Chapter 4 - THE FATHER SHE WAS TOLD WAS DEAD
“My father.”
Nico did not move.
Marco looked toward the locker entrance.
Sienna stared at the photograph.
KEEP SIENNA AWAY FROM PETER.
Her name.
Written by Nico’s mother.
A woman who died when Sienna was ten.
“I was told he died,” she said.
“When?” Nico asked.
“Before I turned eleven.”
“How?”
“Industrial accident.”
“Where?”
“My mother never said.”
Marco spoke carefully.
“What was his full name?”
Sienna laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
“Peter Brooks.”
Marco’s expression changed.
Nico caught it.
“You know the name.”
Marco hesitated.
“That name was in old dock records.”
Sienna looked at him.
“What records?”
“Valente freight.”
Nico stood.
“Pull them.”
They returned to the mansion just before dawn.
Sienna refused sleep.
Nico stopped trying to order her into it.
That felt like progress.
Marco accessed archived trucking files.
Peter Brooks appeared everywhere.
Dock supervisor.
Union liaison.
Northstar Freight.
Temporary security contractor.
Then, abruptly, nothing.
Records ended seventeen years earlier.
Sienna had been fourteen.
Not ten.
Her father had supposedly died four years before that.
“He was alive,” she whispered.
Nico stood behind her.
“Apparently.”
She stared at the dates.
Her mother had lied.
Or protected her.
Those possibilities hurt differently.
“What happened seventeen years ago?”
Marco searched.
“Dock strike. Major one.”
Nico knew it.
“My father broke that strike.”
Marco nodded.
“Six men disappeared from payroll afterward. Peter Brooks was one.”
Sienna turned.
“Disappeared how?”
“Quit. Fired. No one knows.”
Nico pointed at Northstar Freight.
“What was this company?”
Marco’s mouth tightened.
“A side operation.”
“Whose?”
“Your father’s officially.”
“And unofficially?”
Marco pulled another file.
“Peter Brooks ran the books.”
Sienna leaned back.
“So my father was an accountant?”
“More like fixer,” Marco said.
“Dock assignments. cash distributions. union payments.”
Nico looked at the black card.
“Second book.”
Sienna understood.
Her father had kept Antonio Valente’s hidden ledger.
Lucia discovered it.
Eleanor Crane helped her.
Tessa was involved somehow.
And Elliot had spent his adult life following whatever their mothers had started.
“Call Tessa,” Sienna said.
Nico did.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Sienna’s stomach tightened.
“Where did you put her?”
“A safe apartment.”
“Who knows the location?”
“Marco. Me. Two guards.”
Marco checked his phone.
“One guard missed check-in.”
Everyone moved at once.
The safe apartment was in River North above an old tailor shop.
Nico’s men entered first.
No shots.
No struggle.
The front room was empty.
One guard lay unconscious near the kitchen.
Alive.
The second was gone.
So was Tessa.
Sienna found her purse on the floor.
“Tessa wouldn’t leave this.”
Nico looked around.
“Was anything taken?”
Sienna opened it.
Wallet.
Keys.
Lipstick.
Phone charger.
One item missing.
Her small silver compact.
Sienna froze.
“What?” Nico asked.
“She carries an old compact from her mother.”
“Important?”
“She never lets anyone touch it.”
Marco searched the guard.
In his jacket pocket was a folded cocktail napkin.
One sentence.
Tell Sienna Peter is alive.
Sienna read it twice.
Nico took the note.
“Whose handwriting?”
“Tessa’s.”
“So she left willingly enough to write this.”
“Or someone let her.”
The guard groaned.
Marco knelt.
“Who took her?”
The man opened his eyes.
“Older guy.”
“Name?”
“Didn’t give one.”
“Description?”
“Gray beard. Limp. Knew Tessa.”
Sienna sat down.
A man with a limp.
Her childhood returned in pieces.
Her father had limped after a warehouse injury.
Left side.
Always worse in winter.
“No.”
Nico watched her.
“That matches him.”
She hated the certainty in his voice.
“Yes.”
Nico stood.
“Then Peter Brooks took Tessa.”
Sienna looked at the napkin.
Or Tessa had gone with him.
That was different.
“Why would she leave?”
No one answered.
Then Sienna remembered something.
“Tessa hired me.”
Nico frowned.
“At Vesper?”
“Yes. Six years ago.”
“You applied.”
“I did.”
“Who interviewed you?”
“Tessa.”
Nico looked at Marco.
Vesper opened six years ago.
Tessa had been in Lucia’s photograph decades earlier.
KEEP SIENNA AWAY FROM PETER.
Yet Tessa later brought Sienna directly into a Valente-owned restaurant.
A place connected to Lucia’s hidden records.
Sienna felt sick.
“She didn’t hire me by accident.”
Nico’s expression hardened.
“No.”
“Maybe she was watching me.”
“Or protecting you.”
Sienna laughed bitterly.
“I’m beginning to hate that word.”
Nico understood.
“So am I.”
Marco found a security feed.
Tessa leaving the apartment building.
Beside her was the older man.
Gray beard.
Limp.
Sienna stared.
Older.
Thinner.
But she recognized him.
Not from photographs.
From memory.
Hands lifting her onto a kitchen counter.
A deep voice reading cereal boxes because she insisted the cartoon tiger had a backstory.
Her father.
Peter Brooks.
Alive.
Tessa got into his car voluntarily.
Before entering, she looked directly at the security camera.
Then raised the missing silver compact.
She opened it.
Inside the mirror, written in red lipstick, were numbers.
Marco froze the frame.
Nico read them.
“Container number.”
Marco typed.
A shipping container currently stored at Calumet Yard.
Valente territory.
Scheduled for transfer tonight.
“Who owns the container?” Sienna asked.
Marco’s face changed.
“Northstar Freight.”
The company had supposedly been dead seventeen years.
Nico stood.
“Get the yard sealed.”
Marco was already moving.
Sienna grabbed her coat.
Nico looked at her.
“No.”
She stared.
“We have been over this.”
“This time is different.”
“My father is alive.”
“That is why it’s different.”
“You think I’m staying here?”
“Yes.”
She stepped close.
“You carried me out of a restaurant. You pulled me under a bullet. You dragged me into your family history. You do not get to reach the part where my father is alive and suddenly decide I’m decorative.”
Nico’s jaw tightened.
“You could be the reason everyone is moving.”
“Then maybe I should know why.”
Silence.
Finally Nico said, “Stay beside me.”
Sienna nodded.
“See? Growth.”
Calumet Yard stretched beneath floodlights.
Stacks of containers formed steel corridors.
The Northstar container stood isolated near the eastern fence.
Marco cut the seal.
Nico opened the door.
Inside were no weapons.
No drugs.
No cash.
Just filing cabinets.
Photographs.
Old union books.
Twenty years of records.
At the center sat one wooden chair.
On it was Tessa’s silver compact.
Sienna picked it up.
Inside was a photograph she had never seen.
Her mother.
Peter.
Tessa.
Lucia Valente.
Eleanor Crane.
All five standing together.
Sienna whispered, “They all knew each other.”
Nico looked at the back.
One sentence.
THE CHILDREN MUST NEVER PAY FOR WHAT WE DID.
Then Marco opened the nearest filing cabinet.
He pulled out a ledger.
Old.
Black leather.
On the first page was Antonio Valente’s name.
Below it:
PETER BROOKS — PARTNER.
Sienna stared.
“My father didn’t work for yours.”
Nico’s expression went cold.
“No.”
May you like
He closed the book.
“He built it with him.”
