Chapter 2 - The Man Who Pulled Her From the Fire
Dante did not sleep.
At 2:16 a.m., he stood alone in the penthouse library with a glass of bourbon he had not touched.
Elena’s final sentence kept repeating in his mind.
The license plate belonged to the Romano family.
It could mean a dozen things.
Seventeen years earlier, the Romano organization had owned fleets of vehicles.
Construction cars.
Security cars.
Delivery vans.
Private sedans.
Several hundred employees had access to them.
But Dante knew Elena well enough to understand something important.
If the explanation were harmless, she would have given it.
Instead she had spent seventeen years protecting Samuel Reed.
And now Samuel had somehow fallen into debt with an organization tied to Dante.
That felt less like coincidence every minute.
At seven the next morning, Elena entered the library wearing the same ivory blouse as the previous night.
She had refused the clothes Marco brought from her apartment.
Perhaps on principle.
Dante pushed a cup of coffee toward the chair opposite him.
“I’m not hungry.”
“It’s coffee.”
“I’m not thirsty either.”
“You’re angry.”
“Excellent deduction.”
“Sit down.”
“I’d rather stand.”
Dante sighed.
“Fine.”
She remained standing.
He opened a folder.
“I found the accident report.”
Her face stiffened.
“Seventeen years old. Your father, Carlo Moretti, was driving north on the Westchester Parkway. Your mother, Teresa, passenger side. You were in the back.”
Elena stared out the window.
“The report claims heavy rain caused your father to lose control.”
“That’s what they decided.”
“You don’t believe it.”
“I was twelve.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Elena looked at him.
“I remember my father yelling.”
“What?”
“Someone was following us.”
Dante waited.
“Dad kept checking the mirror. Mom told him to slow down. Then headlights came beside us.”
Her hands tightened around the back of the chair.
“I remember metal hitting metal.”
Dante said nothing.
“The car spun. We went through the barrier. I woke upside down.”
Her voice became quieter.
“Smoke was everywhere. My mother wasn’t moving. My father tried to turn around to reach me.”
She stopped.
Dante had interrogated criminals without flinching.
Listening to Elena describe being twelve years old inside a burning car was harder.
“Samuel broke the rear window,” she continued. “He cut my seat belt. Dragged me through the glass. The car caught fire less than a minute later.”
“And your parents?”
“He tried.”
Two words.
Enough.
Dante looked down at the report.
“Samuel told police another vehicle struck you.”
“Yes.”
“The statement disappeared.”
Elena’s eyes met his.
“You found that?”
“There’s a reference to an amended witness report, but the amendment itself isn’t in the file.”
“He was threatened.”
“By whom?”
“He never knew.”
“Tell me what happened afterward.”
Elena walked toward the windows.
“Samuel came to the hospital once. He had cuts on his hands and face. I remember apologizing because he was hurt.”
A sad smile appeared.
“He laughed. Told me he had gotten worse injuries fixing his roof.”
Dante could almost picture it.
“A week later, he disappeared.”
“Why?”
“Someone visited him.”
“Romano?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did they say?”
“He told me years later that a man showed him photographs of his wife leaving work and his son walking to school.”
Dante’s jaw hardened.
“Samuel had a son?”
“Daniel. Seven years old then.”
“And whoever visited him threatened the family.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t Samuel go to police?”
“He had already tried.”
Elena finally sat down.
“The detective who took his statement told him to forget what he saw.”
Dante recognized the kind of corruption his father’s generation had considered ordinary.
Not everyone in the Romano organization had been cruel.
But cruel men had lived comfortably inside it.
“When did Samuel contact you again?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“So you really hadn’t seen him for seventeen years?”
“Not once.”
“How did he find you?”
“He didn’t.”
Elena hesitated.
“I found him.”
“Why now?”
She looked toward the folder.
“I received an envelope.”
Dante became still.
“When?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“What was inside?”
“A photograph.”
“Of what?”
“My parents’ car.”
Dante’s attention sharpened.
“After the crash?”
“Before.”
She reached into her handbag.
For the first time, Dante realized she had been carrying something beneath the lining.
Elena removed an old photograph.
The image showed a dark sedan stopped at a gas station.
Carlo Moretti stood beside it.
Another vehicle was visible in the far background.
Black.
Long.
Expensive.
Dante picked up the photograph.
There was handwriting on the back.
ASK THE MAN WHO PULLED YOU OUT.
“Who sent this?”
“No return address.”
“You had it analyzed?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if the Romano family had anything to do with what happened, I couldn’t exactly ask Romano security to investigate.”
Dante absorbed the insult.
Because it was deserved.
“How did you locate Samuel?”
“Private investigator.”
“What did you learn?”
“He lives in Queens. His wife died eleven years ago. His son moved to Oregon. Samuel worked construction until an injury ended it.”
“The debt?”
“Medical bills and business loans.”
“Why Houseian?”
“He borrowed from the wrong lender trying to keep his home.”
“And you paid it.”
“Yes.”
“Why secretly?”
“Because Samuel would never have accepted it.”
Dante looked again at the photograph.
“Where is he now?”
Elena did not respond.
“I promised I wouldn’t approach him last night. It’s morning.”
“Dante.”
“I’m not sending soldiers.”
“You are not meeting him.”
“Elena.”
“No.”
He almost smiled.
“You know nobody speaks to me that way.”
“I do.”
“And yet?”
“You pay me extremely well.”
Despite himself, Dante laughed once.
The tension eased for perhaps five seconds.
Then disappeared.
“I need to know whether someone in my family murdered your parents.”
“You want to know.”
“Yes.”
“I need to.”
That distinction silenced her.
Dante leaned back.
“If my family did this, Elena, you deserve the truth.”
“And what happens when you find it?”
“That depends on who is responsible.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The Romano answer.”
His expression cooled.
“What answer would you prefer?”
“One where nobody disappears.”
Dante studied her.
“You think I’m my father.”
“I think you inherited his world.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
Elena’s voice softened.
“But sometimes I’m afraid you’ve had to become close enough.”
The remark landed harder than an insult.
Dante looked away first.
At nine, they drove to Queens.
Elena finally agreed after Dante promised Marco would remain in the car.
Samuel Reed lived in a narrow brick townhouse beside a laundromat.
Nothing about the neighborhood suggested a man connected to organized crime.
Samuel answered the door after Elena knocked twice.
He was sixty-four.
Gray hair.
Weathered face.
A cane in his left hand.
He saw Elena.
Then Dante.
The door immediately began closing.
Elena caught it.
“Samuel.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“You said nobody else.”
“I know.”
Samuel stared at Dante.
“You’re Romano.”
Dante did not deny it.
Samuel’s face changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“That face,” he whispered.
Dante frowned.
“What?”
Samuel looked almost twenty years younger in his terror.
“I saw your father.”
Elena froze.
Dante’s heart seemed to stop.
“Where?”
Samuel stepped backward.
“The night of the crash.”
Dante stared at him.
“My father was there?”
“Not at the road.”
“Then where?”
Samuel looked toward the street before pulling them inside.
He locked three separate bolts.
The living room was small and clean, filled with photographs.
Samuel sank into a chair.
“I gave the police the license plate. Two days later, a detective came to my apartment with another man.”
“Who?” Dante asked.
“I didn’t know his name.”
“Describe him.”
“Tall. Gray suit. Scar beside his ear.”
Dante immediately knew.
Vincenzo Romano.
His father’s older brother.
Dante’s uncle.
Still alive.
Still powerful.
Still technically retired.
Samuel continued.
“The detective told me I was confused. Said there had been no second car.”
“And the other man?” Elena asked.
“He put pictures of my wife and son on the table.”
Samuel’s hand trembled.
“He told me accidents happen every day.”
Dante’s face became stone.
“Did he admit ordering the crash?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say you saw my father?”
Samuel looked directly at him.
“Because three nights before the Moretti crash, I was working late at a service station in Yonkers.”
Dante waited.
“Your father was there. So was the man with the scar.”
“What were they doing?”
“Arguing with Carlo Moretti.”
Elena’s breath caught.
“My father?”
Samuel nodded.
“Your father kept saying he had copies.”
“Copies of what?”
Samuel stood slowly.
He walked toward a cabinet.
From behind a framed photograph, he removed an envelope.
“I’ve kept this seventeen years.”
He placed it on the table.
Elena stared at it.
Her father’s handwriting covered the front.
If anything happens to me, find Samuel Reed.
Dante looked from the envelope to Samuel.
“You knew her father?”
Samuel nodded.
“Not well.”
“Then why did Carlo trust you?”
“Because I was standing there when he learned what the Romano family had been hiding.”
Elena reached for the envelope.
Samuel suddenly covered it with his hand.
“Before you open this, you need to understand something.”
His eyes shifted toward Dante.
“Carlo Moretti wasn’t running from the Romano family.”
Dante frowned.
“He was running from one Romano.”
“Vincenzo?”
Samuel shook his head.
Then whispered the name Dante never expected.
“Your father.”
Inside the envelope was a financial ledger showing that years before Dante inherited the Romano empire, someone had been stealing millions under his father’s authority.
May you like
And at the bottom of the final page appeared a signature that could destroy everything Dante believed about the man who had raised him.
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