Chapter 2 - The Photograph Her Mother Hid
Mave stared at the photograph until the image blurred.
She wanted it to be fake.
Photoshop.
A coincidence.
Anything that would preserve the life she had believed for twenty-eight years.
Instead, there was her mother, Eleanor Bennett, smiling in front of an old waterfront warehouse.
The picture had clearly been taken decades earlier.
Her mother looked barely twenty.
Standing beside her was a much younger Vincent Costa.
Not the Vincent sitting beside Mave.
A man with the same dark eyes and hard jaw, but older than Vincent would have been in 1998.
Mave looked up suddenly.
“That isn’t you.”
Vincent shook his head.
“My father.”
She looked back at the image.
Carlo Costa.
The name existed somewhere in the corners of every newspaper archive about organized crime in New York.
Founder of Costa Shipping.
Philanthropist.
Businessman.
Alleged criminal figure.
Dead for sixteen years.
Mave felt sick.
“My mother knew your father.”
“Yes.”
“How well?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Give me half answers.”
Vincent’s voice remained controlled.
“I’m not keeping this from you. I genuinely don’t know.”
She flipped the photograph again.
Tell our daughter someday.
Her hands began trembling.
Vincent noticed.
He took the photograph before she could crease it.
“Mave.”
“My mother told me my father died before I was born.”
“I heard you.”
“She never mentioned the Costas.”
Vincent said nothing.
“That handwriting,” Mave continued. “Do you recognize it?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes lifted.
“Whose?”
“My father’s.”
The world seemed to tilt.
Mave pulled away from him.
“No.”
“Mave—”
“No.”
She pressed herself against the opposite door.
“You’re saying Carlo Costa was my father?”
“I’m saying we need more information.”
“But you think it.”
Vincent did not respond quickly enough.
Mave laughed once.
It was not humor.
It sounded frightened.
“This is insane.”
The car entered the private underground garage beneath Vincent’s Midtown residence.
Marco stopped beside an elevator.
Vincent opened the door.
“We go upstairs.”
“I’m going home.”
“No.”
She turned on him.
“You don’t get to order me around.”
“Someone followed us from the Plaza.”
“I noticed.”
“Someone knows your mother’s history. Someone knows your birth year. Someone had a photograph of my father standing beside her. You are not going home alone.”
Mave glared at him.
Vincent leaned closer.
“You can hate me upstairs.”
That almost broke through her fear.
Almost.
She climbed out.
Vincent’s penthouse occupied three floors above Manhattan.
Mave had been there only twice.
The space was elegant but strangely empty.
Dark wood.
Stone.
Glass.
A piano no one played.
A wall of windows overlooking the city.
It looked like somewhere designed for magazine photographs instead of living.
Vincent led her into his study.
He unlocked a cabinet and removed a leather box.
Mave stood with her arms folded.
“What is that?”
“My father’s personal files.”
“You kept them?”
“I inherited everything.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
Vincent opened the box.
Letters.
Photographs.
Financial records.
Old passports.
Mave watched him search.
After several minutes, he stopped.
His eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“There used to be another folder.”
“What folder?”
“One labeled E.B.”
Mave’s breath caught.
“Eleanor Bennett?”
“Possibly.”
“And it’s gone?”
Vincent closed the box.
“Yes.”
“How convenient.”
He looked at her.
“You think I removed it?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
That hurt him.
Mave could tell because his expression became calmer.
Vincent became most controlled when he was angry or wounded.
She sat on the edge of a leather chair.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I accused you.”
“Reasonably.”
Mave covered her face with both hands.
“This morning I was worried about a thirty-thousand-dollar accounting discrepancy.”
Vincent’s head lifted.
“What discrepancy?”
She slowly lowered her hands.
“The Belize holding company.”
“What about it?”
“Thirty thousand went to New Jersey.”
Vincent crossed toward his desk.
“Show me.”
“My tablet’s in the car.”
Vincent called Marco.
Three minutes later, the tablet arrived.
Mave opened the spreadsheet.
Vincent studied the transfer.
His expression sharpened.
“This account was closed five years ago.”
“Well, apparently it disagrees.”
“Who authorized this?”
“No signature.”
Vincent picked up his phone.
“Get Leo.”
No answer.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
Vincent looked at the time.
Leo should have returned twenty minutes ago.
He called another number.
“Find Leo.”
Mave watched him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The face where you act like nothing is wrong because something is very wrong.”
Vincent ignored that.
His phone rang.
He answered immediately.
A man’s voice spoke quickly.
Vincent’s expression hardened.
“Where?”
Another pause.
“I’m coming.”
He ended the call.
“Stay here.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Mave.”
“Leo was following the car that was following me. If something happened because of this, I deserve to know.”
“This isn’t a debate.”
“Then fire me.”
Vincent stared.
“Excuse me?”
“If you want a secretary who sits quietly while you hide everything, fire me and hire one.”
“Mave.”
She grabbed her coat.
“You said tonight required a scalpel.”
Vincent exhaled sharply.
“You are impossible.”
“You’ve known that for three years.”
Twenty minutes later, they arrived at a private Costa warehouse near the East River.
Leo was sitting on the hood of a black SUV with an ice pack against his forehead.
Mave jumped out.
“Oh my God.”
“I’m fine,” Leo said.
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you. That helps.”
Vincent approached.
“What happened?”
“They boxed me in near the Queensboro ramp. Two cars. Professional driving. They didn’t want a fight. They wanted me stopped.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“One guy.”
Leo looked at Mave.
“Blond.”
The same stranger.
“He came to the window,” Leo continued. “Put this on the windshield.”
He handed Vincent an envelope.
Inside was another photograph.
Eleanor Bennett.
Carlo Costa.
And a baby.
Mave’s knees nearly gave way.
Vincent caught her elbow.
The baby could not have been more than six months old.
On the back was a date.
April 1999.
Mave had been born in November 1998.
She stared at the picture.
“That’s me.”
Vincent looked sick.
Leo stopped joking.
Mave whispered, “Carlo Costa was my father.”
No one answered.
The truth no longer needed words.
Mave walked away from them toward the edge of the warehouse.
For twenty-eight years, she had believed she came from a quiet life.
Her mother had worked as a bookkeeper.
They had lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn.
Birthday cakes from grocery stores.
Secondhand furniture.
Sunday movies.
Carlo Costa had lived in mansions.
Why?
Why would her mother hide something this enormous?
Vincent came beside her.
“She must have had a reason.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
Mave wiped at her eyes.
“What was your father like?”
Vincent took a long time before answering.
“To the world? Ruthless.”
“And to you?”
“Complicated.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Mave looked at him.
“If he was my father, then what does that make us?”
Vincent’s mouth almost twitched despite everything.
“Not related.”
She stared at him.
He added, “My father was not my biological father.”
Mave blinked.
“What?”
“Carlo adopted me when I was six.”
That was another fact Mave had never known.
Vincent looked toward the river.
“My mother married him. My biological father disappeared before I was born. Carlo raised me.”
“So if Carlo was my father…”
“You would be his biological daughter.”
“And you…”
“His adopted son.”
Mave absorbed this.
The emotional knot between them somehow became more confusing instead of less.
Leo approached cautiously.
“There’s something else.”
Vincent looked irritated.
“Tonight is full of things else.”
Leo handed Mave a small key.
“The blond guy left that too.”
Attached was a metal tag.
B-417.
Mave frowned.
“I know that number.”
Vincent turned.
“From where?”
“My mother used to keep a storage receipt in her jewelry box. I found it after she died. B-417.”
“Where?”
“Grand Central.”
Vincent looked at Leo.
“Station lockers haven’t used keys like this in decades.”
Mave stared at the key.
“My mother told me never to throw it away.”
The three of them drove to Grand Central shortly after midnight.
The old locker area had been renovated years ago, but Costa connections opened doors most people did not know existed.
A facilities manager led them into a basement archive containing abandoned lockboxes from the old terminal system.
Locker B-417 still existed.
Mave inserted the key.
Her hand trembled.
Vincent stood behind her.
“Want me to do it?”
“No.”
She turned the key.
Inside was a small metal case.
A diary.
A cassette tape.
And an envelope addressed in Eleanor Bennett’s handwriting.
MAVE — IF THE COSTAS EVER FIND YOU, READ THIS FIRST.
Mave’s blood turned cold.
She opened the letter.
The first sentence made her sit down.
My darling girl, Carlo Costa was your father, but he was never the man you needed to fear.
Mave read further.
Then stopped.
Vincent watched her face.
“What does it say?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
She looked at him.
“My mother says your father tried to protect us.”
“From whom?”
Mave lowered her gaze to the next line.
Her voice became barely audible.
“From his eldest brother.”
Vincent’s face changed.
Mave looked up.
“You have an uncle?”
Vincent did not answer.
Because according to every Costa family record, Carlo Costa had been an only child.
Yet Eleanor’s letter named the man clearly.
Sebastian Costa.
And beneath the name was a warning.
May you like
If Sebastian ever learns you are Carlo’s daughter, he will come for you—not because of who you are, but because of what your father left in your name.
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