Chapter 2 - The Secret Beneath Nana's Soup“Enzo,” I said, keeping my eyes on the photograph. “Take us to the safe house on Beacon Hill.”
Elena stiffened.
“Please, I don't want to be involved in whatever this is.”
“You already are.”
“I never asked for your protection.”
“And I never asked someone to threaten a five-year-old girl.” I slid the photograph into my inside pocket. “Yet here we are.”
Nora sat between us, clutching the sleeves of her red coat. The Bentley's heater hummed, gradually returning color to her hands.
She watched me suspiciously.
“Are you really a bad man?”
Elena closed her eyes.
“Nora, honey, that's not something you ask.”
“It's all right,” I said.
The little girl tilted her head.
“Are you?”
I'd been called many things in my thirty-six years. Monster. Murderer. King of Boston's underworld. The man whose enemies sometimes disappeared before their funerals could be arranged.
Nobody had ever asked me the question quite so plainly.
“I've done bad things,” I answered.
Nora thought about that.
“Did you hurt little girls?”
“No.”
“Did you hurt their mommies?”
I looked through the window at the passing snow.
“Not intentionally.”
She frowned.
“That's not the same as saying no.”
Enzo made a strangled sound from the front seat.
I shot him a look in the rearview mirror.
He immediately became fascinated by the traffic.
“No,” I told Nora. “It's not.”
She settled back, seemingly satisfied that she'd caught me in an honest answer.
Elena looked at me differently after that.
Not with trust.
But perhaps with the beginnings of understanding.
The safe house occupied the top three floors of a converted brownstone overlooking a quiet Beacon Hill street. My security team had already secured the building before we arrived. Two guards waited at the entrance, and a third monitored the cameras upstairs.
I disliked bringing civilians here. The walls held secrets, and secrets had a way of spreading.
But the building was protected, the exits were controlled, and nobody could approach unnoticed.
Nora's eyes widened at the sight of the marble staircase.
“Do you live in a castle?”
“No.”
“Why not? You're rich.”
I removed my gloves.
“Castles are expensive to maintain.”
She considered this with remarkable seriousness.
“Then you should get a smaller castle.”
“An excellent suggestion.”
Elena almost smiled.
Almost.
A housekeeper brought hot chocolate, soup, and fresh blankets. Nora wrapped herself in a thick wool throw and sat cross-legged on a sofa large enough to accommodate an entire family.
She held the hot chocolate in both hands.
“Mommy,” she whispered, “he has a castle.”
“He has a house, sweetheart.”
“A big house is a castle.”
“Finish your drink.”
I watched them for several seconds before turning to Enzo.
“Search Elena's apartment. Take a team. Nobody enters without us knowing.”
He nodded.
“Should I look for the papers?”
“Look for everything.”
When he left, Elena rose abruptly.
“I need to call my landlord.”
“Use the secure phone.”
“I need to know whether my apartment is safe.”
“It isn't.”
“How can you know that?”
“Two men found you in the street within hours of whatever happened this morning. They knew your schedule, your daughter's school route, and the documents they wanted you to sign. Somebody has information about you.”
She went still.
I continued quietly.
“Until I know how they found you, you don't go anywhere without security.”
“You can't keep us prisoners.”
“No. But I can keep you alive.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
Her voice carried enough steel to make me pause.
I recognized that quality. My mother had possessed it too, that quiet refusal to bend simply because someone else spoke louder.
“Then tell me everything,” I said.
Elena stared at the photograph I'd placed on the table.
“When I was twenty-two, I worked as an assistant accountant for Isabella Moretti.”
The room seemed to tighten around her words.
“You worked for my mother?”
“For nearly six years.”
“Why have I never seen you?”
“Because your mother hired me after you moved away to attend college. And because you were rarely at the restaurant when I was there.”
I had attended college for precisely eleven months before my father's arrest forced me back into the family business. I'd spent the next decade becoming the person my mother had feared I would become.
“What did you do for her?” I asked.
“Managed the books for her charitable trust. Paid suppliers, handled property taxes, coordinated repairs for tenants who couldn't afford them. She wanted Nana's Soup and the surrounding buildings to remain independent.”
“And Salvatore?”
“He handled the legal side.”
Of course he had.
My uncle had been my mother's oldest friend in the family, her trusted adviser, the man who sat at her hospital bedside when she first became ill.
He'd also been the last person to see her alive.
“What happened four years ago?” I asked.
Elena pressed her lips together.
“Your mother discovered that money was disappearing from the trust.”
“How much?”
“Almost eight million dollars.”
I felt the familiar stillness settle over me.
“Who took it?”
“I don't know. She was investigating the transfers when she died.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I tried.”
My gaze snapped to hers.
“When?”
“Three days after the funeral. I called your office. Your assistant said you weren't accepting visitors.”
“I didn't have an assistant three days after the funeral.”
“Then someone pretended to be one.”
I said nothing.
Elena looked down at her hands.
“Two weeks later, a man followed me home. He told me to stop asking questions. A month after that, my bank account was frozen because of an anonymous fraud complaint. I lost my job. I lost my apartment. I was pregnant, and my husband was already dead.”
Nora looked up.
“Daddy died before I was born.”
Elena's face softened.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
I looked at the child.
“How did your husband die?”
Elena hesitated.
“His name was Daniel. He was a paramedic. He died in an accident while responding to an emergency call.”
“What kind of accident?”
“A truck hit his ambulance.”
“Who was driving the truck?”
“The police never found out.”
Something about the answer bothered me.
Two dead people. Eight million dollars missing. A murdered mother. A frightened accountant and a husband killed in an accident.
Perhaps Boston was simply an unlucky city.
Or perhaps somebody had been cleaning up loose ends.
I returned to the photograph.
“Why was my mother with you?”
Elena swallowed.
“Because that photograph was taken the day she gave me something to hide.”
“What?”
“A ledger.”
I leaned forward.
“What ledger?”
“A record of every payment made by the trust for the last ten years. Not just the legitimate expenses. The secret accounts too. She'd found a series of transfers that led to companies owned by Victor Sokov.”
That explained the property papers.
“Why would my mother keep a record of Sokov's accounts?”
“Because Sokov wasn't the only name in the ledger.”
She paused.
“Your uncle's name appeared beside the transfers.”
I studied her face.
“Did you keep it?”
“No. Isabella took it back the following week.”
“Then where is it?”
Elena looked toward the ceiling.
“Your mother said the one place Salvatore would never search was the place he thought he'd already destroyed.”
I stood.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know. She never explained it.”
A soft footstep sounded behind us.
Nora had left her hot chocolate on the sofa. She approached with a folded piece of paper clutched in her hand.
“Mommy says I shouldn't show strangers this.”
Elena turned pale.
“Nora, where did you get that?”
“From my backpack.”
The child unfolded it.
It was a child's drawing, made with a red crayon. A green roof sat above a crooked golden sign. Beneath it, a little girl held hands with a smiling woman.
At the bottom, Nora had written her name in uneven letters.
But the back of the paper carried something else.
A message in my mother's handwriting.
THE KEY IS WHERE THE SOUP NEVER COOLS.
I stared at it.
For four years, I had searched my mother's accounts, offices, cars, and homes.
I'd searched everything except the restaurant.
The one place I'd sworn never to enter again.
“Nora,” I said carefully, “who gave you this drawing?”
She blinked.
“Grandma Isabella.”
Elena covered her mouth.
I felt every muscle in my body lock.
“My mother is dead,” I said.
“I know.”
“Then how did you meet her?”
Nora looked toward her mother, confused by the question.
“Mommy took me to see her.”
Elena began to cry silently.
I turned toward her.
“When?”
“Last month.”
The room went perfectly still.
“You told me my mother died four years ago.”
“She did.”
“Then who did your daughter meet?”
Elena looked at me with terror in her eyes.
“That's what I've been trying to tell you,” she whispered. “Someone has been visiting us, claiming to be Isabella Moretti.”
A second later, every light in the safe house went out.
May you like
The security alarm began to scream.
And from somewhere below us came the sound of three gunshots.
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