Chapter 9 - THE NAME ON THE LEDGER
Antonio did not reach for his gun.
He slowly removed it and placed it on the desk.
“Check the date.”
Lorenzo looked at the ledger entry.
March 14, 2001.
Antonio had been twelve years old.
Isabella exhaled.
The name belonged to someone else.
Antonio's father.
Antonio Russo Sr.
A former DeLuca lieutenant who had died when Antonio was seventeen.
Antonio stared at the transfer amount.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
“That's the week my father disappeared.”
Lorenzo remembered the story.
Antonio's father had supposedly died in a boating accident.
The body had never been recovered.
Isabella looked at him.
“Your father may have worked with Salvatore Bellini.”
Antonio's face hardened.
“Or against him.”
Lorenzo folded the paper.
“We find Sophia first.”
The abandoned school smelled of dust and rain.
Lorenzo entered with Antonio and six handpicked men.
No sirens.
No backup.
A light glowed inside the old gymnasium.
Sophia sat tied to a chair.
Alone.
Lorenzo crossed the floor.
“Sophia.”
Her eyes opened.
“Emma.”
“I know.”
“Where is she?”
Sophia began crying.
“They took her.”
“Who?”
“A woman.”
Lorenzo stopped cutting the rope.
“What woman?”
“I've seen her before.”
“Where?”
“At the mansion.”
“When?”
Sophia's voice dropped.
“Years ago.”
Antonio moved closer.
“What did she look like?”
“Late fifties.”
“Dark hair.”
“Scar under her chin.”
Lorenzo's expression changed.
He knew exactly one woman matching that description.
His aunt.
Caterina DeLuca.
His father's younger sister.
Caterina had disappeared after Vittorio died.
Everyone believed she had moved to Sicily.
Lorenzo hadn't seen her in fourteen years.
Sophia rubbed her wrists.
“She called Emma by name.”
“She said, ‘Your grandfather has waited a long time to meet you.’”
Antonio frowned.
“Emma's grandfather is dead.”
Sophia looked at him.
“That is what I thought.”
Lorenzo felt the room become colder.
Lucia's grandfather Matteo Conti was dead.
Lorenzo's father Vittorio was dead.
Emma's biological grandfather, as far as Sophia had ever said, had also died before Emma was born.
Unless the woman wasn't talking about Emma.
Unless she believed Emma was someone else.
A projector suddenly clicked on at the far end of the gym.
A video appeared on the wall.
Marco sat in a leather chair.
Emma was beside him eating cookies.
She did not appear hurt.
Marco smiled into the camera.
“Lorenzo.”
“If you're watching this, you found Sophia.”
“Congratulations.”
Emma looked toward someone offscreen.
Then she smiled.
“Grandpa.”
Lorenzo froze.
An older man stepped into frame.
Silver hair.
Heavy shoulders.
A scar across his right hand.
Antonio dropped the flashlight.
“No.”
Lorenzo knew that face from photographs.
Everyone in their world did.
Salvatore Bellini.
Marco's father.
The man supposedly murdered twenty-five years earlier.
Salvatore looked into the camera.
“Vittorio's son.”
“I have waited a very long time to meet you as a man.”
The screen went black.
May you like
Lorenzo stared at the empty wall.
The war he thought had started eight months ago had actually begun before he was old enough to understand what war meant.
