Chapter 10: The Harbor Ledger
Alessandro broke the window with a chair.
Smoke poured across the ceiling.
Daniel lowered me onto the fire escape before climbing out behind us.
We reached the alley seconds before the second floor exploded.
All of Daniel’s evidence burned.
Almost all of it.
He had hidden one item inside Emma’s stuffed rabbit before his staged death.
“The blue rabbit?” I asked.
Daniel nodded.
“She carried it everywhere.”
Emma had lost the rabbit during my first week at the Moretti mansion.
I remembered searching the laundry room, the kitchen, and every servant corridor.
Alessandro remembered something else.
“Emma gave it to my father’s portrait.”
I stared at him.
“She said the sad man needed a friend.”
The rabbit had been placed inside the locked Moretti family archive.
We returned to New York.
Inside the archive, the blue rabbit remained on a shelf beneath Antonio’s portrait.
Daniel cut open the seam.
A small silver key fell into his hand.
It opened a private deposit box at Moretti National Bank.
Inside was the Harbor Ledger.
The ledger contained decades of payments made by Vittorio and Charles Cole.
Judges.
Police captains.
Union leaders.
Doctors.
Security officers.
There were payments connected to my mother’s murder and Daniel’s staged accident.
There was also a payment to Marco Costa.
I turned toward him.
“You worked for Vittorio.”
Marco did not deny it.
“Years ago.”
“How many years?”
“Twenty-three.”
Alessandro’s voice hardened.
“Were you involved in my father’s shooting?”
“No.”
“But you helped Vittorio.”
“I passed him information. I believed your father was destroying the family.”
Daniel reached for Marco.
Alessandro stepped between them.
“Let him speak.”
Marco admitted removing the maternity belly from Vanessa’s room. Vittorio had ordered him to burn it and plant the receipt in my name.
“Why did you confess part of it?” I asked.
“Because Emma saw me.”
“You helped them kidnap her.”
“No. I did not know Matteo would take her.”
“Why should we believe anything you say?”
Marco removed the gold lion ring and placed it on the table.
“Because I know where Antonio is.”
The room became still.
“He is alive,” Marco said. “Vittorio keeps him beneath Harbor Tower Seven.”
Daniel looked at the ledger.
The abandoned tower where he had supposedly died was scheduled for demolition the following morning.
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Vittorio was not destroying an old building.
He was destroying the last living witness.
