He moved to the window.
"Nico and I have not been close for a long time.
There are reasons for that.
But he has never lied to me directly.
He lies by omission.
By distance.
Not to my face."
"Someone cut those brakes," I said.
"It wasn't done by accident."
"No." He turned back.
"It wasn't.
Which means if Nico is telling the truth, Vanessa found someone else.
Someone I don't know.
Someone outside my organization." He paused.
"That is a much more dangerous problem."
A knock at the door.
One of his men stepped in and placed a folder on the desk without a word, then left.
Dante opened it.
His jaw tightened.
"What is it?" I asked.
He turned the folder so I could see.
A photograph.
Surveillance quality, slightly grainy.
Vanessa at a restaurant table.
Across from her, a man I didn't recognize.
Not Nico.
Someone older.
Heavy-set.
A ring on his right hand that caught the light.
"His name is Caruso," Dante said.
"He runs operations in three states.
We have had an arrangement for eleven years.
A careful one."
"Was," I said.
He looked at me.
"You said 'runs.' But the way you said his name—"
"He's been trying to move into territory that isn't his for two years." Dante closed the folder.
"I blocked it.
Legally, financially, every way I could without open conflict.
Apparently he found another approach."
"Through your wife."
"Through my wife." He said it without emotion.
Which was its own kind of emotion.
I looked at the closed folder.
"How long have you and Vanessa—"
"Four years." He sat down.
"I knew it wasn't a love match.
That was acceptable to both of us.
What I did not know was that she had been in contact with Caruso for the last eighteen months."
"How do you know that now?"
He opened the laptop and turned it toward me.
An email chain.
Dates going back a year and a half.
Vanessa's personal account.
The name at the other end was a shell company, but the writing style, the references, the specific details — someone had already done the work of connecting it.
"Who found this?" I asked.
"My people have been working through the night." He closed the laptop.
"Cara.
I need to ask you something."
I waited.
"The conversation you overheard.
Vanessa said, 'By midnight, I'll be a grieving widow.' Those exact words?"
"Yes."
"She was certain.
Not hopeful.
Certain."
"Yes."
He stood again.
Moved back to the window.
Outside, a third man had joined the two near the tree line.
"She knew the exact road," he said quietly.
"She knew the exact time.
She knew I always drive that route alone on Thursday nights." He stopped.
"The only people who know my Thursday schedule are inside this house."
The room went very still.
"You think someone here told her," I said.
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
I looked at the door.
Closed.
The corridor beyond it, full of people who worked for Dante Moretti, any one of whom might have made a single phone call to the wrong person.
"What happens now?" I asked.
He turned from the window.
His expression had changed.
Harder.
May you like
More deliberate.
"Now," he said, "I let Vanessa believe she's a widow."
