Chapter 3 - THE THING MY FATHER HID
I stared at Nolan's photograph until the letters blurred.
YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU HAD.
That was true.
It was the part that hurt most.
My father had left me something important enough to get him killed, and for six years I had slept a few rooms away from it without knowing.
"What fits in that compartment?"
Sofia enlarged the image on her laptop.
The velvet indentation was narrow and about three inches long.
Dante did not need time to guess.
"A flash drive."
I looked at him.
"You knew?"
"I suspected."
"That's becoming your favorite answer."
He accepted the accusation without reacting.
Sofia rotated the image.
"The question is whether Nolan found the drive or only the empty slot."
"The box was closed when he took it."
"Then somebody opened it before him."
A memory surfaced so faintly that I almost dismissed it.
My father in his kitchen three days before he died.
Coffee gone cold beside his elbow.
The music box open in front of him.
His thumb pressing something beneath the brass inlay.
At the time, I had assumed he was repairing it.
I could still hear him telling me not to touch it because the hinge was temperamental.
I gripped the edge of the table.
"There was a mechanism."
Dante looked up.
"Where?"
"Under the brass strip on the lid."
"He pressed it."
"Then the front edge lifted."
Sofia leaned back.
"Which means Nolan might have learned the mechanism from someone who saw Michael use it."
I thought about everyone who had been in my father's house near the end.
Colleagues.
Neighbors.
My aunt.
The funeral director.
Then one face stopped the list.
Nolan.
I had met him six months after my father died.
At least, that was what I had always believed.
"No."
Dante noticed immediately.
"What?"
"Nolan told me the first time he saw me was at a Cubs game."
My skin prickled.
"But after my father died, there was a memorial reception at a restaurant in River North."
I closed my eyes.
"There was a waiter there who kept staring at me."
"You remember his face?"
"Not clearly."
"But?"
"He had a scar near his right eyebrow."
Nolan had the same scar.
He claimed he got it playing hockey in college.
I suddenly felt sick.
"He was there."
I looked at Dante.
"Nolan was at my father's memorial before he ever introduced himself to me."
Sofia's fingers froze over the keyboard.
Dante's expression became lethal.
"Then your relationship was never random."
The room seemed to shrink around me.
Every first between Nolan and me started rearranging itself.
The first date he planned at my favorite restaurant.
The way he already knew I hated red wine.
The apartment he said he happened to find two blocks from my office.
The questions about my father that had once sounded caring.
The way he encouraged me to keep old family documents instead of throwing them away.
I had called it attentiveness.
Now it looked like research.
"He chose me."
My voice barely worked.
"He didn't fall in love with me."
"He chose me."
Sofia closed the laptop halfway.
"Claire, whatever his original reason was, that doesn't mean every moment was fake."
I laughed bitterly.
"That's supposed to help?"
"No."
Her voice softened.
"It's supposed to stop you from blaming yourself for not recognizing a lie designed before you ever heard it."
I turned away.
The city glowed beyond the windows.
Somewhere out there, Nolan had my father's box.
Somewhere out there, he might have the drive too.
Dante's phone buzzed.
He read a message.
"Nolan just entered the Bellini Social Club."
"Can you get him?"
"Yes."
"Then do it."
Sofia looked at me.
Dante did not move.
"Why not?"
"Because if I take Nolan out of a Bellini property tonight, I start a war before I know what he has."
"You seemed willing to choke him in a ballroom."
"That was personal."
"This isn't?"
His eyes cut toward me.
"This is bigger."
I hated the answer.
"My father is not bigger?"
"Your father is exactly why I won't make a stupid move to satisfy your anger for ten minutes."
The sentence stung.
"My anger?"
"Yes."
"You don't get to talk to me about anger."
"I get to talk to you about surviving it."
I stepped closer.
"And what would you know about that?"
Dante's face did not change.
Sofia did.
Her eyes dropped.
I had touched something.
Dante looked at his sister, then back at me.
"Enough."
He walked out of the room.
I turned to Sofia.
"What happened?"
"Ask him."
"He doesn't answer questions unless someone bleeds first."
"Then ask harder."
She reopened the laptop.
"For now, help me find out what your father hid."
We spent the next hour reconstructing six years of my father's life from memory.
Names.
Habits.
Storage units.
Safe-deposit boxes.
Old clients.
One detail kept returning.
My father hated cloud storage.
He trusted paper.
He trusted physical copies.
If the flash drive existed, he would have backed it up somewhere analog.
"Did he keep ledgers?"
Sofia asked.
"Always."
"Where are they?"
"Most of his files went to storage after he died."
"Which facility?"
I gave her the name.
She typed it in.
"Your unit is still active."
"I pay it every month."
"Who has access?"
"Me."
I paused.
"And Nolan."
Sofia slowly looked up.
Of course.
Nolan had helped me move boxes there last winter when I said I wanted more room in the apartment.
He had insisted on being added to the access list in case I lost my key.
I had thought it was practical.
I wanted to scream.
Dante returned wearing a different jacket.
"We're going."
"Where?"
"Your storage unit."
I stood immediately.
Sofia frowned.
"You just said you wouldn't move without knowing what Nolan has."
"He sent two men toward the facility ten minutes ago."
My pulse spiked.
"Then we're already late."
Dante looked at me.
"Stay here."
I almost laughed.
"Absolutely not."
"Claire."
"My father's files."
"My name on the account."
"My life Nolan invaded."
I picked up my coat.
"You can either take me with you or spend the drive wondering which cab I'm in behind you."
Sofia covered a smile with her hand.
Dante stared at me for three seconds.
"You stay behind me if anything happens."
"I will stay wherever makes sense if anything happens."
His mouth tightened.
"That was not agreement."
"You're learning."
The storage facility sat beneath an elevated train line on the west side.
Rain had started by the time we arrived.
Two of Dante's men entered first.
A third checked the office.
The night manager was missing.
That was the first bad sign.
The second was the broken security camera hanging above the hallway to my unit.
My key card still worked.
The steel door rolled upward with a metallic rattle.
Boxes filled the narrow room from floor to ceiling.
My father's handwriting covered half of them.
For one second, grief hit me so suddenly I could smell his aftershave.
Dante noticed but said nothing.
I appreciated the silence.
"Financial files were usually blue boxes."
We found three.
One contained tax records.
One contained old client invoices.
The third was empty except for a yellow legal pad.
A single sentence had been written on the first page in my father's handwriting.
IF CLAIRE EVER NEEDS THIS, IT MEANS I FAILED.
My knees almost gave out.
I touched the words with one finger.
Dante stepped closer but did not touch me.
Below the sentence was a list of numbers.
Fourteen digits.
Then a second line.
MOTHER'S SONG.
Sofia stared at the page.
"A password?"
"Maybe."
I knew what it meant.
My mother had died when I was twelve.
She used to play one song on the piano whenever my father came home late.
"Autumn Leaves."
Dante looked at me.
"What?"
"Mother's song."
"It was Autumn Leaves."
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the entire aisle.
One of Dante's men shouted from the entrance.
Then came the sound of metal striking metal.
Dante grabbed my shoulder and pulled me behind the concrete divider.
I heard footsteps running toward us.
Fast.
More than one person.
"Stay down."
This time I did not argue.
A flashlight beam cut through the dark.
Dante moved toward it.
There was a sharp struggle.
A man cursed.
Something crashed into a storage door.
I pressed myself against the wall, holding the legal pad inside my coat.
Another figure appeared behind me.
I saw only the outline before a hand clamped over my mouth.
Panic exploded through my body.
Nolan's smell flashed through my memory even though the man was not Nolan.
I drove my heel backward as hard as I could.
The man grunted.
I twisted and bit his palm.
He swore and loosened his grip.
I ran.
Two steps later, he caught my coat.
The fabric tore.
Then Dante hit him from the side.
The man slammed against the floor.
Dante stood over him, breathing hard for the first time since I had met him.
His face was terrifying.
"You touched her."
The man laughed through blood at his lip.
"Bellini says she's worth more alive."
Dante went completely still.
The man smiled wider.
"You didn't tell her?"
I stepped closer despite Dante's hand lifting to stop me.
"Tell me what?"
The man looked directly at me.
"Your old man didn't just hide Bellini accounts."
He coughed once.
"He hid Moretti accounts too."
I looked at Dante.
His silence answered before he did.
The attacker kept smiling.
"That's why both families wanted Michael Sullivan's drive."
Dante's men dragged the attacker away.
I did not move.
Rain hammered the roof above us.
"Is he lying?"
Dante looked at the legal pad in my hands.
"No."
My fingers tightened around it.
"Then maybe Nolan isn't the only man who's been using me to get to my father's evidence."
Dante's face closed.
"Claire."
"Don't."
I stepped back.
"Not one more half-truth."
"Not one more thing you decide I can learn later."
A phone rang from inside the attacker's dropped jacket.
No one moved at first.
Then Sofia picked it up with a gloved hand.
The screen showed an incoming call.
NOLAN.
Sofia answered on speaker without speaking.
Nolan's voice filled the dark hallway.
"Did you get the ledger?"
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Sofia looked at me.
Dante looked at me.
May you like
Then Nolan said the sentence that changed everything again.
"And if Claire is there, tell her Dante Moretti is the reason her father is dead."
