Chapter 2 - The Empty Casket
Julian did not attend his scheduled board meeting at DeLuca Maritime Capital. He did not notify his senior partners or his executive council.
Twenty minutes after Mia spoke the name, Julian sat in the rear seat of a black Maybach speeding north along the Taconic State Parkway. Beside him sat Frank Vance, a sixty-year-old retired chief of detectives who had served as the DeLuca family’s private fixer for three decades. Frank held an unlit cigar between two calloused fingers, his sharp gray eyes scanning a satellite map of Dutchess County on an encrypted tablet.
"You're chasing smoke, Julian," Frank said, his gravelly voice fighting the hum of the twelve-cylinder engine. "The dental records were confirmed by the Suffolk County coroner. The body was severely traumatized by the fall, but the forensic pathologist signed the death certificate."
"The pathologist was appointed by Vincent’s legal committee," Julian replied, staring out at the blur of autumn hardwoods turning to scarlet and burnt orange along the highway shoulder. "Katherine had eighteen million dollars in voting stock tied to our port concessions in Brooklyn. If she died intestate, those voting rights reverted to her family's trust. To Vincent."
Frank paused, his hand hovering over the tablet. "Vincent is her brother, Julian. A man doesn't fake his own sister’s drowning to win a proxy fight at an annual general meeting."
"Vincent gambled twenty-five million in offshore credit default swaps through a syndicate in Macao two years ago," Julian said, his jaw clenching until the muscle knotted beneath his stubble. "Katherine found the transfers on our internal server three days before she went off the bluff. She came to my study in the middle of the night, terrified. She told me she was going to the federal prosecutor in Manhattan."
"And you let her drive to Long Island alone?"
"I told her to wait until morning," Julian whispered, the memory slicing through his ribs like broken bottle glass. "I told her our lawyers would draft the disclosures. We had an argument. She said I was too slow, that I was calculating the commercial fallout while her family’s honor was being sold to foreign loan sharks. She took the keys. She took the dog. That was the last time I heard her voice."
The car rounded a sweeping bend, the Hudson River appearing to their left, gray and vast beneath an overcast November sky.
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"If she’s alive, Frank," Julian said, his knuckles white against his knee, "she isn't hiding from me. She’s hiding from the people who put her in that water."
Frank set the cigar on the armrest and pulled a heavy steel Sig Sauer from his shoulder holster, checking the slide with a crisp, metallic click. "Then let's hope the little girl was right about the train, kid. Because if Vincent knows Katherine is breathing, the second funeral won't have an empty casket."
