Chapter 5 - The Price of Silence
“Tell me,” Carmine said.
Odette stared at the dead phone screen.
“Tell me now.”
Benny closed the office door.
Odette's shoulders fell.
“Vincent didn't order the fire because of the property.”
Carmine's jaw tightened.
“You told us he wanted Emmett's records.”
“He did.”
“But?”
“The records weren't just financial.”
Nell was somewhere unknown.
Every second mattered.
Carmine's voice turned hard.
“What was on them?”
Odette looked at him.
“Payments.”
“To whom?”
“City inspectors. Contractors. Judges. Police officers.”
“That's not surprising.”
“No.”
“Then what is?”
“One payment went to a doctor.”
Carmine became still.
“What doctor?”
“Dr. Aaron Bell.”
The name meant nothing for three seconds.
Then everything.
Bell had treated Dante Orsini.
Carmine's father.
Odette continued.
“Emmett found the payment years earlier. He kept it because the amount was strange.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“For what?”
“I don't know.”
“When?”
“Six months before your father's death.”
Carmine stared.
“That doesn't make sense. The fire happened three years before he died.”
“Yes.”
“Then how could Emmett have records of a payment that happened later?”
Odette swallowed.
“Because Emmett survived.”
Carmine frowned.
“His neurological damage—”
“Was severe, but not constant.”
Nell had said her father sometimes did not recognize her.
Sometimes.
Odette continued.
“After the fire, Dante kept visiting him.”
“What?”
“Quietly.”
“Why?”
“They were building a case together.”
Carmine felt betrayed by the dead.
His father had hidden an investigation for years.
“Against Salerno.”
“Yes.”
“And you helped?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Vincent was my brother and I knew what he had become.”
Odette's eyes hardened.
“I loved him once. That doesn't mean I was willing to watch him destroy everyone around him.”
“Then why does he want you?”
“Because I kept copies.”
Benny cursed softly.
“Where?”
“Not here.”
“Where?”
Odette looked at Carmine.
“Somewhere Vincent can't reach easily.”
Carmine's phone rang again.
Unknown number.
He answered immediately.
A man's voice.
“You found the box.”
Carmine recognized Vincent Salerno even though they had not spoken in almost two years.
“Where is Nell?”
“Alive.”
“If she isn't—”
“No speeches, Carmine. Your father was better at them.”
“Where is she?”
“You have something I need.”
“You said you want Odette.”
“I want what she knows.”
Odette closed her eyes.
Vincent continued.
“Bring her to the old Gulf Arc warehouse on Tchoupitoulas at nine.”
“And Nell walks out?”
“Yes.”
“I want proof she's alive.”
A rustle.
Then Nell's voice.
“Carmine, don't—”
The line shifted.
Vincent returned.
“Nine.”
He hung up.
Benny looked at Carmine.
“It's a trap.”
“Yes.”
“We don't send Odette.”
“No.”
Odette stood.
“Yes.”
Carmine turned.
“You're not going.”
“She was taken because of me.”
“She was taken because of Vincent.”
“I know my brother.”
“Apparently not well enough.”
Odette absorbed the blow without reacting.
Then she said:
“I know him well enough to know he will not hurt me immediately.”
“Comforting.”
“He'll want the location of the copies.”
“And do you plan to give it to him?”
“Yes.”
Benny frowned.
“Then why did we bother investigating?”
Odette looked at Carmine.
“Because the copies are already somewhere safe.”
“Where?”
She smiled faintly.
“With Palmira.”
Carmine stared.
“My grandmother?”
“She doesn't know what they are. I gave her an envelope years ago and told her it contained family papers.”
Carmine almost laughed.
“Palmira opens everything.”
“Not when I made her swear on your grandfather.”
“Fine.”
He turned to Benny.
“Get it.”
Twenty minutes later, Palmira marched into Carmine's office holding a sealed envelope.
“I knew this house was too quiet.”
Carmine kissed her cheek.
“Nonna—”
“Don't ‘Nonna' me. Odette says somebody stole the pie girl.”
Nell.
Pie girl.
Under different circumstances he might have smiled.
Palmira dropped the envelope on the desk.
“I have waited four years to learn why I was guarding papers inside my jewelry safe.”
Inside were copied bank statements.
Payment ledgers.
Photographs.
A handwritten note from Dante.
Carmine read.
If something happens to me, the Bell payment matters. Don't trust the prescription report.
His hands went cold.
Benny leaned over his shoulder.
“What prescription report?”
Odette answered.
“After Dante died, I asked for toxicology.”
Carmine looked at her.
“You what?”
“The hospital refused because cause of death appeared natural.”
“So?”
“I had a private lab test one remaining tablet.”
“And?”
Odette hesitated.
“It wasn't his medication.”
Carmine stared.
“What was it?”
“A high-dose cardiac stimulant.”
Silence.
His father's death had been called heart failure.
Carmine sat down.
For four years, he had accepted it.
He had been there.
Dante collapsed after dinner.
Carmine remembered the ambulance.
Palmira screaming.
Odette holding his mother's photograph because someone had knocked it from the hall table.
He remembered his father looking at him from the stretcher.
He remembered his final words.
Take care of the house.
At the time Carmine believed he meant the family.
Now he wasn't sure.
“Why didn't you tell me?” he whispered.
Odette cried.
“I was afraid.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
The admission hurt more than the secret.
Odette was afraid of almost nothing.
Carmine stood.
“Tonight ends it.”
Benny prepared quietly.
No dramatic display.
No reckless charge into a warehouse.
Carmine's strength had never been noise.
It was preparation.
By eight-thirty, authorities Carmine trusted had copies of the evidence.
So did two attorneys.
So did a journalist in Baton Rouge with instructions to publish if Carmine failed to contact him by midnight.
Vincent could burn one warehouse.
He could not burn every copy.
At eight fifty-eight, Carmine entered the abandoned Gulf Arc warehouse with Odette beside him.
Benny and several men remained positioned outside.
Vincent waited near the center.
Sixty-four years old.
Silver hair.
Expensive coat.
He looked less like a criminal than a man arriving late to the opera.
Nell sat in a chair nearby.
Not tied.
But guarded by two men.
Her eyes found Carmine.
Relief moved across her face.
Vincent smiled.
“Your father would be disappointed.”
“In what?”
“That you brought the police into family business.”
Carmine's expression didn't change.
“I'm evolving.”
Vincent laughed.
“Odette.”
She stepped forward.
“Hello, brother.”
“You always chose strangers over blood.”
“No.”
Her voice was calm.
“I chose decent people over you.”
Vincent's smile vanished.
“Where are the copies?”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
Vincent looked at Carmine.
“You think paperwork will save you?”
“No.”
“What will?”
“The fact that you no longer know who has it.”
That landed.
Vincent's face changed.
Carmine continued.
“Bank records. Bell's payment. Property acquisitions. Fire report. Investigator transfer.”
Vincent glanced toward Nell.
“Her father should have sold.”
Nell's expression became still.
Carmine heard the confession hidden inside the sentence.
“So you burned him out.”
Vincent smiled.
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't need to.”
“Courts require more.”
A voice came from behind the warehouse office.
“No, Vincent.”
Everyone turned.
An elderly man stepped into view with a cane.
Nell made a sound Carmine had never heard from her before.
“Dad?”
Emmett Fontaine stood there.
Thin.
Unsteady.
But unmistakably alert.
Nell rushed toward him before either guard could stop her.
Carmine's men entered simultaneously.
Vincent's expression shattered.
“You.”
Emmett looked at him.
“You should have made sure the fire finished the job.”
Nell held her father.
“Dad, how are you here?”
Emmett touched her face.
“Odette brought me.”
Nell looked toward her.
Odette smiled through tears.
Emmett turned toward Carmine.
“Your father saved my life twice.”
Carmine could barely speak.
“Twice?”
“The night of the fire.”
“And?”
“The week before he died.”
Vincent stepped backward.
Benny blocked him.
Emmett continued.
“Dante discovered Bell had changed his medication. He came to warn me Vincent knew we were collecting evidence.”
Carmine's throat tightened.
“Did my father know he was in danger?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't he tell me?”
“Because he thought he could finish it.”
The answer was painfully like Dante.
Vincent laughed.
“You have nothing but stories from damaged old men.”
Emmett looked at him.
“No.”
He reached inside his coat.
And removed a tiny digital recorder.
“I also have your voice.”
Vincent stopped smiling.
Emmett pressed play.
A conversation filled the warehouse.
Vincent's voice from years earlier.
Talking about the bakery.
The chained exit.
The inspector.
And finally:
“If Dante keeps digging, Bell knows what to do.”
Carmine closed his eyes.
His father had not died naturally.
Vincent had killed him.
When Carmine opened his eyes again, the room expected rage.
It did not come.
He looked toward the officers entering through the loading bay.
Then at Vincent.
“You spent your whole life believing fear made people loyal.”
Vincent said nothing.
Carmine nodded toward Nell, Emmett and Odette.
“All it did was give them a reason to survive you.”
Vincent was arrested before midnight.
But as officers led him away, he turned toward Carmine.
“You think this ends because you found one recording?”
Carmine stared.
Vincent smiled.
“Ask your housekeeper who hired the man who changed the pills.”
Odette's face went white.
May you like
And Carmine realized Vincent had just revealed one final betrayal.
He had not acted alone.
