Chapter 4 - THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR'S LIE
I reached the printing shop seventeen minutes after the gunshot.
Two black sedans blocked the alley, and one of my men lay facedown beside the loading door.
His name was Nico Ferrara.
He had delivered the burner phone to Tony less than an hour earlier.
Blood spread beneath his chest, but his fingers moved when I knelt beside him.
“Inside,” he whispered.
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Tony?”
“Alive when they took Marco.”
“Who took him?”
Nico’s eyes closed.
“Men wearing our rings.”
Every soldier formally accepted into my family received a plain black ring marked with a silver crown.
It was not expensive.
Its value came from the promise behind it.
Wearing it without permission meant death.
Using it to betray me meant something worse.
I left one man with Nico and entered through the loading bay with Bruno beside me.
The printing shop had been abandoned for six years.
Old machines stood beneath dusty plastic sheets, and stacks of yellow paper leaned against the walls like neglected tombstones.
The first body was near the stairwell.
One of Tony’s guards had been shot twice in the back.
The second body belonged to an attacker.
Bruno sniffed the dead man’s coat, then sneezed and turned toward a trail of blood leading upstairs.
The attacker wore one of our rings.
It belonged to a soldier named Paulie Canto, who had supposedly moved to Florida after his mother became ill.
He had not moved anywhere.
Someone had kept him hidden and waiting.
We climbed to the second floor.
Tony sat against the wall with blood running from a cut above his eye.
His hands were tied behind him, but he was conscious.
“Marco is gone,” he said.
I cut the restraints.
“Who came?”
“Paulie and three men I didn’t recognize.”
“Did they say anything?”
“One of them called the others saints.”
“Saints?”
“That was the word.”
“Where did they take Marco?”
“Black van heading east.”
Bruno moved toward the office at the end of the hall.
Pike had been kept there before Tony moved him to a second location.
The door stood open.
A dark smear marked the frame.
Inside, we found a message written across the wall in blood.
THE DEAD SHOULD STAY BURIED.
Below the sentence was the symbol of the split crown.
Carlo’s warning mark had been turned into a threat.
Tony stared at it.
“That is not Carlo’s handwriting.”
“No.”
“Then someone knows about the key.”
I looked at the camera mounted above the office door.
Its red light blinked.
The shop had no active electricity.
Tony pulled the device from the wall.
A battery pack had been taped behind it.
We were still being watched.
I raised the camera toward my face.
“Tell Victor Harlan that Marco belongs to me.”
I dropped it and crushed the lens beneath my heel.
Tony touched the cut over his eye.
“I don’t think Harlan ordered this.”
“Why?”
“Paulie called someone before they left.”
“He said, ‘Uncle, we have the rat.’”
Many men used family titles as signs of respect.
In our world, however, only one person was called Uncle without a name attached.
Salvatore.
I did not accuse him aloud.
An accusation against my uncle would split my organization before I had evidence strong enough to survive the fracture.
I called the man holding Pike at the second location.
No one answered.
We drove to a storage garage near Astoria Boulevard.
The guard outside had disappeared.
The lock had not been forced.
Inside, Pike sat alone beneath a hanging work light.
His wrists were tied to a metal chair.
A strip of tape covered his mouth.
He was alive.
That was the first thing in hours that made me more suspicious instead of less.
If the attackers knew enough to find Marco, they knew enough to find Pike.
They had left him because they wanted him found.
Bruno circled the chair once.
He smelled Pike’s shoes, jacket, hands, and face.
Then he walked to a leather briefcase resting against the wall.
Pike shook his head violently.
I removed the tape from his mouth.
“That is not mine,” he gasped.
“Then whose is it?”
“I don’t know.”
I opened the case.
Inside were two death certificates, a bundle of cash, and one purple sneaker stained with dried blood.
Tomas had described Elena’s purple sneakers at the funeral.
Only one had been placed in the coffin.
The other now sat in front of us like a piece of evidence delivered by a ghost.
Bruno sniffed it and whined.
Beneath the shoe was a small digital recorder.
I pressed play.
Static filled the garage.
Then Pike’s voice began.
“I understand the instructions.”
A second voice answered, distorted electronically.
“The lid remains closed.”
“Yes.”
“No viewing after delivery.”
“Yes.”
“The parents may see the face through the veil, but they do not touch her.”
“What if they insist?”
“Captain Mercer will handle them.”
Pike’s recorded voice trembled.
“And if she wakes?”
The distorted voice paused.
“She will not.”
The recording ended.
Pike began crying before I looked at him.
“I was afraid.”
“You asked what to do if she woke.”
“I noticed her finger move when they brought her in.”
Tony stepped closer.
“And you still closed the coffin.”
“They had my daughter.”
“Who?” I asked.
“I don’t know their names.”
“They sent me a picture of Claire outside her college dorm.”
“They said if I opened the lid, she would disappear.”
Fear can explain a betrayal.
It cannot erase the person buried beneath it.
“Why is Elena’s shoe in the case?”
“I have never seen it.”
“Why did they leave you alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“They wanted me to tell you something.”
“What?”
Pike’s lips shook.
“Room 412 is not a room.”
I waited.
“It is a locker.”
“Where?”
“Grand Central Terminal.”
“Which section?”
“The old baggage corridor beneath Track One Hundred and Three.”
“How do you know?”
“Kessler said the number during a call.”
“He told someone the ledger was back in four-twelve.”
“What ledger?”
“I don’t know.”
Tony looked at the brass key in my hand.
Grand Central’s public lockers had been removed years ago, but old service lockers still existed in restricted areas below the station.
Carlo had once used those corridors to move unseen between Midtown meetings.
He would know every forgotten door.
“We go now,” Tony said.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“Whoever left Pike knew he would tell us.”
“It is a trap.”
“Of course it is.”
I put the key in my pocket.
“That does not mean the ledger is not there.”
I ordered two men to take Pike somewhere new and bring his daughter into protection.
Then I called Salvatore.
My uncle answered with the tired irritation of a man awakened from sleep, though it was barely nine in the evening.
“Luca, the city is saying you pulled a living child from a coffin.”
“The city talks too much.”
“Is it true?”
“Yes.”
A long silence followed.
“Thank God.”
Salvatore knew when to sound human.
“Where is Marco?” he asked.
“Missing.”
“I heard he ran.”
“From whom?”
“People hear things.”
“People wearing our rings attacked my men.”
His voice hardened.
“Then they were not our people.”
“Paulie Canto was one of them.”
“Paulie is in Florida.”
“Paulie is dead in a printing shop.”
Another silence.
“I will come to you,” he said.
“No.”
“Luca, family stands together when the house is under attack.”
“I am protecting the hospital.”
“Then I will meet you there.”
“No.”
This time he understood the refusal.
“Are you questioning me?” he asked.
“I am questioning everyone.”
He exhaled slowly.
“Your father made that mistake near the end.”
“My father trusted the wrong people near the end.”
Salvatore’s voice turned cold.
“Be careful that grief does not teach you disrespect.”
The call ended.
Tony had heard enough to know what had not been said.
“Still think Grand Central is the next move?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why call him?”
“To see whether he tried to stop me.”
“He did not.”
“That means he may want us there.”
We left Pike’s garage and divided the crew into three vehicles.
Halfway to Manhattan, Dr. Vale called.
Her voice was controlled, but I heard alarm beneath it.
“Elena is awake again.”
“Is she stable?”
“For now.”
“She keeps asking for Bruno.”
“He is with me.”
“Then bring him back.”
“We are handling something.”
“Mr. Moretti, her heart rate spikes whenever she wakes and cannot find him.”
I looked at Bruno in the back seat.
He watched the passing lights without resting his head.
“What else?” I asked.
Dr. Vale hesitated.
“She drew something.”
“What?”
“A church.”
“That is not unusual for a frightened child.”
“She drew a red angel above the door.”
Tony looked at me.
Dr. Vale continued.
“Then she wrote your home address beneath it.”
My house stood in Forest Hills, six miles from the nearest church with any kind of angel statue.
No one had given Elena that address.
“Get everyone away from the windows,” I said.
I told the driver to turn around.
Before he could reach the next exit, my home security system sent an alert to my phone.
The front gate had opened using my uncle Salvatore’s private access code.
A second alert followed.
The alarm inside my library had been disabled from within the house.
Then the live camera feed appeared.
A man in a gray coat and red scarf stood in front of my desk.
A burn scar ran along his jaw.
He looked directly into the camera and raised a bloodstained silver coin between two fingers.
The coin had belonged to Carlo.
The man placed it on my desk.
May you like
Then he lifted a sign written in black ink.
THE RED ANGEL IS ALREADY INSIDE YOUR HOUSE.
