Chapter 3 - A Name Everyone Feared
Darkness swallowed the basement.
Sophie’s first instinct was to shout.
Her second was smarter.
She grabbed the cassette recorder, photograph and letter, shoved them inside her purse and moved away from the storage box.
Footsteps sounded beyond the metal shelves.
Slow.
Measured.
Someone else was there.
Sophie pulled out her phone.
No signal.
Of course.
Movie characters always had no signal in basements, and Sophie had spent years criticizing them for going into basements anyway.
Now she understood.
Fear made people optimistic about cellular infrastructure.
A beam of light swept across the floor.
Sophie pressed herself behind a shelving unit.
The footsteps came closer.
She could hear breathing.
Then a male voice.
“Ms. Carter?”
She recognized it.
Marco.
Sophie sagged against the shelf.
“Here.”
A flashlight appeared.
Marco reached her.
“What happened?”
“The lights went out.”
“I noticed.”
“How did you know I was here?”
His expression was carefully neutral.
“Mr. Romano.”
“He tracked me?”
“No.”
“Marco.”
“Yes.”
Sophie’s eyes narrowed.
“That is deeply irritating.”
“He predicted you would ignore him.”
“That’s worse.”
Emergency lights flickered on.
Marco checked the room.
Nobody else was found.
The electrical panel had been deliberately switched off.
Whoever had entered had disappeared through a rear service corridor.
Outside, Julian waited beside a black sedan.
Sophie stormed toward him.
“You tracked me.”
“I protected you.”
“You put a device on me?”
“Your phone was already sharing location with the family account you used at the concert.”
Sophie stopped.
“What family account?”
“You bought the ticket through a ticket service.”
“Yes.”
“Your emergency contact information was attached.”
“And you accessed that?”
“Yes.”
“That is somehow even creepier than the tracker.”
Julian opened the passenger door.
“Get in.”
“No.”
“It’s raining.”
“I’ve survived weather before.”
“Sophie.”
“Julian.”
For several seconds, they stared at each other.
Marco quietly moved several yards away.
Julian lowered his voice.
“Someone followed you into that building.”
“And your solution is to order me into a car?”
“My solution is to keep you alive long enough to yell at me tomorrow.”
That disarmed her.
Slightly.
She got in.
During the drive, Sophie showed him the photograph.
It depicted Thomas Carter standing beside four men outside a Romano shipping terminal.
Julian recognized three.
His father, Alessandro Romano.
His uncle, Vittorio Romano.
And Dominic Vale, an attorney who still represented Romano Holdings.
The fourth man was unfamiliar.
Sophie turned the photograph over.
Names were written on the back.
Thomas Carter.
Alessandro Romano.
Vittorio Romano.
Dominic Vale.
Samuel Price.
Julian’s face hardened.
“You know him?”
“Samuel Price was a federal investigator.”
“Was?”
“He disappeared sixteen years ago.”
Sophie stared at him.
“That seems important.”
“It is.”
They arrived at Julian’s house shortly after seven.
Sophie expected something resembling a fortress.
Instead, the estate was an old stone home overlooking Lake Michigan.
Still enormous.
Still guarded.
But warm light filled the windows.
Inside, Julian led her to a library.
Sophie removed the cassette recorder from her purse.
“Do you have anything that can play this?”
Julian looked offended.
“I’m thirty-seven, not twelve.”
Ten minutes later, Marco produced an old cassette player from somewhere inside the mansion.
Sophie inserted the tape.
Static.
Then her father’s voice.
Sophie closed her eyes.
Fifteen years disappeared.
Thomas Carter sounded exactly as she remembered.
Warm.
Steady.
A little tired.
“If Sophie is hearing this, I failed to fix something before it reached her.”
Her hand covered her mouth.
Julian stood several feet away.
The recording continued.
“I discovered money moving through Romano Maritime accounts. Not Alessandro’s money. Someone is using the company. I believe it connects to Samuel Price’s disappearance.”
Static cracked.
“There is a ledger. I divided the evidence because one copy would be too easy to destroy.”
Sophie glanced at Julian.
Her father continued.
“Alessandro knows part of this. He believes his brother Vittorio is being framed. I’m not so certain.”
Julian’s jaw tightened.
“If anything happens to me, Sophie must never be involved.”
A long pause.
Then Thomas spoke again.
“And if Julian Romano ever hears this—your father is trying to protect you from the same person I am.”
Julian went completely still.
The recording ended.
Sophie looked at him.
“Your father died too.”
“Eight months after yours.”
“How?”
“Heart attack.”
“You believe that?”
“I did.”
The room suddenly felt colder.
Julian sat across from her.
“My father changed during his final year. He stopped trusting people. Changed drivers. Replaced staff. Put restrictions on accounts.”
“And you never knew why?”
“He refused to tell me.”
Sophie looked toward the cassette player.
“Maybe he was trying to protect you.”
Julian’s expression tightened.
“Protection built on silence is still a lie.”
Sophie understood that more than she wanted to.
Her father had loved her.
But he had also built half her childhood on secrets.
She unfolded the letter again.
There was more writing on the second page.
I hid the rest where your mother taught you that courage sometimes looks like music.
Sophie frowned.
Julian noticed.
“What?”
“My mother taught piano.”
“Where?”
“At Saint Agnes Community Center.”
The center had closed eleven years earlier.
The building now belonged to a Romano redevelopment company.
Sophie laughed once.
“Of course it does.”
“What?”
“Apparently every road in my life leads back to you.”
Julian’s eyes held hers.
“That wasn’t true yesterday.”
“No. Yesterday I was just stealing your chair.”
Something softened between them.
Dangerous.
Unexpected.
Then Marco entered.
“Julian.”
The use of his first name changed the room immediately.
“What happened?”
Marco handed him a tablet.
Security camera footage showed Sophie entering Grand Central Storage.
Ten minutes later, another man entered through the rear door.
The image was grainy.
But clear enough.
Julian enlarged it.
Sophie recognized the man instantly.
Principal Daniel Whitaker.
Former principal of Franklin Elementary.
The man who had hired Sophie eight years earlier.
The man who had attended her mother’s funeral.
The man who still volunteered twice a month at her school.
Sophie whispered, “That can’t be right.”
Julian looked at her.
“You know him.”
“Yes.”
“How well?”
“He was my father’s best friend.”
Then Sophie remembered something she had not thought about in years.
Daniel Whitaker had been driving the car directly behind Thomas Carter on the night her father died.
May you like
At least, that was what he had told police.
And suddenly Sophie knew exactly who she needed to question next.
