Chapter 5 - The Chapel Door
The hospital would not discuss Helena's toxicology report over the telephone.
Lucia insisted on going in person.
Giovanni wanted Martin to handle it.
Lucia refused.
"She was my mother before she was your legal problem."
Giovanni looked as if he wanted to argue.
Then he remembered who had left Lucia the evidence.
"I am coming with you."
They reached Saint Vincent Medical Center shortly after seven in the morning.
The city had begun to wake around them.
People carried coffee across sidewalks.
Delivery trucks blocked intersections.
A woman laughed into her phone outside a bakery.
Lucia resented all of them for living in a world where Tuesday morning was ordinary.
Dr. Miriam Hale met them in a private consultation room.
She had treated Helena during her final admission.
Her face held the careful neutrality of a physician who knew the family name and wished it did not matter.
"Mrs. Moretti had advanced cardiac disease," she began.
Lucia nodded.
"We know."
"Her initial collapse was consistent with her condition."
"But?"
Dr. Hale folded her hands.
"But the repeat panel detected a sedative-hypnotic medication that was not on her prescribed list."
Giovanni's shoulders stiffened.
"Could it have been given at the hospital?"
"We checked every administered medication."
"And?"
"No."
Lucia leaned forward.
"Could she have taken it herself?"
"That is possible."
"Did she have a prescription for it from another doctor?"
"Not in the records available to us."
Giovanni thought of the photograph.
"What about Dr. Elias Venn?"
Dr. Hale frowned.
"I do not know that physician."
"Would your system show if he prescribed something?"
"Not necessarily if it was outside our network."
Lucia placed the clinic photograph on the table.
Dr. Hale studied it.
"This is your mother?"
"Yes."
"When was this taken?"
"Nine days before she died."
The doctor looked uneasy.
"I would want to know why she went there."
"So would we."
Dr. Hale explained that the sedative could lower blood pressure, impair breathing, and complicate an already dangerous cardiac condition.
She refused to say it had killed Helena.
She also refused to say it had not.
"The medical examiner will determine cause and manner."
Giovanni's voice hardened.
"How long?"
"I cannot promise."
"Try."
Dr. Hale met his eyes without blinking.
"Mr. Moretti, your influence does not make toxicology faster."
Lucia almost admired her.
Giovanni did too.
He gave one small nod.
"Fair enough."
Outside the consultation room, Lucia stopped him.
"We go to Venn's clinic next."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because if someone altered your mother's medication, walking in unannounced tells them we know."
"They already know we are looking."
"Then we do not make it easier."
Lucia wanted to object.
Her phone interrupted her.
Father Matteo was calling.
She answered.
"Father?"
"You asked Nora about me."
Lucia looked at Giovanni.
"She told us you drove Mother to meet a federal prosecutor."
A long silence followed.
"Come to the chapel."
"We were just there."
"Come back."
"Why?"
The priest lowered his voice.
"Because Helena made me promise I would tell you the rest only after you found the ledger."
Lucia's skin prickled.
"How do you know we found it?"
"Because if you had not, you would not be asking me about Daniel Reeve."
He ended the call.
Giovanni did not like being summoned.
He liked being summoned by a priest even less.
He went anyway.
The chapel looked different in daylight.
Helena's coffin had already been taken to the cemetery for the private burial later that afternoon.
The flowers remained.
Without the coffin, they looked abandoned.
Father Matteo waited beside the adjoining private chapel where Giovanni had appeared during the funeral.
Lucia had never been inside that smaller room.
The priest opened the door.
Inside were six wooden pews, a simple altar, and a locked cabinet built into the wall.
"Helena met me here three times in the last month."
Giovanni frowned.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because she asked me not to."
"Everyone seems very comfortable keeping things from me."
Father Matteo looked at him.
"Perhaps ask yourself why."
Lucia lowered her eyes before her father could see the almost-smile.
Giovanni did see it.
He ignored it.
The priest unlocked the wall cabinet.
He removed a gray envelope and placed it on the altar.
"Helena believed Moretti Maritime was being used to move money and influence without her consent."
"We know."
"She believed Emilio was involved."
"We know that too."
"She also believed he was being manipulated by Clarissa and Carlo."
Giovanni's jaw tightened at his brother's name.
"Did she tell you why?"
"Palermo."
Lucia turned toward Giovanni.
"There it is again."
He stared at the altar.
Father Matteo continued.
"Helena told me Carlo had hated her since 1989."
"Why?"
The priest looked at Giovanni.
"That part belongs to your father."
Lucia waited.
Giovanni remained silent.
"Tell me."
He exhaled slowly.
"In Palermo, Carlo was engaged to a woman named Sofia Bellandi."
Lucia recognized the surname.
"Bellandi."
"Yes."
"The same family trying to get our docks?"
"The same."
Father Matteo watched Giovanni carefully.
Giovanni continued.
"Our father arranged the marriage to settle a dispute."
"And Mother stopped it?"
"Helena discovered the Bellandis were using the engagement to hide a plan against our family."
"What plan?"
"It does not matter now."
Lucia's stare sharpened.
"You are doing it again."
Giovanni looked at her.
"Fine."
He spoke with obvious reluctance.
"Sofia's brother intended to have me killed after the wedding reception."
Lucia absorbed that.
"Mother found out?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"She listened when everyone else was drinking."
That sounded like Helena.
"What happened to Sofia?"
Giovanni looked at the stained-glass window.
"She disappeared before the wedding."
"Disappeared?"
"She left Sicily."
"That is not what disappeared usually means in this family."
Father Matteo closed his eyes.
Giovanni's face hardened.
"She left alive."
"And Carlo blamed Mother?"
"For humiliating him."
"Thirty-seven years ago?"
"Carlo has always considered memory a form of loyalty."
Lucia looked at the gray envelope.
"What is that?"
Father Matteo touched it.
"Helena's notes from her meetings with Daniel Reeve."
Giovanni went still.
"She met him?"
"Twice."
"Why?"
"She wanted to separate the legitimate companies from anything illegal connected to the family."
Giovanni's expression darkened.
"She wanted to cooperate with prosecutors."
"She wanted to protect Lucia, the grandchildren, and the employees who had nothing to do with your past."
"By giving them me?"
Father Matteo did not retreat.
"By giving them financial evidence about people abusing Helena's company."
Lucia looked at her father.
"Did she plan to expose you?"
"Ask the priest."
Father Matteo shook his head.
"She told Reeve she would not trade old crimes for new safety."
Giovanni's anger softened into something like pain.
"Of course she did."
The priest opened the gray envelope.
Inside was a typed memorandum.
Helena had listed conditions under which she would provide evidence of the Orison transfers.
The first condition protected Moretti Maritime employees.
The second protected Lucia.
The third named Emilio.
Lucia read it aloud.
"No charges against Emilio Moretti arising solely from financial transfers made without proof that he understood the Bellandi connection."
Giovanni stared at the line.
"She was trying to save him."
"Even after he lied to her," Lucia said.
"Especially then."
Lucia felt sudden anger at her mother.
It was unfair.
It was also real.
"She always saved him."
Giovanni looked at her.
"So did I."
"And look what that made."
The words struck both of them.
Lucia immediately regretted them.
Giovanni did not answer.
Father Matteo broke the silence.
"There is something else."
He turned the memorandum over.
A handwritten note covered the back.
Helena had written it the day before her collapse.
Father Matteo read it.
"Clarissa knows I met Reeve."
Lucia's stomach tightened.
"How?"
"Helena did not know."
The priest continued.
"She wrote that Clarissa confronted her outside Dr. Venn's clinic."
Giovanni looked sharply at the photograph Lucia had shown him.
"So that picture was taken during the confrontation."
"Apparently."
"Why was Helena at the clinic?"
Father Matteo looked uncomfortable.
"She did not tell me."
Lucia stared at the note.
"Did she say what Clarissa wanted?"
"Yes."
The priest pointed to the next sentence.
Lucia read it herself.
"She offered me a deal."
Below that, Helena had written four words twice.
Emilio for the evidence.
Lucia looked at Giovanni.
"What does that mean?"
Before he could answer, the chapel door opened behind them.
All three turned.
Carlo Moretti stood in the doorway wearing the same black suit he had worn to Helena's funeral.
He looked at the envelope on the altar.
Then he looked at Giovanni.
"I was wondering when Helena's priest would finally open his mouth."
Father Matteo stiffened.
Lucia's hand closed around the memorandum.
Giovanni stepped between his brother and his daughter.
"How did you know we were here?"
Carlo smiled faintly.
"Because, brother, I am not the only one in this family who knows how to watch a door."
After Carlo entered the chapel, Lucia became aware of every exit in the room.
It was the first time she had ever looked at her uncle and measured distance instead of family.
Carlo noticed.
"Do not look at me like I am a stranger."
Lucia held Helena's memorandum tighter.
"Then stop arriving like one."
Giovanni moved half a step closer to his brother.
The two men had the same shoulders and none of the same grief.
Father Matteo quietly moved the gray envelope behind the altar rail.
Carlo saw that too.
"Helena always did love theater."
The priest's expression hardened.
"This is a chapel."
"In this family, same thing."
Lucia watched Giovanni absorb the insult without reacting.
That restraint frightened Carlo more than anger would have.
His eyes flicked toward the door.
For one second, Lucia saw calculation replace arrogance.
He had not come merely to confront them.
He had come to learn what Helena had left.
And he had just discovered that they knew more than he expected.
Carlo's arrival also answered one question Lucia had not known to ask.
Someone had told him where they were.
The chapel had not been part of the public funeral schedule.
Only family security, Father Matteo, Martin, and a handful of staff knew Giovanni had returned.
Lucia looked through the colored glass toward the outer corridor.
The old fear returned in a new form.
The danger was not only following them.
May you like
It was being informed by someone close enough to hear doors open.
