Chapter 4 - The Man in the Gray Coat
They didn't catch him.
By the time Tomas reached the corner, the stranger was gone.
But Rosie's memory had opened a door she had spent four years keeping shut.
Back at the estate, she sat opposite Dante in his study.
“The car behind us stopped after we crashed.”
“You saw it?”
“I think so.”
“Don't force the memory.”
Rosie looked surprised.
“Why?”
“Because I need what you actually remember, not what I convince you to remember.”
She nodded.
Slowly.
“I saw someone approaching.”
“Gray coat?”
“Yes.”
“Face?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
Rosie closed her eyes.
Rain.
Broken glass.
Her father's body beside her.
Footsteps.
A hand reaching through the shattered window.
A ring.
Her eyes opened.
“The ring.”
Dante leaned forward.
“The Valerio ring?”
“Yes.”
She looked at his hand.
Dante wasn't wearing his.
“Where's yours?”
“In a safe.”
“Who wore one that night?”
“I don't know.”
“But it was someone in your family.”
“Probably.”
The word hurt him more than Rosie expected.
Dante had spent his adult life building power because power was supposed to create certainty.
Yet the greatest betrayal of his life had apparently been sitting at his own table.
Tomas entered.
“I recovered part of Samuel's corrupted recording.”
He connected the device to a laptop.
Samuel's voice played.
“The person responsible has access to executive accounts…”
Static.
“…Vin…”
More static.
Rosie looked at Dante.
“Vincent?”
“Possibly.”
“Who else starts with Vin?”
“Three senior employees.”
Dante refused to accuse his cousin without proof.
They examined the financial records instead.
Payments moved through shell companies.
Cargo disappeared.
Insurance claims appeared weeks later.
Millions had been siphoned away.
Then Rosie found something strange.
“What's Bellwood Consulting?”
Dante looked.
A shell company.
Created two weeks after Samuel died.
For four years, it had received payments.
Someone had been using Samuel's name after his death.
Dante traced the account.
The money ultimately moved into a trust.
Beneficiary:
Rosalie Bellwood.
Rosie stared.
“What?”
Nearly $840,000 had accumulated.
She stood so quickly her crutch fell.
Dante caught the crutch before it hit the floor but did not touch her.
“That isn't mine.”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
“Why would someone put money in my name?”
“Insurance against something.”
“Or guilt.”
Dante looked at her.
“Yes.”
The trust had been created by an attorney.
Elias Mercer.
Dante knew him.
“He worked for my father.”
They found Mercer living outside Pittsburgh.
He agreed to meet only after Dante mentioned Samuel Bellwood.
The old attorney arrived at the estate after dark.
The moment he saw Rosie, his eyes filled.
“You look like him.”
“My father?”
Mercer nodded.
Rosie remained standing.
“Why is there money in my name?”
Mercer looked at Dante.
“You weren't supposed to know.”
Dante's voice cooled.
“Tell her.”
Mercer sat.
“Samuel discovered a criminal operation inside Valerio Freight. He came to me because he didn't know whether Dante was involved.”
Rosie glanced at Dante.
“I told him Dante wasn't.”
“How could you know?”
“Because Dante's father had discovered the same thing.”
Silence.
Dante stood.
“My father?”
Mercer nodded.
“Three months before Samuel died.”
Dante's father had supposedly died from a heart attack.
Mercer continued.
“Your father planned to remove someone from the company. He died before he could.”
Dante's expression changed.
Two deaths.
Same secret.
“Who?”
Mercer looked frightened.
“I promised I wouldn't say without the original ledger.”
“What ledger?”
“Samuel had it.”
Rosie remembered the blue folder.
“Was that what they were looking for?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
Mercer shook his head.
“Samuel never told me.”
Rosie looked through the documents again.
Then she noticed numbers handwritten on the back of a photograph.
Not financial numbers.
Coordinates.
Dante entered them into a map.
A point appeared along the Monongahela.
An abandoned Valerio Freight boathouse.
They drove there the following morning.
Inside, dust covered everything.
Rosie found an old locker behind a stack of rotting equipment.
The brass key didn't fit.
Dante examined the lock.
Then he noticed a carved symbol.
A small bell.
Bellwood.
Rosie touched it.
“My dad made things like this for me when I was little.”
She pressed the center.
A hidden panel opened.
Inside lay the blue folder.
Rosie almost cried.
Four years.
Her father had beaten them.
Dante opened it.
The first page contained names.
Dates.
Amounts.
The second contained photographs.
On the third was a signed statement.
Rosie read the final paragraph.
Then she looked at Dante.
“It wasn't Vincent.”
Dante took the paper.
His face changed.
The name belonged to someone he had trusted since childhood.
Someone who had access to everything.
Someone who had stood beside Dante at his father's funeral.
Tomas Raldi.
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Dante turned.
May you like
Tomas stood in the doorway.
And he was holding Samuel Bellwood's missing blue folder case in his hand.
