Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO KNEW HER FATHER
Evelyn stared at Lorenzo until the sirens became distant noise.
Her first instinct was to step away from him.
His hand closed around her elbow before she could.
"Not here."
"You said you knew my father."
"I said I knew the night he disappeared."
"That is not better."
Rafe scanned the street.
"Boss, we need walls."
Lorenzo released Evelyn.
"Two blocks east."
"You just said they know your cars."
"We are not taking mine."
They moved toward Lower Wacker.
Evelyn followed because the alternative was standing alone in an alley while armed men hunted Lorenzo Moretti.
She hated that this counted as logic.
At the corner, Lorenzo stopped beside a dented gray sedan.
A parking ticket trembled beneath its windshield wiper.
Rafe looked at him.
"That is a Honda."
"Congratulations."
Lorenzo broke the rear passenger window with the butt of his pistol.
"You can identify vehicles under stress."
Rafe almost smiled.
Almost.
They were inside thirty seconds later.
Rafe hot-wired the car while Lorenzo watched the mirrors.
Evelyn sat in the back seat beside the broken window and tried to make sense of the last ten minutes.
Celeste had arranged a massacre.
Gilbert had driven her away.
Lorenzo knew something about Evelyn's father.
And Evelyn was now inside a stolen Honda with two armed men who looked offended by traffic laws.
"Talk," she said.
Lorenzo looked back at her.
"You are in no position to give orders."
"Then let me out."
"No."
"That sounded like an order."
"It was."
"Then I am apparently in exactly the right position to complain about them."
Rafe looked at Lorenzo through the mirror.
A faint expression crossed his face.
It might have been amusement.
Lorenzo was not amused.
"Daniel Carter worked for my father."
Evelyn's mouth went dry.
Her father had sold used cars, taken cash jobs, played cards, and spent money he did not have.
That was the man she remembered.
"Doing what?"
"Accounting."
She laughed once.
It came out broken.
"My father could barely balance a checkbook."
"That was what he wanted people to think."
"You are lying."
"I do not need you to believe me tonight."
"You needed me to believe you enough to save your life."
His eyes hardened.
"I did not ask you to."
That hurt more than it should have.
Evelyn turned toward the shattered window.
Cold air whipped her hair across her face.
Lorenzo spoke again after a moment.
"My father ran businesses that required two sets of books."
"I can imagine."
"Daniel kept the third set."
Evelyn looked back.
"What does that mean?"
"The honest one."
Rafe drove down a ramp into a warehouse district west of the river.
Lorenzo continued.
"Every payment."
"Every bribe."
"Every debt."
"Every judge."
"Every police officer."
"Every politician."
Evelyn felt her stomach tighten.
"And every murder?"
Lorenzo did not answer quickly enough.
That was an answer.
"My father was not a killer."
"No."
Lorenzo looked out the windshield.
"He was worse for the people who were."
They stopped inside a narrow garage behind a shuttered printing shop.
Rafe closed the metal door behind them.
The room smelled of dust and old ink.
A single bulb buzzed overhead.
Three men appeared from a back office.
All wore plain clothes.
All carried guns.
They froze when they saw Evelyn.
"She is with me," Lorenzo said.
No one asked questions after that.
He led Evelyn upstairs to an office with covered windows and a scarred wooden desk.
Rafe placed three phones on the desk.
"All clean."
"Call Luca."
"Already tried."
Rafe's jaw tightened.
"No answer."
Lorenzo's gaze sharpened.
"Dante?"
"No answer."
"My mother?"
"Moved ten minutes before the dinner."
Lorenzo looked at him.
"Moved by whom?"
"Order came through Luca's authentication."
Silence filled the office.
Evelyn understood enough to know this was bad.
"Was Luca at dinner?"
Rafe shook his head.
"He was coordinating security."
"So the person coordinating security disappeared at the exact time your fiancee tried to kill you."
Rafe's eyes cut toward her.
"We noticed."
Evelyn ignored him.
"And your mother was moved on his orders."
Lorenzo looked at Rafe.
"Find her."
"I am working on it."
"Work faster."
Rafe left.
Evelyn remained near the door.
"You are not keeping me here."
"I am."
"I have a home."
"Celeste knows your face."
"She knew my face before tonight."
"Before tonight, you were furniture to her."
Lorenzo stepped closer.
"Now you are the woman who ruined an execution."
Evelyn hated the truth of that.
"I can go to the police."
"Which police?"
"Chicago police."
"That narrows it down to several thousand people, some of whom were on my father's third ledger."
"You expect me to trust you instead?"
"No."
His answer was immediate.
"I expect you to stay alive long enough to make a better decision."
Evelyn folded her arms.
"Then tell me what happened to my father."
Lorenzo's jaw shifted.
"In 2008, Daniel Carter found a set of transfers he was not supposed to find."
"Transfers to who?"
"He never told me."
"You were what, fifteen?"
"Sixteen."
"Then why would he tell you anything?"
"Because I found him bleeding in our garage."
Evelyn stopped breathing for a second.
Lorenzo's voice lost some of its ice.
"He had been beaten."
"He refused to tell my father who did it."
"He kept saying one thing."
Evelyn could barely ask.
"What?"
Lorenzo looked directly at her.
"Tell Evie I did not run."
The room tilted.
Nobody had called her Evie except her father and, years later, Gilbert.
She put one hand on the desk.
"You are lying."
"He had a split lip."
Lorenzo continued anyway.
"Two broken fingers on his left hand."
"A burn along his wrist."
"He kept trying to stand."
Evelyn saw her father's hands in memory.
The left ring finger had never bent correctly during the last months he was home.
He had told her he caught it in a car door.
"What happened after the garage?"
"My father ordered a doctor."
"Daniel refused."
"He left before dawn."
"And disappeared two nights later."
Evelyn's eyes burned.
She would not cry in front of Lorenzo Moretti.
Not for a man she had spent fourteen years teaching herself not to miss.
"Did your family kill him?"
The question hung between them.
Lorenzo did not insult her with a quick denial.
"I do not know."
"That means maybe."
"Yes."
Her hand moved before she decided to move it.
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the office.
Two armed men burst in immediately.
Lorenzo lifted one hand.
They stopped.
Evelyn expected anger.
What she saw was something stranger.
Acceptance.
"You should not have done that," one guard said.
Lorenzo looked at him.
"Leave."
The guards disappeared.
Evelyn's palm stung.
"If your family killed him, I will find out."
"So will I."
"Why now?"
"Because Celeste used an operation word tonight that my father stopped using after Daniel vanished."
Evelyn remembered the glowing phone screen.
"Cleaners."
Lorenzo nodded.
"That was not Celeste's language."
"Whose was it?"
"My uncle Salvatore's."
A door slammed downstairs.
Rafe returned at a run.
"Boss."
His face told Lorenzo the news before his mouth did.
"Your mother's convoy was hit near Oak Park."
Lorenzo's eyes went black.
"Alive?"
"Driver is dead."
"Two guards are dead."
"Car was empty when police found it."
Lorenzo took one breath.
"Where is Luca?"
"Still missing."
Rafe looked toward Evelyn.
"And there is something else."
He placed a tablet on the desk.
A news site was already playing footage from outside the Obsidian.
Smoke billowed behind flashing lights.
A reporter stood in front of the camera.
"Sources inside the Vane family say tonight's violence may have been an assassination attempt ordered by Lorenzo Moretti after a private dispute with his fiancee."
Evelyn stared.
The report had gone live less than forty minutes after the first explosion.
"That was fast."
"Too fast," Rafe said.
The screen changed.
A photograph appeared.
It showed Celeste Vane entering a police station.
Her emerald dress was covered by a gray blanket.
She looked terrified.
Beautifully terrified.
The caption beneath her photograph made Evelyn feel cold.
CELESTE VANE SURVIVES MORETTI ENGAGEMENT MASSACRE.
Then a second image appeared beside Celeste's.
Evelyn recognized herself immediately.
It was a staff photograph from the Obsidian website.
WAITRESS SOUGHT FOR QUESTIONING.
Rafe swore.
Lorenzo said nothing.
The reporter continued.
"Police are also seeking twenty-four-year-old Evelyn Carter, a restaurant employee seen leaving the scene with Moretti shortly after the attack."
Evelyn's heartbeat slowed in disbelief.
"They made me his accomplice."
Lorenzo looked at the screen.
"No."
"They made you my hostage."
The next banner proved him right.
POSSIBLE ABDUCTION VICTIM MISSING AFTER MASSACRE.
Evelyn laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
"I save your life and become evidence against you."
"Welcome to my evening."
She rounded on him.
"Do not joke with me."
"I am not."
Rafe's clean phone rang.
Everyone went still.
He checked the number.
"Blocked."
Lorenzo held out his hand.
Rafe gave him the phone.
Lorenzo answered without speaking.
A woman's voice came through the speaker.
Celeste.
"Hello, darling."
Lorenzo's expression did not move.
"Where is my mother?"
Celeste laughed softly.
"Still so predictable."
"If you hurt her-"
"You misunderstand."
Her voice became almost tender.
"I am not the one you should be worried about."
Evelyn stepped closer.
Celeste continued.
"Ask the waitress what her father stole from yours."
Evelyn went cold.
Lorenzo's eyes shifted to her.
Celeste smiled through the phone.
Evelyn could hear it.
"Then ask her why Daniel Carter is still alive."
May you like
The call ended.
