Chapter 7 - VINCENT’S SIDE
Lorenzo refused to believe Vincent was dead.
He did not say it emotionally.
He said it like a fact he intended to prove.
“No body?”
His man shook his head.
“None.”
“Then he’s missing.”
Mom looked at me.
I knew what she was thinking.
Dad had been “missing” too.
Missing was just a word adults used when they did not know whether hope was cruel.
Lorenzo sent us home with two men outside.
Mom hated it.
She argued for ten minutes.
Then Noah woke crying, and she stopped because some fights have to wait when a baby needs changing.
That evening, Lorenzo returned alone.
He carried no groceries this time.
Only Vincent’s coat.
It had been found folded in the trunk of the abandoned car.
Inside one pocket was a rosary.
Black beads.
Silver cross.
Lorenzo placed it on our kitchen table.
“He’s carried this since he was sixteen.”
Mom looked at him.
“You sound like you care about him.”
“I do.”
“Even after he lied?”
“Yes.”
That answer surprised her.
Maybe she expected powerful men to throw people away as soon as they disappointed them.
Lorenzo didn’t.
“He was my father’s driver before he worked for me,” he said. “When my father died, Vincent stayed.”
I touched one bead.
Something rough caught my finger.
A small strip of clear tape had been wrapped around it.
Under the tape was paper.
We peeled it free.
One number.
27.
“That’s it?” I asked.
Lorenzo stared.
“No.”
He picked up the train ticket from locker 214.
Elena’s ticket had been for seat 27.
Chicago.
March nineteenth.
Two days after Dad vanished.
By midnight, we were on our way to Chicago.
Mom protested again.
Lorenzo gave her a choice.
She and I could remain in Detroit under guard, or we could come.
She chose come.
Not because she trusted him.
Because she trusted distance even less.
Noah slept most of the drive.
I watched streetlights slide across the window and thought about my father.
For eighteen months, I had been angry at him.
I had imagined him somewhere warm.
Eating food while we had none.
Sleeping without hearing Noah cry.
I hated myself for how quickly that anger was becoming hope.
Hope is dangerous when you have been disappointed enough.
In Chicago, seat 27 led us nowhere at first.
Then Lorenzo noticed the ticket had been punched twice.
Once for boarding.
Once by a conductor.
There was a handwritten mark beside the second punch:
St. A.
St. Anne’s.
A church near the old rail line.
We arrived shortly after sunrise.
The church was small, brick, and almost empty.
An elderly priest recognized Elena’s photograph.
“Yes,” he said. “She came here last year.”
Lorenzo leaned forward.
“Alone?”
The priest studied all of us.
“No.”
My breath stopped.
“With who?”
“A man. Thin. Hurt.”
Mom grabbed the edge of a pew.
“What was his name?”
The priest looked at her.
“Daniel.”
I began crying before I realized it.
Not loudly.
The tears simply came.
Dad had made it to Chicago.
Dad had been alive.
Mom sat beside me.
“Where did he go?”
The priest’s expression saddened.
“He left after two nights.”
“With Elena?”
“No.”
Lorenzo frowned.
“Why not?”
“Because Elena was afraid whoever followed them would follow Daniel too. They separated.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Daniel?”
The priest looked toward the altar.
“He said he was going back.”
Mom stared.
“Back to Detroit?”
“Yes.”
I could not understand.
“He escaped. Why would he go back?”
The priest looked at me gently.
“Because he had two children.”
That answer hurt more than anything.
He had been trying to come home.
The priest disappeared into a back room and returned with a small paper bag.
“Daniel left this.”
Inside was a train-station photograph booth strip.
Four pictures.
Dad and me from years earlier.
We had taken them after a Tigers game because I begged him.
He looked ridiculous in every one.
I pressed the strip against my chest.
There was also a note.
If Sarah comes, tell her I finally understood the watch. Vincent is not the enemy. He took me where I asked to go. He lied afterward because Salvatore threatened his daughter.
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
There was the answer.
Vincent had lied.
But not for money.
Not because he betrayed Dad.
Because Salvatore had threatened his child.
Mom whispered, “What daughter?”
Lorenzo looked sick.
“Caroline.”
“Where is she?”
“She died three years ago.”
The priest shook his head.
“No.”
Everyone turned.
“Daniel said Vincent’s daughter was alive.”
Lorenzo stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
The priest walked to a filing cabinet and removed a donation envelope.
On the front was a name.
Caroline Bell.
Dated six months earlier.
Six months after Daniel disappeared.
Vincent had let everyone believe his daughter was dead.
Why?
Lorenzo took the envelope.
Inside was fifty dollars and a note.
For the man who gave my father somewhere safe to pray.
The priest pointed toward the rosary.
“Vincent came here twice.”
“When?”
“Last spring. Then again three weeks ago.”
Three weeks.
Vincent had been investigating this recently.
“He asked about Daniel,” the priest said. “And Elena.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That Elena wrote once.”
He reached into another drawer.
The postcard was from Michigan.
Not Chicago.
No picture.
Only a postmark.
Traverse City.
The message said:
I kept my promise. The ledger is where Antonio first learned the truth. Tell L. to look under the thing his mother refused to throw away.
Lorenzo read it twice.
Then his face changed.
“What?” I asked.
He stood.
“My mother’s old house.”
Mom frowned.
“What thing?”
Lorenzo looked at me.
“A child’s wooden rocking horse.”
We drove back to Detroit.
By late afternoon, we stood in the attic of Maria Moretti’s old home.
Dust covered everything.
Lorenzo pulled a faded wooden rocking horse from under a sheet.
One runner had been repaired with a metal plate.
He unscrewed it.
Inside was a narrow oilcloth packet.
The ledger.
Page after page of stolen money.
Fake vendors.
Warehouse transfers.
Payments to Salvatore.
And one final list in Elena’s handwriting.
Names of people Salvatore had paid to keep quiet.
Mom leaned over Lorenzo’s shoulder.
Then gasped.
Halfway down the page was a name we all knew.
Lisa Bennett.
Beside it was an amount.
$60,000.
Mom stepped back as if struck.
“No.”
I felt the same thing.
Lisa had told us Salvatore controlled her because of her son’s debt.
But sixty thousand dollars was not a small debt.
Lorenzo turned the page.
The next entry was worse.
Daniel Carter — resolved. V.B. witnessed.
Below it, in red ink, someone had written a date.
Three days from now.
And one location.
Riverfront Warehouse 12.
Lorenzo stared at it.
“That’s not an old entry.”
Mom looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
He closed the ledger.
“It means someone is still using this book.”
I felt my skin go cold.
Then a voice came from the attic doorway.
“You finally found it.”
We turned.
Vincent stood there.
Alive.
Blood dried along his temple.
His coat was gone.
May you like
His face looked exhausted.
And in his hand was my father’s old brown jacket.
