Chapter 9 - Dinner With a Dangerous Secret
Victor vanished.
Again.
By sunrise, 314 Mercer Street had become a federal crime scene.
The fake ledger remained behind.
Evelyn was gone.
Victor’s men had used tunnels beneath the neighboring building to reach a waiting vehicle.
Agent Sloan was furious.
Roman was silent.
Sadie recognized which was more dangerous.
They returned to Lombardi’s because the restaurant had become an unlikely neutral ground.
Arthur closed the private dining room.
No customers.
No staff except a skeleton kitchen crew.
Sadie stood inside the room where, less than twenty-four hours earlier, her entire life had broken open with a bottle of wine.
Now federal photographs covered the table.
Victor.
Mercer.
Daniel.
Anthony.
Rebecca.
Evelyn.
Roman stared at one image.
Sadie sat opposite him.
“You haven’t eaten.”
“Neither have you.”
“I worked restaurants for three years. Not eating is part of the uniform.”
Arthur appeared nervously carrying pasta.
“No charge.”
Sadie looked at him.
“That frightened?”
“Yes.”
At least he was honest.
He disappeared.
Roman almost smiled.
Then Tommy entered.
“We found something.”
Sloan looked up.
“What?”
“Victor owns three properties under shell companies.”
“We know.”
“One received a utility spike tonight.”
Roman straightened.
“Where?”
Tommy placed an address on the table.
Sadie recognized the neighborhood.
“Financial district.”
“Old private club,” Tommy said. “Closed six years ago.”
Sloan called her team.
Roman looked at the photograph.
“No.”
Everyone turned.
Sloan frowned.
“No what?”
“He wants us there.”
Sadie considered it.
“Why?”
Roman pointed at the property.
“Victor used that club for meetings twenty years ago.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Once.”
“What’s special about it?”
“Private tunnels. Separate exits.”
Sloan’s expression darkened.
“He could move Evelyn again.”
“Yes.”
Sadie looked at the table.
Victor had remained ahead because everyone reacted to him.
He chose locations.
Timing.
Rules.
“What does he actually want?” she asked.
Roman answered immediately.
“Control.”
“No. Specifically.”
“The ledger.”
“He knows federal agents have it now.”
Roman paused.
“Then he can’t get it back.”
“Exactly.”
Sadie looked at Victor’s photograph.
“So what can he still destroy?”
Sloan said, “Witnesses.”
“Evelyn.”
“Yes.”
Sadie shook her head.
“He could have killed her already.”
Roman’s eyes narrowed.
“He needs her alive.”
“Why?”
Nobody answered.
Sadie remembered Mercer’s video.
The ledger is a person.
Evelyn was not merely a witness.
She knew where records came from.
How they were authenticated.
Who created them.
Without her, Victor could claim fabrication.
But that still did not explain keeping her alive.
Then Sadie remembered the suitcase.
Twenty-two years of records.
“Is anything missing?”
Sloan frowned.
“From what?”
“The real ledger.”
Evelyn had said the archive was complete.
But had anyone checked?
Sloan called the evidence team.
Twenty minutes later she received the answer.
One section appeared referenced repeatedly but was absent.
A file called NORTHSTAR.
Roman frowned.
“What is Northstar?”
Tommy went pale.
Sadie noticed.
“You know.”
Tommy sat down.
“Maybe.”
Roman stared at him.
“Talk.”
Tommy rubbed his jaw.
“When your father died, Victor took over something called Northstar.”
“What?”
“I never knew. Heard the name twice.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it was old business.”
Sadie looked at him.
“Everything is old business.”
Tommy nodded grimly.
Roman asked, “What did Victor say?”
“That Northstar was insurance.”
Sloan leaned forward.
“Against what?”
Tommy looked at Roman.
“Against everybody.”
Silence.
Sadie understood.
“A blackmail archive.”
Tommy nodded.
“Possibly.”
Victor had spent decades collecting secrets.
Judges.
Police.
Politicians.
Businessmen.
Maybe even federal officials.
Evelyn knew where it was.
That was why Victor needed her.
Sloan said, “If Northstar exists, Victor could use it to disappear.”
Roman looked at Sadie.
“Or burn the city behind him.”
Sadie stood.
“We need Evelyn before he opens it.”
Sloan gathered files.
“I’m raiding the club.”
Roman said, “He’ll expect you.”
“Yes.”
“That may be exactly what he wants.”
Sloan paused.
Sadie looked at Roman.
“What aren’t you saying?”
“Victor trained me to build distractions.”
“How?”
“Create one crisis people can see while the real move happens somewhere else.”
Sloan stared at the address.
“The club is the distraction.”
“Likely.”
“Then where is he?”
Roman looked toward Sadie.
She knew before he spoke.
“Lombardi’s.”
Arthur, entering with coffee, nearly dropped the pot.
“What?”
Roman stood.
“The first place Nora reappeared.”
Sadie’s heartbeat quickened.
“Why here?”
“Because Victor knows how I think.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t think like him anymore.”
Roman looked at her.
“No.”
Sadie walked toward the door.
“He hasn’t realized that yet.”
The restaurant had security cameras everywhere.
Kitchen.
Entrances.
Hallway.
Loading area.
Tommy checked footage.
At 4:12 a.m., a delivery truck arrived.
Wrong vendor.
Two men unloaded wine crates.
Arthur frowned.
“We didn’t order anything.”
Tommy froze the image.
One man looked directly at the camera.
Victor Hale.
Arthur sat down hard.
“He was here?”
Sadie looked at the time.
Victor had entered while they were at Mercer Street.
“What did he bring?”
They searched the cellar.
Rows of wine.
Crates.
Roman moved toward one labeled BRUNELLO.
Sadie stared.
The same wine she dropped.
Roman opened the crate.
Inside was no wine.
Only an old wooden box.
Sadie lifted the lid.
A cassette tape.
A key.
And a note.
ROMAN AND NORA.
DINNER. TONIGHT. MIDNIGHT.
NO POLICE.
EVELYN EATS WITH US.
Sloan read the message.
“Absolutely not.”
Sadie looked at Roman.
He looked at her.
Victor had turned everything into theater.
A dinner.
At the restaurant where Nora resurfaced.
“He wants an ending,” Roman said.
Sadie picked up the cassette.
“Then we give him one.”
But when Tommy placed the tape into an old player from the warehouse, Anthony Vale’s voice filled the room.
Roman stopped breathing.
His father had recorded something twenty-two years earlier.
And the first words were:
“If Roman ever hears this, Victor has already betrayed me.”
Roman sat down slowly.
Anthony continued.
“Northstar is not Victor’s insurance.”
A pause.
“It is mine.”
And suddenly, Victor’s final move was no longer only about escaping justice.
May you like
It was about finding the one secret Roman’s father had kept from him.
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