Chapter 14 - Under St. Augustine's
Sophia did not go to Rosa's daughter's house.
She went directly to Brooklyn and found Anthony sitting at the guarded apartment's kitchen table.
He had been returned there after the rescue on Staten Island.
A bandage covered his left eyebrow.
He looked up when Sophia entered.
The relief on his face vanished when he saw hers.
"You paid a reporter."
Anthony lowered his coffee.
"Sophia -"
"Do not say my name like it is an apology."
Dante and Enzo remained near the door.
Sophia had not asked them to come inside.
They came anyway because Anthony was still technically under threat.
She no longer had energy to argue about it.
"Why?" she asked.
Anthony rubbed his hands together.
"Vanessa gave me the reporter's contact."
Sophia laughed once.
"Of course she did."
Vanessa had admitted manipulating him, but this detail had not appeared in her confession.
"When?"
"The day before the engagement dinner."
"What did she tell you to send?"
"The recording."
"And information about my rent and the debt."
Sophia stared at him.
"Did you know they would call me a thief?"
"No."
"Did you care what they called me?"
Anthony opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Sophia nodded.
"How much?"
He looked down.
"Two thousand."
Her face went numb.
"You sold my private life for two thousand dollars."
"I thought the story would scare Moretti away from you."
Sophia stared at him in disbelief.
"Why would you want that?"
Anthony looked at Dante.
"Because I know what happens when our family gets involved with theirs."
Dante's expression hardened.
Sophia stepped closer to her father.
"Mom got involved because of you."
Anthony flinched.
"I know."
"She went to Elena because of your debt."
"I know."
"Lorenzo used your debt to silence her."
"I know."
"And after all of that, you decided the solution was to betray me before Dante could."
Anthony's eyes filled.
"I was trying to keep you out."
"You do not protect someone by becoming the first person to hurt them."
The sentence broke whatever defense he had left.
Anthony began crying quietly.
Sophia felt nothing for several seconds.
That scared her.
She had spent years feeling too much for him.
Now there was only exhaustion.
"Mom told me not to save you again."
Anthony looked up sharply.
"What?"
"In her letter."
His face collapsed.
"She wrote you a letter?"
"Yes."
"What else did she say?"
"That every time someone rescued you, you learned that the real price belonged to somebody else."
Anthony covered his face.
Sophia's voice softened, but only slightly.
"I love you."
He lowered his hands.
"But I am finished paying for you."
Anthony nodded through tears.
"You should be."
It was the first truly responsible thing Sophia had heard him say in years.
She turned toward the door.
"Soph."
She stopped.
Anthony stood.
"There is something else about Father Luca."
Sophia looked back.
"What?"
"Your mother met him every February."
"On the seventeenth."
Sophia frowned.
"Why that date?"
"I never knew."
"But after she died, he sent me a card every year on that day."
"What kind of card?"
"Saint Rosalia."
Sophia's pulse changed.
Elena's medal.
The patron saint image her grandmother had worn.
"Do you still have them?"
Anthony shook his head.
"I threw them away after Father Luca died."
Dante spoke from the doorway.
"Today is February seventeenth."
Everyone went still.
Sophia had lost track of the date in the chaos.
The wedding was scheduled for the eighteenth.
Maria's secret meeting date fell one day before it.
"We need to go to St. Augustine's," Sophia said.
Dante nodded.
They reached the church shortly before six in the evening.
Snow had begun falling over Brooklyn.
St. Augustine's stood between a school and an old rectory, its brownstone walls dark with melting flakes.
Sophia had not entered since her mother's funeral.
The smell of wax and old wood brought the grief back instantly.
She remembered Maria's coffin near the altar.
She remembered Anthony shaking beside her.
She remembered Father Luca placing both hands on Sophia's shoulders and telling her in Sicilian that grief was love with nowhere to sit.
Sophia stopped in the center aisle.
Dante stood beside her without speaking.
"I hate that I remember the flowers," she whispered.
"What?"
"From her funeral."
"Everyone kept telling me I would remember her face."
"I remember white lilies."
Dante looked toward the altar.
"I remember the ceiling from my brother's funeral."
Sophia turned toward him.
He had never spoken about Matteo beyond the few words in Elena's library.
"Why the ceiling?"
"I was not born yet."
Sophia frowned.
Dante corrected himself.
"Not Matteo."
"My father's funeral."
His mouth tightened.
"I stared up because I did not want anyone to see me cry."
Sophia's anger at him softened despite herself.
"Did it work?"
"No."
She almost smiled.
A priest named Father Dominic met them near the sacristy.
He remembered Sophia.
"Maria's girl."
Sophia's throat tightened.
"Everybody keeps calling me that this week."
"You look like her."
"So I have been told."
Father Dominic looked at Dante and Enzo.
His expression suggested he knew exactly who they were.
"You are here about Luca's vault."
Sophia stared at him.
"You know about it?"
"I know he left instructions."
"For who?"
Father Dominic looked at her.
"For you."
He led them beneath the church through a narrow stairway near the sacristy.
The basement contained storage rooms, old vestments, folding chairs, and boxes of parish records.
At the far end stood a small brick archway sealed by a steel door.
Father Dominic removed a key from around his neck.
"Luca told me this door could only be opened on February seventeenth if Sophia Rossi came asking."
Dante looked at Sophia.
"He planned this."
"For seven years?"
Father Dominic smiled faintly.
"Priests are patient."
The door opened.
Inside was a room no larger than a pantry.
A single metal cabinet stood against the wall.
On top sat a photograph.
Sophia picked it up.
Her mother stood beside Father Luca outside St. Augustine's.
Maria looked healthy.
She was smiling.
In her arms was eight-year-old Sophia.
Behind them, partly cut off by the frame, stood Elena Moretti.
Sophia stared.
"Elena was here."
Dante took the photograph.
"She said Maria never told her the full story."
"Maybe she didn't."
Sophia turned the photograph over.
One sentence was written on the back.
Three mothers kept one child safe.
Sophia's eyes filled.
Teresa.
Maria.
Elena.
She had grown up believing her family had been small and broken.
In reality, women had been quietly building walls around her before she even understood danger existed.
Father Dominic opened the cabinet.
Inside sat a thick black ledger sealed in plastic.
There were also two cassette tapes, a signed affidavit from Maria, and a bundle of copied bank statements.
Enzo exhaled.
"This is it."
Dante did not touch anything.
"Photograph everything before we move it."
Sophia opened Maria's affidavit.
The first pages described the false vendors.
The next identified Carlo Genovese, Lorenzo Moretti, and Paul Mercer by name.
Sophia stopped.
"Mercer was involved twenty-three years ago?"
Dante looked over her shoulder.
According to Maria, Paul Mercer had been a junior accountant before becoming an attorney.
He had helped create the shell vendors.
He was not merely Carlo's fixer.
He had been part of the scheme from the beginning.
Enzo photographed the pages.
Sophia continued reading.
Then she reached a paragraph about Lorenzo.
Maria wrote that Dante's father had privately admitted the scheme was wrong.
He wanted to exit it without starting a war with Carlo.
He promised to preserve one original ledger in case Carlo ever moved against the Moretti family.
Sophia looked at Dante.
"Your father kept a copy too."
"Where?"
She read the next line.
Lorenzo said Elena would know where to find it if the old alliance ever became a threat.
Dante's face changed.
"Mama said she didn't know."
"Maybe she doesn't know she knows."
Father Dominic handed Sophia a small envelope from the bottom shelf.
It was marked with a single word.
Rosalia.
Inside was a brass key and a note in Father Luca's handwriting.
The saint opens what the husband hid.
Sophia thought of the medal Elena wore around her neck.
"The medal."
Dante understood.
"My mother's Saint Rosalia medal."
The one Teresa had given her forty-one years ago.
The one Elena had worn through every change in the Moretti family's fortune.
A key hidden inside a symbol of friendship.
Sophia almost laughed at the elegance of it.
Then a sound came from the stairway.
Enzo turned immediately.
Footsteps.
More than one person.
Father Dominic frowned.
"The church is closed."
Dante moved Sophia behind him.
She grabbed his sleeve.
"Do not do that."
"Do what?"
"Put me behind you like furniture."
"Sophia, this is not the moment."
"There is never a moment you think is appropriate."
Despite the danger, Dante looked almost exasperated.
Enzo raised one hand for silence.
The footsteps stopped outside the basement corridor.
Then Vanessa appeared beneath the archway.
Everyone froze.
She was alone.
Her face was pale.
"You need to leave."
Dante's eyes narrowed.
"How did you know we were here?"
Vanessa looked at Sophia.
"Your father told me."
Sophia's stomach dropped.
"Anthony is under guard."
"He called me from the guard's phone."
"Why?"
Vanessa held up her own phone.
"Because Carlo called him first."
Dante stepped closer.
"What did Carlo say?"
Vanessa's voice shook.
"That if Sophia opened Father Luca's vault tonight, he would burn St. Augustine's records room before morning."
Father Dominic crossed himself.
Sophia looked at the ledger.
"He knows."
"Yes."
Vanessa nodded.
"And he knows about the second Moretti copy."
Dante's expression hardened.
"Where is it?"
Vanessa looked at him.
"He says Elena has been carrying the key around her neck for forty-one years."
Sophia's phone rang.
It was Elena.
Sophia answered immediately.
"Elena?"
There was no response.
Only breathing.
Then Carlo Genovese's voice came through the line.
"Miss Rossi."
Sophia's blood went cold.
"Where is Elena?"
Carlo laughed softly.
"Safe."
Dante grabbed the phone and put it on speaker.
"Carlo."
"Dante."
"If you touch my mother -"
"I have no interest in touching Elena."
"I only need the medal around her neck."
Sophia looked at Dante.
Carlo continued.
"Bring the ledger from the church tomorrow."
"Bring Maria's box."
"And bring Vanessa to the altar."
Dante's voice turned flat.
"Or?"
Carlo paused.
"Or your mother learns what happens when old women keep old promises too long."
The call ended.
Dante stood motionless.
Sophia looked at the black ledger in her hands.
May you like
The wedding was no longer a trap they controlled.
Carlo had taken the one person Dante would sacrifice everything to save.
