Chapter 3 - The Night My Husband DiedI slapped Dante Moretti.
The sound rang across his study.
A guard outside the door immediately reached for his weapon. Dante raised one hand, stopping him without looking away from me.
I could barely feel my own palm.
“You knew my husband.”
Dante touched his cheek.
“Yes.”
“For three years?”
“Yes.”
“And you watched me scrub your floors. You watched my daughter grow up in a cottage ten minutes from your bedroom. You knew who we were, and you said nothing?”
His jaw tightened.
“I knew Miguel worked for my family.”
“What did he do?”
“He handled financial records. Contracts, property accounts, shipping manifests.”
“My husband repaired cars.”
“He did that, too.”
I stared at him.
Miguel had never mentioned working for a crime family. Not once. He came home with grease on his clothes and exhaustion in his eyes, joking about broken engines and customers who refused to pay. Some nights, he'd sit at the kitchen table long after Sophie fell asleep, writing numbers into a little black notebook.
I'd assumed he was calculating bills.
Dante watched realization spread across my face.
“You knew,” I whispered. “You knew he was doing something dangerous.”
“I knew he was good with numbers. I didn't know how deep he'd gone until it was too late.”
“Then tell me how he died.”
Dante walked to the fireplace.
For the first time since I'd known him, he looked less like a king surveying his kingdom and more like a man standing before the consequences of his own decisions.
“Three years ago, we discovered that someone inside my organization was moving money through companies that didn't exist. Millions of dollars disappeared through property purchases, shipping contracts, and supposedly legitimate charities.”
“And Miguel found the evidence.”
“He found part of it. He was supposed to bring it to me privately on October 14.”
“What happened?”
“I received a message saying he'd stolen records and planned to sell them to a rival family. I ordered two men to intercept him and bring him to me alive.”
He turned.
“They found a body outside a Brooklyn bakery. The clothing matched Miguel's description. The identification came through a source I trusted.”
“You never saw his face?”
“No.”
“You never checked?”
“The body had been badly burned.”
A sound escaped my throat, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“So you decided my husband was a traitor without seeing him, then let me bury a stranger.”
“I made a mistake.”
“You made a decision that destroyed my life!”
“I know.”
His response left me with nowhere to put my anger.
I wanted him to argue. To deny it. To offer excuses I could tear apart.
Instead, he stood silently and accepted every accusation.
A knock came at the door.
Dante opened it to find Teresa Moretti, dressed in a dark green robe, her silver hair pinned neatly at the back of her head.
She looked at me first.
Then she saw the note.
Her expression crumpled.
“Oh, Isabel.”
I stepped away from her.
“Did you know?”
She closed her eyes.
That was answer enough.
“You knew Miguel wasn't simply a mechanic. You knew he had been involved with this family.”
“Yes.”
“And you offered me that job because of him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Teresa looked toward Sophie, who had fallen asleep against Bruno's enormous back.
“Because I promised your husband I would keep his daughter safe.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“What promise?”
Before she could answer, Dante's telephone vibrated.
A message appeared on the screen.
He read it once, then turned the display toward us.
It was a photograph of Sophie's bedroom, taken from inside the cottage.
The window stood open.
Someone had placed a small black envelope on her pillow.
Inside the photograph, a gloved hand held the pendant chain Sophie had worn around her neck.
Beneath the image were seven words.
RETURN THE STAR BEFORE TOMORROW NIGHT.
Teresa covered her mouth.
Dante immediately called the security team.
“Find Rourke. Search the estate. Nobody goes near the cottage alone.”
I ran toward Sophie, but Bruno lifted his head and blocked my path.
He wasn't threatening me.
He was staring at the floor beneath the sofa.
A faint scratching sound came from underneath it.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Dante crouched and pulled the sofa away from the wall.
Beneath it lay a loose floorboard.
And beneath that floorboard was a photograph of Miguel, taken only two days earlier.
He was alive in the picture.
Older. Thinner. A scar crossed his cheek.
And he was standing beside a man whose face made Teresa whisper a name I had never heard before.
“Elias.”
Then she looked directly at me.
“Isabel, there's something else you need to know about your husband.”
May you like
Her voice broke.
“The man they buried three years ago may not have been Miguel.”
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