Chapter 5 - The Price on Elena Hart
Elena stared at the photograph.
“That’s impossible.”
Noah was six in the picture.
Elena was twenty-three.
They were outside a courthouse on the day she received guardianship.
Nico watched her.
“Who knew you then?”
“Everyone. Nobody. I don’t know.”
“Think.”
“My parents were dead. Noah’s father disappeared before he was born. Our mother—”
She stopped.
Nico noticed.
“Your mother?”
“She died when Noah was five.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
Nico looked toward Gabriel.
Gabriel understood.
Elena’s voice sharpened.
“Don’t.”
“We need to investigate.”
“My family has nothing to do with you.”
“Someone kept your photograph for seven years.”
That silenced her.
Gabriel returned hours later carrying a file.
Elena’s mother had worked for a pharmaceutical company.
Valenti Biomedical Holdings.
Nico stared at the page.
“My father owned that company.”
Elena felt suddenly sick.
Her mother had been an accountant.
Three months before her death, she had reported financial irregularities.
Millions disappearing through shell corporations.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Victor Sanz.
Elena looked at Nico.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if I were lying, you wouldn’t have the file.”
It was infuriatingly logical.
Then Gabriel found something worse.
Elena’s mother had mailed evidence to a federal investigator.
It never arrived.
Her accident occurred forty-eight hours later.
Elena sat down.
For seven years she had believed her mother’s death was random.
Now random was becoming difficult to believe.
Nico lowered himself carefully into the chair opposite her.
“Elena.”
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
She covered her mouth.
No tears came.
Not yet.
“I spent seven years blaming her.”
Nico said nothing.
“She was working late all the time. Noah was sick even then. I thought she cared more about that stupid company than us.”
Her voice broke.
“And maybe she was trying to protect us.”
Nico’s face changed.
He knew something about misunderstanding dead parents.
“My father kept secrets too,” he said.
Elena looked at him.
“What kind?”
“The kind that leave children paying for them.”
Their eyes met.
For once there was no nurse and patient.
No mafia king and broke employee.
Just two people standing beneath the shadows left by their families.
Then Gabriel entered.
His face told them something had happened.
“Noah’s missing.”
Elena stood so quickly her chair fell backward.
“What?”
“The hospital room is empty.”
The world disappeared beneath her.
Nico was already reaching for his crutches.
Gabriel moved toward him.
“You can’t go.”
“Watch me.”
Elena grabbed Nico’s arm.
“You can barely walk.”
He looked at her.
“And your brother is out there.”
That ended the argument.
Because Nico Valenti had just chosen to leave the safest house in Bellhaven while injured.
For Noah.
May you like
For Elena.
And whoever had taken the boy was about to discover exactly what that choice meant.
