Chapter 7 - The Mafia Boss Who Never Trusted Anyone
I didn't tell Adriano about the photograph.
That was my first mistake.
My second was believing that the person holding my father would actually release him if I followed the instructions.
At five in the morning, I left the temporary apartment wearing jeans, sneakers, and the old blue coat my mother had given me years earlier.
I took a taxi halfway across Brooklyn.
Then another.
The warehouse stood at the end of an industrial street, its windows covered with plywood and its loading bays rusted shut.
I stopped across the road.
Every instinct told me to leave.
Then I remembered the photograph.
My father's face.
Alive.
Waiting.
I crossed the street.
The warehouse door opened before I touched it.
A man in a gray jacket stood inside.
"Miss Brennan?"
"Where's my father?"
"Come in."
"No. Bring him out."
He gave a small, unpleasant smile.
"That isn't how this works."
I stepped backward.
A second man appeared behind me.
My stomach dropped.
"Your phone," the first man said.
I gripped it.
"Let me speak to my dad."
He sighed.
"You're making this unnecessarily difficult."
Suddenly, the phone vibrated in my hand.
ADRIANO COSTELLO.
The man noticed.
"Don't answer."
I pressed the green icon.
"Adriano—"
The man lunged forward.
The phone fell.
I stumbled backward.
Before either stranger could reach me again, headlights swept across the warehouse entrance.
A black SUV stopped abruptly.
Marco stepped out.
Two additional security men followed.
Then Adriano emerged from the passenger side.
His expression was unlike anything I'd seen before.
Not loud.
Not frantic.
Terrifyingly controlled.
"Eliza. Come here."
The man in the gray jacket raised his hands.
"We haven't done anything."
"Then you won't object to waiting for the police."
Adriano's gaze remained fixed on me.
I ran toward him.
Only when I reached the SUV did I realize how badly I was shaking.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Did they touch you?"
"No."
He looked toward Marco.
"Keep everyone in sight. Ruiz is on her way."
Then he opened the passenger door for me.
"Get in."
We didn't speak until we reached a diner several blocks away.
Adriano ordered coffee.
I stared at the tabletop.
Eventually, he asked the question I'd been dreading.
"Why didn't you call me?"
"Because the message said to come alone."
"Eliza—"
"That's my father!"
My voice rose.
Several customers glanced in our direction.
I lowered it.
"That's my father, Adriano. What was I supposed to do?"
"Tell someone you trust."
I laughed bitterly.
"And who would that be?"
The words landed harder than I'd intended.
He leaned back.
"Fair question."
I looked up.
His expression had changed.
Not anger anymore.
Something closer to hurt.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
"You don't owe me an apology for wanting your father back."
"Then why are you upset?"
"Because whoever sent that message understood exactly what would make you walk into danger."
He paused.
"And they were right."
I wrapped my hands around the coffee cup.
"How did you find me?"
"The residence reported that you'd left before dawn. Marco checked on you, found you absent, and called. When you didn't answer, I was concerned."
"Did you track my phone?"
"No. The driver's pickup details and the location you briefly mentioned before the call dropped helped us find the area."
I looked at him.
"You really don't trust anyone, do you?"
Adriano's mouth tightened.
"Not easily."
"Why?"
He was silent for so long I thought he wouldn't answer.
Then he loosened his tie.
"Because when I was nineteen, my father's closest friend gave me the name of a man he said I could trust."
"What happened?"
"That man sold information about my family to someone who wanted us gone."
I studied the scar on Adriano's face.
"Is that how you got that?"
His fingers moved instinctively toward his temple.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
He looked down at his coffee.
"Trust became expensive after that."
Over breakfast, Adriano told me more about himself than he had during all our previous conversations combined.
His father had built a network of legitimate transport, construction, and hospitality businesses.
But the Costello family also had a history of criminal associations.
After Vittorio's death, the empire fractured.
Adriano inherited its debts, enemies, and dangerous loyalties before he was old enough to understand most of them.
"People think power means never being afraid," he said.
"Doesn't it?"
"No. It means learning how much damage fear can do when you pretend it isn't there."
I watched him carefully.
"Do you regret the life you've lived?"
He didn't look away.
"Parts of it."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only honest one I have."
For the first time, I didn't see the man from the newspapers.
I saw someone who had learned to survive by keeping every emotion behind a locked door.
And somehow, he'd opened that door just enough for me to glimpse the person underneath.
Detective Ruiz called an hour later.
The two men at the warehouse claimed they had been hired to deliver a message.
They refused to identify their employer.
No evidence of my father had been found inside.
But a recent photograph of him had been recovered from an office printer.
Somebody wanted us to believe he was nearby.
Somebody had arranged an elaborate trap.
I rested my forehead against the cold diner window.
"What do we do now?"
Adriano's phone rang before he could answer.
Reynolds.
His expression sharpened as he listened.
Then he stood.
"The bank?"
A pause.
"How long ago?"
He looked at me.
"Eliza, we need to go."
Forty minutes later, we entered the bank's private conference room.
A preservation officer and two attorneys were waiting.
The safe-deposit box had been opened under documented supervision after an emergency legal application.
Its contents had been photographed and secured.
There were three items.
An old accounting ledger.
A sealed envelope.
And a photograph.
I barely noticed the ledger.
My attention went straight to the picture.
It showed Vittorio Costello standing beside my father.
Between them was a woman.
Young.
Elegant.
Dark-haired.
Her face looked disturbingly familiar.
I turned the photograph over.
Three names were written in blue ink.
Vittorio Costello.
Daniel Brennan.
Isabella Moretti.
I looked at Adriano.
"Who's Isabella?"
He stared at the photograph.
His face had lost all color.
"She's my mother."
I blinked.
"Your mother?"
"She disappeared six months after my father died."
His gaze remained fixed on her smiling face.
"And I've spent seventeen years believing Conrad Harrington killed her."
May you like
But when we opened the sealed envelope, the first line of my father's letter revealed something neither of us had expected.
Adriano, your mother wasn't taken by Conrad. She left because she discovered who was truly responsible for Vittorio's death.
