Chapter 4 - THE DEBT WE CAN'T REPAY
“Mom… Victoria’s son isn't Daniel’s. He’s my husband’s.”
The kitchen stopped spinning, but the air felt too thin to breathe.
I looked at the crayon drawing. I looked at my daughter.
Emily’s husband, Mark, was a junior prosecutor. A good man. A quiet man. Or so I had thought.
“Mark and Victoria?” I managed to say. “Five years ago?”
Emily nodded, wiping her face. “Before we were married. It was a one-night thing. But she kept the boy. She never told Mark, not until last year. She tracked him down and showed him the paternity test. If this gets out, Mark’s career is over. His political campaign is dead. Victoria said if I ever breathed a word to you about her and Dad, she would ruin Mark and take everything we have.”
I grabbed the edge of the granite counter.
Daniel wasn't just paying a debt to Victoria’s father’s company. Victoria was blackmailing my entire family. She had a leash on my husband, and a knife to my daughter's throat.
“Where is Mark now?” I asked.
“Asleep,” Emily whispered. “He thinks Victoria is just taking regular hush money from our savings. He doesn't know she’s sleeping with Dad. He doesn't know she took your house.”
I felt a sudden, violent surge of protectiveness. I had spent thirty years letting Daniel handle the threats. But Daniel had folded. He had sold me out to protect his empire, leaving our daughter at the mercy of a monster.
“Go back to bed, Emily,” I said, my voice hardening. “Do not tell Mark I was here. Do not tell your father I know.”
“Mom, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find out what else my husband is hiding.”
I left the house and got back into my car. I pulled the silver rosary from my pocket and laid it on the passenger seat next to my wedding portrait.
I needed answers, and Daniel wouldn't give them to me. But I knew someone who would.
Marcus.
Marcus was Daniel’s driver, his fixer, and his oldest friend. He was a mountain of a man who had driven my children to school when the rival gangs were making threats in the nineties.
I knew where Marcus drank on Thursday nights.
I drove downtown, parking illegally outside a dark, windowless bar near the docks. I walked in, ignoring the stares of the rough men at the counter, and found Marcus in a back booth.
He looked up, a glass of bourbon halfway to his mouth. He didn't look surprised to see me. He looked deeply, profoundly sad.
“Hello, Susan,” he rumbled.
“You knew, Marcus,” I said, sliding into the booth across from him. “About Victoria. About the house.”
He set the glass down. “It wasn't my place to speak, Mrs. Moretti.”
“It is your place now. Daniel dug up my father’s grave. Why?”
Marcus flinched. He actually flinched. The toughest man in Chicago looked away from me.
“He didn't dig it up, Susan. He just opened the vault.”
“To get a rosary? Why?”
Marcus sighed. “He wasn't looking for the rosary. He was looking for what was buried with your father. But someone got there first. The rosary was all that was left on the floor.”
“What was buried with my father?”
Marcus leaned in. “Thirty years ago, when Daniel was just a kid trying to make a name, he stole something from the Rossi family. Something big. It’s what gave him the capital to buy his first waterfront business. He told me he hid it where no one would ever look. In the casket of a good, honest man who died the same week.”
My stomach turned. “My father.”
“Yes. And now, the Rossi family has come to collect. They found out. Victoria isn't just a mistress, Susan. She’s a Rossi.”
Everything clicked. The blackmail. The house. The absolute submission of my powerful husband.
“They’re taking everything,” I whispered.
“Everything,” Marcus agreed. “Daniel is liquidating it all to keep them from killing him. And to keep them from killing you.”
Marcus reached into his heavy leather jacket. He pulled out a crisp, white envelope and slid it across the sticky table.
“He didn't want you in that penthouse, Susan. He just said that in front of Victoria. He told me to give you this tomorrow.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was an Amtrak ticket. First class. Leaving Chicago for Montreal.
Dated for tonight.
And tucked beneath the ticket was a heavy, brass key.
“What is this key?” I asked.
Marcus looked at me grimly.
May you like
“That’s the key to locker 402 at Union Station. Daniel said if you ever loved him, you’ll take whatever is in that locker, get on the train, and never come back.”
TITLE: What Was Left Behind
