Chapter 4 - The Man Who Survived 1989
Luca shoved Isabella behind the stone wall.
Another shot struck the iron gate.
"Stay down."
He drew a handgun from beneath his jacket.
Isabella stared at it.
"You brought a gun to your mother’s grave?"
"I brought you."
"That is not an explanation."
"It is tonight."
Footsteps pounded outside.
Then silence.
Too much silence.
Luca moved carefully toward the entrance.
The funeral director lay behind a stone monument, clutching his shoulder.
The locksmith was crawling toward cover.
No shooter was visible.
Whoever had fired had already disappeared.
Luca called an ambulance.
Then another number.
"Not Dominic," Isabella said.
He looked at her.
"No."
"Good."
"You’re learning."
"I hate that sentence."
They left the cemetery with the ledger wrapped in Luca’s coat.
By sunrise, they were sitting in a private office above the social club.
Isabella opened the first page.
Columns of dates.
Companies.
Property addresses.
Payments.
Initials.
Some entries went back nearly forty years.
"This could destroy people," she whispered.
"It already did."
Luca stood by the window.
His mother’s empty coffin had changed him.
Isabella could see it.
Not softened.
Sharpened.
"Why would her body be gone?" she asked.
"I don’t know."
"Did Dominic arrange the burial?"
"Yes."
"Then start there."
Luca nodded.
"I will."
He called one man.
Enzo Bianchi.
Enzo arrived twenty minutes later.
He was seventy, compact, gray-haired, and angry about being awake.
Then he saw Isabella.
His expression changed.
"Madonna."
"What?"
"You look like Sofia."
Isabella stiffened.
"My mother?"
"You knew her?"
Enzo glanced toward Luca.
"I knew everyone."
Luca placed the ledger on the desk.
"My mother’s grave was empty."
Enzo’s face drained.
"Who opened it?"
"I did."
"You shouldn’t have."
"That seems to be tonight’s popular opinion."
Enzo crossed himself.
"Where’s Dominic?"
"Not here."
"Keep it that way."
Luca stared.
"You knew."
"I suspected."
"About the ledger?"
"No."
"About her body."
Enzo looked away.
Luca stepped closer.
"Where is my mother?"
"I don’t know."
"Enzo."
"Your mother did not die in the Moretti house."
Luca went still.
"What?"
"She collapsed there. Dominic’s father arranged the doctor. She was moved to Saint Catherine’s under another name."
"Why?"
"Because she believed someone was poisoning her."
Isabella felt cold.
"Was she?"
Enzo swallowed.
"I don’t know."
"Did you see her body?" Luca asked.
"No."
"Then who did?"
"Dominic."
Luca turned away.
He placed both hands on the desk.
Isabella watched his shoulders rise with one controlled breath.
Then another.
"Find Samuel Grant."
Enzo blinked.
"Samuel?"
"You know him?"
"Everybody from those days knows him."
"Is he alive?"
"Last I heard, yes. Retired upstate."
"Find him."
Enzo looked at the ledger.
"That from Elena?"
"Yes."
"Then we don’t call anyone until Grant sees it."
"You trust him?"
"Your mother did."
That was apparently enough.
By afternoon, Enzo had an address.
Samuel Grant lived outside Cold Spring in a modest house overlooking the Hudson.
Luca wanted Isabella to stay behind.
She refused.
Again.
"I’m in this ledger."
"You don’t know that."
"My family’s property is."
"Which is why—"
"Stop trying to protect me by hiding me."
The words struck him.
Perhaps because they echoed his mother.
He nodded.
"Fine."
The drive north took nearly two hours.
Samuel Grant opened the door before they knocked.
He was eighty-two and leaned on a cane.
His eyes went immediately to Isabella.
"Rosa’s granddaughter."
Isabella stared.
"How do you know?"
"You have her eyes."
Then he looked at Luca.
"And Elena’s son."
Luca said, "You’ve been waiting for us."
"For thirty-seven years."
Inside, Grant’s walls were covered in books.
No family photographs.
No decorations except an old police badge in a shadow box.
Luca placed the ledger on the table.
Grant did not touch it.
"Where did you find that?"
"My mother’s coffin."
Grant slowly sat.
"So she did it."
"You knew?"
"I knew her plan."
"Did you know her body wasn’t there?"
Grant looked sharply at him.
"What?"
Luca explained.
Grant listened without interruption.
When Luca finished, the old man’s hand shook.
"Then she may not have died when they said."
Isabella leaned forward.
"How is that possible?"
"Your mother contacted me two weeks before her supposed death," Grant said to Luca. "She said she had proof someone was poisoning her medication."
"Who?"
"She didn’t know."
"Dominic?"
"Maybe."
"His father?"
"Vittorio was already dead."
Grant opened the ledger.
He turned pages slowly.
Then stopped.
"Here."
An entry from 1998.
A shell corporation.
A transfer.
Initials: D.F.
Dominic Ferraro.
"What did he buy?" Isabella asked.
Grant adjusted his glasses.
"Silence."
"What does that mean?"
"This company paid a private medical facility."
Luca’s expression hardened.
"Saint Catherine’s?"
Grant nodded.
"Monthly."
"For how long?"
Grant ran a finger down the page.
"Seven years."
Luca sat.
His mother had supposedly died after three months of illness.
Seven years.
Isabella whispered, "Why would someone pay a hospital for seven years after she died?"
Grant looked at Luca.
"Because perhaps she didn’t."
No one spoke.
Grant stood with difficulty and walked to a filing cabinet.
He removed a folder.
"I kept everything."
Inside were copies of witness statements.
Old photographs.
Property records.
And one sealed affidavit.
Grant handed it to Isabella.
"Your grandfather Antonio signed this two days before he died."
Her hands shook.
She read.
Antonio accused Carlo Moretti and Vittorio Ferraro of forging deeds and laundering money.
At the bottom, a handwritten note:
If anything happens to me, Rosa must take Sofia and leave Brooklyn.
Isabella touched her mother’s name.
"He knew."
"He knew enough," Grant said.
Luca looked ill.
"My father had him killed."
"Your father ordered it," Grant answered. "Vittorio arranged it."
"And Dominic?"
"Dominic was twenty-three."
"Old enough."
"Yes."
Grant looked at the ledger again.
"But we need more than old paper. We need a living witness."
"Who?"
Grant hesitated.
Then he removed another photograph.
A nurse stood outside Saint Catherine’s.
On the back:
MARGARET HAYES — NIGHT SUPERVISOR.
Grant said, "She called me in 2006."
"What did she say?"
"That Elena Moretti had been admitted under the name Ellen Marsh."
Luca gripped the table.
"What happened?"
"Before I could meet her, Margaret disappeared."
Isabella looked at the photograph.
"Disappeared?"
"She emptied her bank account and vanished."
Grant lowered his voice.
"Three months ago, she contacted me again."
Luca stood.
"Where is she?"
"I don’t know."
"You said she contacted you."
"She mailed this."
Grant produced a postcard.
No return address.
On the front was a picture of a small church by the ocean.
On the back, one line:
Elena survived the night they buried her.
Luca stared at the sentence.
Grant continued.
"Margaret wrote that if Rosa Romano ever came forward, I should tell her to look for a woman named Lucia Vale."
Isabella frowned.
"Who is Lucia Vale?"
Grant looked toward her.
"I was hoping you could tell me."
Isabella shook her head.
Grant turned the postcard over.
There was a photograph taped beneath the message.
An older woman sat on a bench outside the seaside church.
Her hair was silver.
Her face thinner.
But Luca recognized her immediately.
His knees nearly buckled.
May you like
"My mother."
The photograph was dated six months ago.
