Chapter 6 - THE GIRL IN THE YELLOW COAT
“Took Mara.”
The words stayed in the hospital room long after Elliot said them.
Sienna could hear the monitor beside his bed.
A cart rolling through the hallway.
Someone laughing at the nurses’ station.
Ordinary sounds.
Wrong sounds.
“What do you mean took her?” Sienna asked.
Elliot swallowed.
“Not kidnapped.”
“Then use a better word.”
“My mother moved her.”
“Where?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because I was thirteen.”
“That didn’t stop anyone else from ruining childhood.”
Nico touched Sienna’s arm.
Not restraining.
Grounding.
She let him.
Elliot continued.
Mara had witnessed Rebecca Brooks die.
Dominic knew she had seen him.
Lucia and Eleanor decided the only way to protect the child was to remove her completely.
New name.
New city.
No contact.
Even Elliot was kept away.
“Peter knew where?” Sienna asked.
“At first.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Tessa?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elliot looked at Sienna.
“Because Tessa took Mara out of Chicago.”
Sienna felt another piece shift.
Tessa.
The bartender who knew Lucia.
The bartender who hired Sienna.
The woman Peter willingly left with hours earlier.
“Tessa isn’t just a bartender.”
“No.”
“What is she?”
“Someone who owed your mother.”
Sienna’s voice sharpened.
“Everyone seems to owe my mother except me.”
Elliot looked ashamed.
“Rebecca saved Tessa’s life once.”
“How?”
“Tessa’s husband owed Dominic money. Rebecca paid enough to get her out.”
Sienna closed her eyes.
Her mother had become a stranger one revelation at a time.
Nico asked, “Why bring Sienna to Vesper?”
“Because Peter wanted her watched.”
Sienna looked at him.
There it was.
“I knew it.”
“Not controlled,” Elliot said quickly.
“Watched.”
“Those words are cousins.”
“Peter believed Vesper was safer than anywhere else because Nico owned it.”
Sienna turned toward Nico.
“You didn’t know.”
“No.”
“So my father planted me in a Mafia boss’s restaurant for protection.”
Nico’s mouth moved slightly.
“When you say it like that—”
“There is no good way to say it.”
Marco appeared at the door.
“Nico.”
Something in his tone changed the room.
Nico stepped outside.
Sienna followed.
Marco held up his phone.
“We found Tessa.”
“Where?”
“Old church property in Pilsen.”
“Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Sienna closed her eyes briefly.
“Anyone else?”
Marco hesitated.
“One woman.”
Nico understood before she did.
“Mara.”
Marco nodded.
The church had been converted years earlier into a community pantry and neighborhood office.
Nothing about it suggested danger.
Peter Brooks stood in the basement kitchen when Sienna entered.
He was older than the man from her memory.
Gray beard.
Left leg stiff.
Hands larger than she remembered.
He looked at her.
No one spoke.
Tessa stood near the stove.
She had been crying.
Beside her sat a woman around thirty-five.
Dark curls.
Simple coat.
Hands wrapped around a paper cup.
Mara.
Sienna ignored everyone else.
She looked at Peter.
“You’re alive.”
“Yes.”
“That’s your opening?”
His eyes filled.
“I don’t know what sentence comes after nineteen years.”
“Try one.”
He looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not good enough.”
“No.”
At least he knew.
“You watched me?”
“Yes.”
“Had Tessa hire me?”
“Yes.”
“Paid someone to keep track of my schedule?”
His face changed.
“No.”
Sienna stopped.
“The man outside Vesper.”
Peter looked at Tessa.
She shook her head.
“That wasn’t ours.”
Nico’s expression hardened.
“Then whose?”
Mara spoke for the first time.
“Dominic’s people.”
Everyone turned.
Nico stared.
“Dominic is dead.”
Mara looked at him.
“No.”
Silence.
Nico’s face became unreadable.
“My uncle died in prison twelve years ago.”
Mara shook her head.
“A prisoner named Dominic Valente died.”
Nico understood.
“Not him.”
“No.”
Peter sat heavily.
“Antonio arranged it.”
Sienna laughed once.
“Your families really hate simple funerals.”
Nico did not react.
“Why would my father fake Dominic’s death?”
Peter answered.
“Because killing his own brother would split the family.”
“So he hid him.”
“Exiled him.”
“Where?”
“South America at first. Then Canada. Then nobody knew.”
Tessa looked at Sienna.
“Until six months ago.”
Sienna’s stomach tightened.
“The man watching me.”
“Worked for Dominic.”
Nico looked at Mara.
“How do you know?”
She opened her coat.
Around her neck hung half of Lucia’s pendant.
“I saw him.”
Nico’s gaze locked on the necklace.
His own half rested beneath his shirt.
Mara continued.
“Dominic found me six months ago.”
“How?”
“I used my real first name on a charity application.”
Tessa looked furious with herself.
“We thought seventeen years was enough.”
“It wasn’t,” Mara said.
Dominic had approached her outside her workplace.
Not threatened her.
At first.
He claimed he wanted forgiveness.
Claimed old men got tired of running.
Claimed he wanted only the pendant.
Mara refused.
Then someone began following Sienna.
Dominic knew exactly where Peter’s weakness remained.
Sienna.
Peter stepped closer.
“That’s why I came back.”
“Why not tell me?”
“Because every time I got close, I remembered your mother on that loading platform.”
Sienna’s anger cracked.
Not gone.
Cracked.
“You let me think you were dead.”
“I thought dead was safer than hunted.”
She wiped tears angrily.
“You don’t get to decide what grief I can survive.”
Peter nodded.
“No.”
That simple answer hurt more than defense would have.
Nico stepped toward Mara.
“What does the pendant open?”
She looked at Peter.
Peter nodded.
Mara removed her half.
Nico removed his.
The two pieces fit together into a small oval.
A tiny mechanism clicked.
Inside was not a code.
It was a photograph.
Lucia.
Rebecca.
Eleanor.
Three women standing beside a handwritten sign:
NORTHSTAR BELONGS TO THE CHILDREN.
Sienna frowned.
“What?”
Peter took out a folded warehouse map.
“Northstar was never meant to stay Antonio’s.”
He explained.
Rebecca discovered Antonio and Dominic were using legitimate company profits to fund increasingly dangerous side operations.
She wanted out.
Lucia wanted Nico out too.
Eleanor wanted Elliot and Mara away from all of it.
The three women created a transfer plan.
Northstar’s legal ownership would eventually pass into a trust shared by Nico, Sienna, Elliot, and Mara.
Not to make them rich.
To take the freight company away from men using it as private territory.
Sienna stared.
“My mother planned this?”
“Yes.”
“But she died.”
“And Lucia died.”
“And Eleanor?”
“Cancer. Ten years ago.”
Three women.
Three deaths.
Three unfinished plans.
Nico looked at Peter.
“Where are the ownership records?”
“In one place Dominic could never reach.”
“Where?”
Peter looked toward Sienna.
“Inside Vesper.”
She laughed.
“Of course they are.”
He continued.
“When the restaurant was renovated, Tessa placed a locked metal tube inside the old wine cellar wall.”
Nico looked at her.
“You altered my building.”
Tessa shrugged.
“You were thirty-two and angry at everyone. You weren’t inspecting masonry.”
Sienna almost smiled.
Then the basement door opened upstairs.
Footsteps.
Several.
Nico’s men reacted.
Marco drew his weapon.
Peter went pale.
Mara stood.
Tessa whispered, “That’s too many.”
Nico looked at Sienna.
“Behind me.”
“Don’t start.”
“This is not the time.”
A voice came from the stairwell.
Old.
Calm.
Familiar to Nico.
“Nicholas.”
Nico went completely still.
Only one person in the family had ever called him that.
A man appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
Sixty-eight.
White hair.
Expensive overcoat.
And the same eyes as Nico’s father.
May you like
Dominic Valente smiled.
“Nephew.”
