Chapter 8 - THE MAN AT THE GATE
Matteo did not react to Owen's accusation.
That frightened Adeline more than anger would have.
He simply ordered the other guards to take Owen to a secured room beneath the east wing.
Enzo watched his oldest friend while the order was given.
Matteo had been beside him for eighteen years.
They had attended school together.
They had buried Enzo's father together.
Matteo had taken a bullet meant for Enzo outside a restaurant in River North twelve years earlier.
Trust that old did not disappear because a captured guard laughed on a staircase.
But it could crack.
Enzo looked at the empty place where Matteo's security token should have been.
“How long has it been missing?”
“I don't know.”
“Guess.”
Matteo's jaw tightened.
“I used it at six fifteen to enter the control room.”
“After that?”
“No.”
“Who came near you?”
“Everyone.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I was running security for a two-hundred-person event.”
Matteo's frustration finally showed.
“Staff, vendors, guests, Victor's people, Camilla, waiters, musicians.”
He looked at Enzo.
“You.”
Adeline listened carefully.
Enzo's gaze hardened.
“Did you disable the cameras?”
Matteo stared at him.
“No.”
“Did you give anyone access?”
“No.”
“Did you know Owen was compromised?”
“No.”
“Did you know he knew Daniel Croft?”
“No.”
Each answer came faster.
Matteo's anger grew with every one.
Finally, he looked away.
“If you want my resignation, say it.”
“I want the truth.”
“So do I.”
Enzo stepped closer.
“Then act like my head of security and find it.”
Matteo looked back at him.
The crack between them did not close.
But it stopped widening.
“For now,” Matteo said.
Enzo nodded once.
Adeline touched the envelope hidden beneath her blouse.
Enzo noticed.
“What did you find?”
She hesitated.
His expression changed immediately.
“Adeline.”
She removed the envelope.
“I found this in the old locker room.”
Matteo looked at the handwriting.
“CROFT.”
“My brother's writing.”
Enzo held out his hand.
Adeline did not give it to him.
“This belongs to me.”
“It was hidden in my house.”
“It has my name on it.”
“And an armed guard just tried to take it from you.”
“Exactly.”
Enzo stared at her.
“Open it here.”
Adeline considered refusing.
Then she remembered Owen's words.
Closer than you think.
She tore the envelope open.
Inside was a brass key and a folded page.
Nothing else.
Adeline unfolded the page.
Daniel's handwriting covered only six lines.
Addie,
If you found this, I was right about Bell.
Do not trust the Ashfords.
Do not trust the first Marchetti who offers to help you.
The black ledger is not the evidence.
It is the map.
Gate 4. Union Station. Box 317.
Adeline read it twice.
Then she handed it to Enzo.
His eyes paused on one line.
Do not trust the first Marchetti who offers to help you.
He looked at her.
“You think that means me.”
“I don't know.”
“You came here believing my family may have hurt him.”
“Yes.”
“And now your brother warned you not to trust us.”
“Not the first Marchetti who offers to help.”
Antonio appeared at the top of the staircase.
Everyone turned.
He had insisted on leaving the study despite Dr. Serrano's objections.
His eyes moved to the page in Enzo's hand.
“What does it say?”
Enzo handed it to him.
Antonio read silently.
Then his face changed at the same sentence.
Adeline noticed.
“Were you the first Marchetti who offered to help Daniel?”
Antonio looked up.
“No.”
“Who was?”
Antonio folded the page carefully.
“My brother.”
Enzo stared at him.
“My father?”
Antonio nodded.
“Years ago.”
Adeline stepped closer.
“You knew Daniel?”
“No.”
“I knew Thomas.”
The air seemed to leave the staircase.
Enzo looked furious.
“You said nothing in the study.”
“I said I recognized Michael Bell's name.”
“You let her ask whether Father had Thomas killed.”
Antonio's shoulders sagged slightly.
“Because I do not know the answer.”
Adeline stared at him.
“What do you know?”
Antonio looked older than he had an hour earlier.
“Thomas came to me two days before he disappeared.”
“He said someone was moving money through companies tied to our family.”
“He believed Salvatore was being deceived.”
“By whom?”
“He did not know.”
“What did you do?”
Antonio looked at Enzo.
“I told my brother.”
Adeline's face went cold.
“You told the man who accused my father.”
“I trusted Salvatore.”
“And two days later my father vanished.”
Antonio did not defend himself.
That silence was an answer of its own.
Enzo looked at the brass key.
“Union Station.”
Matteo shook his head.
“Not tonight.”
Enzo turned.
“Why?”
“Because someone inside this house knew where Adeline went five minutes after she left the ballroom.”
He pointed toward Owen being taken away.
“Someone also knew what she would find.”
“So?”
“So Gate 4 could be a trap.”
Adeline took back the key.
“Or it could be the first real lead I have had in four months.”
Matteo looked at her.
“You are not going alone.”
“I did not ask you.”
“No.”
“But if Enzo goes, I go.”
Enzo looked at him.
Matteo's expression was steady.
“You can doubt me later.”
“Right now, I am still responsible for keeping you alive.”
Enzo glanced at Adeline.
“And her?”
Matteo looked at her torn dress and bandaged wrist.
“Apparently her too.”
They left the mansion through a side garage forty minutes later.
Enzo took only Matteo and one driver.
Adeline wore a dark coat Lucia had found in the staff room.
She refused Enzo's jacket when he offered it again.
The city was wet from a light rain.
Chicago's streets reflected red brake lights and white towers as they moved toward Union Station.
No one spoke in the car.
Adeline held the brass key in her fist.
Enzo watched the side mirror.
Matteo watched everything.
At 12:38 a.m., they entered the station through the Canal Street side.
The late-night crowd was thin.
Gate 4 was quiet.
The old storage lockers had mostly been replaced years earlier, but a row of private railway boxes still existed near a service corridor used by long-term contractors.
Box 317 was at the end.
Adeline inserted the key.
It turned.
Enzo put one hand on the door.
“Step back.”
She did.
He opened it.
Inside was a small canvas bag.
Nothing moved.
Matteo checked it first.
“No device.”
Adeline pulled the bag out.
Inside were three items.
A flash drive.
A photograph.
And a prepaid phone.
She picked up the photograph.
Daniel stood beside a man in a gray coat outside an apartment building.
The photograph was dated five months earlier.
Adeline recognized Daniel instantly.
Enzo recognized the other man.
His face hardened.
“That is Leo Benton.”
“The systems manager?”
“Yes.”
Adeline turned the photograph over.
Daniel had written one sentence on the back.
HE IS AFRAID, BUT HE WILL HELP.
The prepaid phone suddenly rang.
All three of them froze.
Adeline looked at Enzo.
He nodded once.
She answered.
“Hello?”
For several seconds, there was only breathing.
Then a man's voice whispered.
“Addie?”
Adeline's knees nearly gave way.
She knew that voice.
“Daniel?”
Enzo and Matteo stared at her.
Adeline gripped the phone with both hands.
“Daniel, where are you?”
Her brother's breathing shook.
“Don't say my name again.”
“Are you alive?”
A broken laugh came through the speaker.
“For the moment.”
Adeline closed her eyes.
Tears finally came.
“I have been looking for you.”
“I know.”
“Where are you?”
“Listen to me.”
His voice sharpened.
“You are with Enzo Marchetti.”
Adeline looked at Enzo.
“How do you know?”
“Because the man at the gate just told me.”
Matteo immediately scanned the station.
Enzo's hand moved inside his jacket.
Adeline whispered.
“What man?”
Daniel's next words turned her relief into terror.
“The one who has been following you since you left the mansion.”
Before leaving for Union Station, Matteo reviewed the memory card recovered from Owen's jacket on an isolated device.
It contained no names.
Only six photographs.
The first showed the north gate of the Marchetti estate.
The second showed Camilla entering through it late at night.
The third showed Leo Benton standing beside his car.
The fourth showed Adeline carrying groceries outside her apartment.
The fifth showed Daniel Croft exiting a records office four months earlier.
The sixth showed Enzo and Matteo together outside a restaurant.
Adeline stared at the final image.
Someone had been studying all of them.
“Why keep these on Owen?” she asked.
Matteo shook his head.
“Could be instructions.”
“Targets?”
“Possibly.”
Enzo looked at the photograph of Camilla at the north gate.
“Date?”
Matteo checked.
“May fourteenth.”
Enzo remembered that night.
Camilla had appeared after midnight and claimed she needed to see him urgently.
She had been unusually affectionate when she finally reached his study.
At the time, he assumed the delay came from an argument with Victor on the phone.
Now he wondered what she had been doing between the gate and his door.
Adeline pointed at the image of Daniel.
“Who took these?”
“No metadata.”
“Same camera?”
“Likely.”
“Then Owen may not have been the watcher.”
Matteo nodded.
“He may have been the courier.”
Enzo slipped the memory card into an evidence pouch.
“That makes him more useful alive than frightened.”
Adeline looked at him.
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“No.”
At the garage, Lucia stopped Adeline before she entered the car.
She handed her a small bottle of water and two pain relievers.
“Take them.”
“I am not a child.”
“Then behave like an adult and stop pretending pain is a moral achievement.”
Adeline took them.
Enzo watched from beside the car.
“You listen to her better than you listen to me.”
“Lucia has earned it.”
Matteo made a sound that might have been a laugh.
Enzo gave him a look.
For one brief second, the tension loosened.
Then Adeline looked back at the estate.
Eleven days earlier, she had entered through the staff gate believing she was the only person using false reasons to cross that property line.
May you like
Now she knew the house had been full of hidden entrances long before she arrived.
Union Station was simply the next door.
