Chapter 4 - Jack Moretti Believed the Waitress
Jack moved me out of the Maragold Room through the kitchen.
Not the front.
Not the east corridor.
The kitchen.
It should have felt humiliating.
Instead, it was the only route nobody involved in the meeting had prepared.
Rocco walked ahead.
Two guards followed behind.
Jack remained beside me, not touching me.
I noticed that.
After years with Ethan, I noticed every man who understood the difference between protecting someone and grabbing them.
“My son.”
“Already in the car with Ruth.”
“Did your men enter the apartment?”
“No.”
“You promised.”
“And I meant it.”
Outside, rain glazed the alley.
A black SUV waited.
Ruth sat in the back with Noah curled against her.
The moment he saw me, he pressed both hands against the window.
“Mom!”
I climbed in.
He wrapped himself around me.
For several seconds, I forgot Jack Moretti existed.
Noah smelled like shampoo and peanut butter.
His hair stuck up on one side.
His robot was tucked beneath his arm.
“Grandma said bad guys were downstairs.”
Ruth shot me an apologetic look.
I kissed his hair.
“Grandma didn’t know who they were.”
“I saw one through the window.”
Every adult in the car went still.
Rocco turned.
“You saw him?”
Noah nodded.
“Black jacket. Gray hat.”
Jack crouched slightly outside the open door so he was closer to Noah’s eye level.
“Did you see his face?”
Noah looked at him suspiciously.
“Who are you?”
For reasons I could not explain, Jack answered seriously.
“Jack.”
“Just Jack?”
A tiny change touched Jack’s mouth.
“For tonight.”
Noah studied him.
Then shook his head.
“I didn’t see the guy’s face.”
“That’s okay.”
“But I saw his car.”
Rocco leaned closer.
“What kind?”
Noah shrugged.
“Black.”
Half of Chicago drove black cars.
Then Noah added, “With a bird.”
“What bird?”
“A silver bird on the back.”
Rocco and Jack exchanged a look.
I saw it.
“What?”
Jack stood.
“Marco’s people use a silver falcon badge on certain private fleet vehicles.”
My stomach turned.
Ruth whispered something I did not catch.
Jack closed the car door and spoke with Rocco outside.
I could see them but not hear them.
Noah handed me his robot.
“The arm broke again.”
Of course it had.
The world could collapse and Noah would still be concerned about a robot.
“The silver connector keeps falling out,” he said.
I stared at the tiny toy.
A connector.
A missing piece.
Suddenly I looked toward Jack.
“Wait.”
I opened the door.
Rocco immediately turned.
“What?”
“The pen.”
Jack stepped closer.
“What about it?”
“The piece I found.”
“Yes.”
“What if someone removed it because they needed more than an invalid signature?”
The lawyer, who had followed in another car, approached.
“What do you mean?”
I looked at Noah’s robot.
“If the verification piece stores information, maybe the person didn’t just want the pen broken. Maybe they wanted the piece itself.”
The lawyer frowned.
“It stores a handshake key.”
“In normal English?”
“It contains part of the cryptographic identity used by the secure recorder.”
“Could someone copy something from it?”
The lawyer’s expression shifted.
“Potentially.”
Jack understood before I did.
“Could the module be used to create a false verification later?”
The lawyer hesitated.
“With expertise, possibly.”
Marco had wanted the agreement to appear legitimate long enough.
What if that was because he intended to manufacture evidence that Jack had completed the signature?
Rocco said, “Then why leave the module in the hallway?”
“Maybe it was dropped,” I said.
Jack looked at me.
“By Victor?”
“Or Parker.”
“Or Marco.”
“Maybe.”
I thought about the corridor.
The linen shelf.
The sound of voices.
Then I remembered something.
“Marco never walked toward me when they finished talking.”
Jack frowned.
“What?”
“I heard them separate. Victor returned toward the room. The third man went toward the east exit.”
“And Marco?”
“I didn’t hear him.”
Rocco understood.
“He stayed in the alcove.”
I nodded slowly.
“Maybe he saw me before I saw him.”
Jack’s expression darkened.
Which meant Marco could have deliberately left the silver component where I would find it.
Rocco said what I was thinking.
“He wanted it found on Lily.”
A trap.
If everything had gone according to plan, Jack would sign.
The alarm would sound.
Jack would be killed.
Then the agreement’s verification would be challenged.
Police or rivals would discover the component connected to the waitress serving coffee.
Marco could claim she had tampered with it.
Maybe accuse her of working for Rinaldi.
A perfect disposable suspect.
I felt sick.
“I wasn’t just invisible.”
Jack looked at me.
“No.”
“I was part of the plan.”
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt.
But I preferred it to comfort built on lies.
Ruth stepped out of the SUV.
“Mr. Moretti.”
Jack turned.
She stood barely five feet tall and wore an old wool coat buttoned incorrectly because she had dressed in a hurry.
Still, she looked directly at him.
“If Lily goes anywhere with you, I go too.”
Jack nodded.
“Fine.”
“And Noah.”
“Yes.”
“And nobody separates them.”
“Agreed.”
Ruth studied him.
“You answer quickly.”
“I’ve learned that delaying reasonable demands wastes everybody’s time.”
Ruth almost smiled.
Then she looked at me.
“We don’t have to go.”
I looked at Noah.
We did.
Not because Jack ordered it.
Because someone had already found Ruth’s building.
“Where?”
Jack answered.
“A property outside the city.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“No isolated house.”
A flicker of surprise crossed his face.
Ethan had loved isolation.
He had called it privacy.
It had really been control.
“Hotel?” Jack suggested.
“Public.”
“Too exposed.”
“Then somewhere with staff.”
Jack considered.
“My family owns an apartment building downtown. Top floors are secure, lower floors are occupied by regular tenants, and there’s a twenty-four-hour desk.”
“Cameras?”
“Yes.”
“Multiple exits?”
“Yes.”
“Ruth gets her own room.”
“Yes.”
“No armed man inside Noah’s bedroom.”
“Obviously.”
I hated that my list sounded unreasonable even to me.
Jack treated every condition like it made perfect sense.
“Anything else?”
I looked at him.
“You don’t get to decide where I go after tonight.”
His eyes held mine.
“Agreed.”
That one word unsettled me more than an argument would have.
We left.
Chicago blurred beyond the windows.
Noah fell asleep against me.
Ruth stared silently outside.
Jack rode in the front.
He never turned around.
That should not have mattered.
But after Ethan, every small absence of control felt enormous.
Twenty minutes later, Rocco received a call.
“Parker’s vehicle found.”
“Where?” Jack asked.
“Near the river.”
“Parker?”
“Gone.”
“Anything inside?”
Rocco listened.
Then slowly turned toward me.
“A Maragold Room employee file.”
My chest tightened.
“Whose?”
He did not need to answer.
Mine.
“Anything else?”
Rocco listened again.
Then his gaze dropped.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Printed photographs.”
Jack’s voice became colder.
“Of?”
“Lily leaving work. Ruth’s building. Noah’s school.”
The car seemed to shrink.
Noah slept against my chest, unaware.
Jack turned around then.
Not to look at me.
To look at Noah.
Something changed in his face.
He had believed me in the restaurant because the evidence made sense.
This was different.
This was personal anger.
“Rocco.”
“Yes.”
“Find out who accessed Lily Bennett’s employee records.”
Victor immediately came to mind.
But Rocco’s next call arrived before he could answer.
He read the message.
“Jack.”
“What now?”
“The file wasn’t printed tonight.”
“How old?”
“Six weeks.”
I stopped breathing.
I had only worked at the Maragold Room three months.
Someone had been watching me for half that time.
Jack looked at me.
“Lily, think carefully.”
“About what?”
“Before tonight, had you ever met Marco Voss?”
“No.”
“Victor ever ask unusual questions about your family?”
I opened my mouth.
Then remembered.
Two months earlier.
Victor asking why Ruth picked Noah up instead of his father.
Victor asking whether Ethan still lived in Chicago.
Victor asking whether my father was alive.
I had thought he was finding new material to insult me with.
I whispered, “Yes.”
Jack waited.
“What did he ask?”
I told him.
Rocco looked uneasy.
Jack asked the question I suddenly did not want answered.
“Why would Marco investigate a waitress weeks before she happened to serve coffee at his assassination plan?”
Nobody spoke.
Noah’s robot shifted in his sleeping hand.
Its broken arm fell off.
The tiny silver connector rolled onto the seat between us.
And staring at that missing piece, I realized the same thing Jack did.
Maria calling in sick tonight might not have been bad luck.
I might not have been “what Victor had left.”
I might have been placed in that room deliberately.
The question was no longer whether Marco had planned to use me.
May you like
The question was why he had chosen me before I ever knew his name.
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