Chapter 11 - The Brother Who Came HomeArthur reached for my arm.
“Don't listen to him.”
“He knows something.”
“He knows how to make people destroy themselves.”
The ladder shook again.
Samuel's voice floated down from above.
“Norah, your father did not leave that box to protect Arthur. He left it because he was afraid of what Arthur would become if he ever learned the truth.”
I looked at Arthur.
He seemed to be holding himself together through sheer force of will.
“What did you do to my father?” he called.
Samuel laughed softly.
“I gave him a choice. Leave Chicago with his daughter, or stay and watch the people he loved disappear one by one.”
“Why did you let him live?”
“Because I wanted him to suffer.”
The words were delivered without anger.
That made them worse.
Arthur raised his gun toward the ladder.
Samuel continued.
“And because I knew you would eventually come looking for him. I knew your guilt would bring you back to the place where everything began.”
A shadow crossed the opening.
I gripped the letter in my hand.
My father had written that he forgave Arthur for my mother's death, but blamed himself for Arthur's brother's death.
How could both be true?
I turned to the account books.
Most contained numbers and company names. One was different. Its pages were filled with dates, initials, and short descriptions of payments.
Near the middle, I found an entry dated the night of the bombing.
M.B. TRANSFERRED. A.C. RETURNED.
The initials appeared beside a sum large enough to buy an apartment building.
Michael Bellini transferred.
Arthur Costello returned.
I felt a cold certainty settle over me.
“Arthur, your brother didn't die in that bombing.”
He looked up sharply.
“What?”
“The entry says Michael was transferred. It says you returned.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Your father had records of everything.”
I turned the page.
Another note had been written beneath the entry.
ONE SON FOR ONE SON.
Arthur's expression went blank.
Above us, Samuel stopped speaking.
The silence lasted several seconds.
Then he called down, “You found it.”
Arthur moved toward the ladder.
I caught him.
“Wait.”
“He used my brother.”
“Or he wants you to think he did.”
Arthur stared at me, breathing hard.
For the first time, I understood why he had come to my door bleeding and alone. The man who had taught him to survive had turned every memory into a weapon. Every act of loyalty had been rewritten as betrayal. Every person he loved had become a possible enemy.
I didn't forgive him.
But I understood the shape of his fear.
We climbed toward the surface together.
Samuel was waiting beside the open hatch, flanked by two men. His cane rested against his leg. He looked almost relieved when he saw the account book.
“Give it to me,” he said.
“No.”
“Your father would have wanted you to survive.”
“He wanted me to know the truth.”
“The truth is an expensive luxury, Norah.”
“So is a conscience.”
Samuel's mouth tightened.
Arthur stepped in front of me.
“Tell me where my brother is.”
Samuel looked at him for a long moment.
“Alive.”
The word struck Arthur with such force that he seemed to forget how to breathe.
“Where?”
“Somewhere you cannot reach him.”
“Where?”
Samuel's expression hardened.
“You have spent twenty years looking for the man who killed him. You never once considered that he might be the man who saved him.”
Arthur's gun trembled.
Samuel continued.
“Your brother was taken from the car before the explosion. Michael Bellini was supposed to die instead, but I switched the vehicles. I needed the Costello family to believe an enemy had struck, and I needed you to inherit the organization without questioning me.”
“You killed innocent people.”
“I protected my business.”
“You murdered my brother.”
“I gave him a different life.”
Arthur looked as though he might shoot him.
I moved beside Arthur, close enough that my hand brushed his.
“Don't,” I whispered.
Samuel smiled.
“There it is. The weakness I always feared.”
He gestured to his men.
One reached for the account book.
Arthur fired once, hitting the man's gun hand. The second guard lunged, and I swung the metal lid of the utility hatch into his face.
He fell.
Samuel stumbled backward toward the street.
Arthur pursued him, but a sharp crack echoed through the alley.
Arthur dropped to one knee.
I turned.
A man stood on the rooftop across the street, holding a rifle.
Samuel looked toward him.
“Not yet,” he shouted.
The gunman hesitated.
That was all the time we needed.
I dragged Arthur through the hatch and slammed the metal cover shut as bullets struck the ground around us.
We ran into the tunnel, carrying the account book and the letters.
When we reached the underground church entrance, Arthur collapsed against the wall, pressing his hand to his side.
Blood spread between his fingers.
“It's nothing,” he said.
“You need a hospital.”
He shook his head.
I knelt beside him.
“Your brother is alive. We have evidence. We can find him.”
Arthur looked at me with eyes that had finally lost their practiced coldness.
“What if he's worse off because I lived?”
I took his hand.
“Then we find him and ask him.”
For several seconds, he simply held my fingers.
Then his phone vibrated.
A message appeared from an unknown number.
A photograph showed a man in his forties sitting beside a window, his face partially hidden by shadows.
The caption read:
YOU WANT YOUR BROTHER BACK? COME TO THE RIVERFRONT AT MIDNIGHT. BRING THE GIRL.
May you like
Beneath it was a second message.
AND COME WITHOUT YOUR GUN.
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