Chapter 5 - Thirty-Two Days
Adrian did not move.
Neither did Marco.
Lena stood beside the table with one hand resting on the microfilm envelope.
“Explain,” Adrian said.
Marco looked at the signature.
Then he laughed once.
Not from amusement.
From disbelief.
“That's not me.”
“Your name.”
“My father's.”
Adrian froze.
Lena looked between them.
“Your father was also Marco Bellini?”
“Marco Bellini Senior.”
Marco stepped closer.
“He handled Moretti Freight accounting before I joined security.”
Adrian remembered.
Vaguely.
Marco's father had died when Marco was nineteen.
Heart attack.
At least that was what everyone believed.
“You never told me he worked for my father.”
“You never asked.”
Adrian's expression hardened.
“That is not good enough.”
“No.” Marco's voice lowered. “It isn't.”
He sat.
“My father was part of the network Thomas Hart found.”
Lena went cold.
“Did he hurt my father?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he tried to leave.”
Marco looked at Adrian.
“My father confessed to Salvatore. He said Vale and Santo had been using his access. Some payments were his. Others had his signature copied.”
Adrian glanced at the film.
“Why didn't my father tell me?”
“Because you were nineteen.”
“I wasn't nineteen when he died.”
Marco looked away.
“Salvatore didn't want you inheriting that war.”
Adrian gave a bitter laugh.
“I inherited it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to your father?”
Marco's jaw tightened.
“The heart attack was staged.”
Lena covered her mouth.
“He was killed?”
Marco nodded.
“Three days before Thomas Hart.”
The pieces shifted.
Two men had tried to expose the same network.
Both died within days.
Salvatore Moretti survived another seven years.
Maybe because they never knew how much evidence he had.
Or maybe because he had made a bargain.
Adrian looked at Marco.
“You knew Thomas was involved?”
“Not until yesterday.”
“Why didn't you tell me after you saw the photograph?”
“Because I needed to confirm.”
“Behind my back.”
“Yes.”
Adrian stepped toward him.
Lena moved between them.
“Stop.”
Both men looked at her.
“This is exactly what whoever is behind this wants.”
Adrian's eyes remained on Marco.
“She is right,” Marco said.
“That isn't helping you.”
Marco pulled out his phone.
“I found Dominic.”
Adrian stopped.
“Where?”
“North Shore hotel. Checked in under another name.”
“Why didn't you say that first?”
“You were busy discovering my father may have helped destroy both our families.”
Lena took the phone.
A surveillance photograph showed Dominic entering a private hotel entrance.
Beside him was Vittorio Santo.
There it was.
Proof they were working together.
But Lena noticed something else.
A woman in the background.
Elegant.
Silver-haired.
Walking toward a car.
Lena enlarged the photograph.
Her face changed.
“No.”
Adrian looked.
“Who is she?”
“My mother.”
Helen Hart had spent eleven years refusing to discuss Thomas's death.
Now she was standing ten feet from the two men connected to it.
Lena called.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
She left the room.
Adrian followed.
“Lena.”
“She knew.”
“We don't know that.”
“She told me Dad's accident was random. She threw out boxes of his things. She told me to stop asking questions.”
“That could have been fear.”
“She was at their hotel.”
“Then we ask her why.”
They reached Helen's small suburban house forty minutes later.
The door stood open.
Lena stopped.
“Mom?”
No answer.
Adrian signaled Marco.
Marco checked the downstairs rooms.
Empty.
Lena entered her mother's bedroom.
A suitcase lay open on the bed.
Half packed.
An old photograph rested beside it.
Thomas.
Helen.
Lena as a child.
On the back, a message had been written recently.
I'm sorry you had to learn this way.
Lena's knees weakened.
Adrian caught her elbow.
“She left.”
“Or someone made her leave.”
Marco called from downstairs.
“Found something.”
On the kitchen table lay another envelope.
Addressed to Lena.
Inside was a letter.
Lena read aloud.
Lena,
If you found your father's key, then everything I spent eleven years hiding has failed.
Your father did not die because he was careless.
He died because he refused to give dangerous men something they wanted.
I knew enough to know they would come for us next.
Salvatore Moretti helped me disappear from their attention. He paid off the mortgage through a shell company. He made sure you could stay in school. I hated taking his help, but he told me Thomas had saved his life by refusing to surrender the evidence.
Lena stopped.
Adrian looked away.
His father had never told him.
She continued.
I promised never to tell you unless the network returned.
It has returned.
Dominic Vale came to me two weeks ago.
He knows you applied to Calder & Finch.
He told me to convince you to withdraw.
I refused.
Yesterday he asked for the key.
I told him I didn't have it.
He said if you kept digging, you would pay for what your father did.
Lena's hands trembled.
The final paragraph was shorter.
Do not trust anyone who tells you this is about money.
It is about the evidence.
And it is about Adrian Moretti.
His father left him something too.
A knock came from the front door.
Everyone froze.
Marco checked the window.
“Two men.”
Adrian moved Lena away from the kitchen.
“Stay behind me.”
The men did not force entry.
One slid a phone beneath the door.
Then they left.
Marco retrieved it.
The screen showed a video.
Helen Hart sat in a chair.
Alive.
Frightened.
A man stood behind the camera.
Vittorio Santo's voice came through the speaker.
“Good morning, Adrian.”
Lena grabbed Adrian's arm.
Santo continued.
“Thomas Hart took something from my father. Salvatore Moretti kept it. Now their children seem determined to repeat their mistakes.”
Helen looked into the camera.
“Lena, don't—”
The video cut.
A timer appeared.
31:48:22.
Thirty-one hours.
Forty-eight minutes.
Twenty-two seconds.
Then a text.
BRING THE FILM.
Adrian's expression became unreadable.
Lena whispered, “We give it to them.”
“No.”
“My mother—”
“We copy it.”
“They'll know.”
“We give them what they expect and keep what we need.”
Lena looked at the countdown.
“You've done this before.”
“No.”
“But you look like you have.”
“I've spent my life preparing for the moment somebody tries.”
Her eyes met his.
“And now somebody did.”
“Yes.”
Over the next day, Adrian's operation transformed.
Lawyers secured evidence.
A federal contact Marco trusted received encrypted copies.
Financial accounts linked to Santo and Vale were flagged.
Vehicles moved.
Phones disappeared.
People Adrian had trusted for years were removed from sensitive positions until he knew which leaks were real.
Lena remained at the center of it.
She hated that.
But she refused to leave.
At midnight, she found Adrian alone in the kitchen.
No security.
No suit jacket.
Just black shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and a cup of coffee he hadn't touched.
“You should sleep,” she said.
“So should you.”
“I asked first.”
“You didn't ask.”
She sat opposite him.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Lena said, “My father trusted yours.”
“Yes.”
“My mother did too.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think Salvatore was trying to protect you when he didn't tell you?”
“I think he was trying to control the consequences.”
“Same thing?”
“No.”
Adrian looked down at his hands.
“My father believed control could solve anything.”
“And you?”
“I used to.”
“Until?”
His gaze lifted to hers.
He did not answer.
Lena felt it anyway.
Her.
She looked away first.
“This is a terrible time to become emotionally complicated.”
“I agree.”
“Good.”
“Doesn't seem to help.”
She almost laughed.
Then she reached across the table.
Her fingers touched his.
Adrian went still.
“You caught my coffee,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“First day.”
“I remember.”
“I thought you were terrifying.”
“You were correct.”
“I still think you're terrifying.”
“Good.”
“But not to me.”
Something in Adrian broke open.
Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
Just enough.
He turned his hand beneath hers.
Their fingers intertwined.
Lena's breathing changed.
So did his.
Then Marco entered.
“We have the location.”
They separated immediately.
Marco ignored that.
“Freight terminal.”
Adrian stood.
“Which one?”
Marco looked at Lena.
“814.”
The same terminal.
The same place Thomas Hart had hidden the suit.
The countdown on the phone changed.
00:48:11.
Forty-eight minutes.
Lena grabbed her coat.
Adrian blocked her.
“You're not going.”
“My mother is there.”
“They asked for the film.”
“And me.”
Adrian's face hardened.
“They didn't.”
“Not in words.”
She picked up the phone.
A new message had appeared.
A photograph.
Lena entering Moretti Tower on the morning they met.
Timestamp: 8:14 a.m.
Text beneath it:
THE GIRL COMES TOO.
Adrian stared at the screen.
Lena whispered, “They planned this from the first morning.”
Another message arrived.
Thirty-two days after her white sneaker stopped his elevator.
One sentence.
COME ALONE, MORETTI, OR HELEN HART DIES.
Adrian looked toward the dark windows.
Then at Lena.
“No.”
She understood immediately.
“Adrian—”
“No.”
But outside, an engine started.
Marco turned toward the security feed.
Lena's assigned car was pulling away.
They all stared.
She was standing right beside them.
No one was supposed to be driving it.
Adrian's phone rang.
He answered.
Vittorio Santo whispered one sentence.
May you like
“Too late.”
And then the lights went out.
