Chapter 2 - The Man My Father Went to See
I did not go home alone.
That was not my decision.
It became everyone else’s decision for me.
Detective Ruiz wanted patrol officers outside my building.
Gabriel wanted Dante’s security team there.
Dante wanted me somewhere “controlled,” which was apparently his preferred word for a place where nobody could approach without being noticed.
I wanted my own bed.
“I’m going home,” I said.
We stood outside La Stella at one in the morning beneath a cold mist rolling in from the harbor.
Dante’s black sedan waited at the curb.
“So am I,” he said.
“That’s wonderful.”
“You’re not going alone.”
“I didn’t invite you.”
“No.”
“And yet somehow you’re still discussing my night like you own it.”
Gabriel looked away, hiding what might have been amusement.
Dante did not.
“You received a threat containing a photograph of your deceased father.”
“Yes.”
“After stopping an attack on me.”
“Yes.”
“So somebody knows where you work, knows your number, knew your father, and had a man inside your restaurant.”
I crossed my arms.
“Still not hearing the part where you become my legal guardian.”
Something flickered in his eyes.
Almost another laugh.
Not quite.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“You can go home.”
I blinked.
“That easy?”
“No. Gabriel goes with you.”
Gabriel sighed.
I pointed at him.
“He looks like he breaks furniture for exercise.”
“I’m very respectful of furniture,” Gabriel said.
That was my introduction to Gabriel Santoro’s sense of humor.
Dante eventually compromised.
Gabriel rode behind us while Dante drove me home.
I had expected a chauffeur.
The fact that Dante drove himself made him seem more human than I wanted him to be.
My apartment occupied the second floor of a narrow brick building six blocks from the hospital where Dad had spent much of his final year.
Dante stopped across the street.
“You can leave now.”
“No.”
“You agreed.”
“I agreed not to enter unless necessary.”
“That sounds intentionally vague.”
“It is.”
I reached for the handle.
“Eleanor.”
I stopped.
He was looking forward rather than at me.
“I should have told you immediately that I knew your father.”
“You think?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because when you told me he had died, I realized who you were.”
Cold moved through me.
“You didn’t know when I introduced myself?”
“No.”
“Then you learned because of my father?”
“His daughter’s name was Eleanor.”
I remembered something Dad used to say.
Never shorten your name just because other people are impatient.
“You called me Eleanor.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why.”
“Yes.”
Anger replaced confusion.
“You were testing me.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
His hands rested on the steering wheel.
“I was remembering him.”
For several seconds I heard only rain against the windshield.
“What did he want from you?”
Dante looked at me now.
“Protection.”
“For himself?”
“No.”
My pulse quickened.
“For me?”
“I don’t know.”
“That makes no sense.”
“He gave me something and told me not to open it unless a specific situation occurred.”
“What situation?”
“If someone came looking for Sebastian Vale.”
The name from the old photograph.
“What did he give you?”
Dante’s expression closed.
“I can’t tell you yet.”
“Then you can absolutely leave.”
I opened the door.
He caught my wrist lightly.
Not forcefully.
Just enough to stop me.
Then he immediately released it.
“Your father asked me to keep you out of this.”
“He should’ve thought of that before dying without explaining anything.”
Pain flashed across Dante’s face.
“Some people keep secrets because they’re cowards.”
“And others?”
“Because the truth would put someone they love in danger.”
I got out.
Gabriel was already checking the alley beside my building.
My apartment door had not been forced.
Nothing looked disturbed.
That should have comforted me.
It didn’t.
Dante stayed in the hallway while I walked through each room.
Dad’s old recliner still sat beside the window.
I had tried three times to get rid of it.
Every time, I stopped.
On the side table remained an old ceramic cup with a chipped blue rim.
He used to keep medication in it.
I touched the cup.
For the first time since January, I wondered whether Dad had been afraid of something besides dying.
“Eleanor.”
Dante stood near the kitchen.
“What?”
“Don’t touch anything else.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did you see?”
He pointed toward the bookshelf.
A photograph had been moved.
Not missing.
Moved.
Dad and me at Coney Island when I was twelve.
The frame normally faced the sofa.
Now it faced the window.
Gabriel entered.
He took one look and pulled out his phone.
“Someone’s been here.”
“How can you know from a picture?”
“I don’t.”
He crossed the room.
Then he reached behind the frame.
A tiny black device sat taped to the back.
A microphone.
I felt suddenly exposed.
My apartment.
Dad’s chair.
My kitchen.
My memories.
Someone had turned all of it into a listening room.
Dante’s voice became cold.
“You’re not staying here.”
This time, I didn’t argue.
Detective Ruiz arrived twenty minutes later.
By three in the morning, investigators had found two microphones and a miniature camera inside the smoke detector.
No fingerprints.
No obvious forced entry.
Whoever had entered knew what they were doing.
I packed a small bag.
Dante brought me to a townhouse overlooking the harbor.
Not a mansion.
That surprised me.
The house was elegant but restrained, built from dark brick and stone, with large windows facing the water.
Gabriel took the guest room downstairs.
Another guard named Adrian Vale arrived shortly before dawn.
The surname caught my attention.
“Vale?”
Adrian noticed.
“Yes.”
“Any relation to Sebastian?”
His expression tightened.
“My uncle.”
Dante had not warned me.
I turned toward him.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Adrian is also the person I trust most after Gabriel.”
“Your father blamed his uncle for stealing from him.”
“Yes.”
“And he still works for you?”
Adrian answered.
“Because Dante proved Sebastian was innocent.”
“When?”
“Too late.”
The words landed heavily.
“What happened to him?”
Adrian looked toward the harbor.
“He disappeared.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“We assumed so for years.”
“Assumed?”
Dante removed his jacket.
“Three months ago, someone used one of Sebastian’s old financial codes.”
“Where?”
“In a waterfront account that hasn’t been active in twenty-seven years.”
The conspiracy widened before my exhausted brain could keep up.
I sat at the kitchen island.
“Start over.”
Dante poured coffee.
“My father, Vittorio, built Russo Maritime with three partners. Sebastian handled finances.”
“And somebody stole from them.”
“Millions.”
“Your father blamed Sebastian.”
“At first.”
Adrian leaned against the counter.
“My uncle found evidence pointing somewhere else. Before he could expose whoever it was, he disappeared.”
“And my father?”
Dante placed coffee in front of me.
“Your father worked maintenance at the docks.”
“That much I knew.”
“He also repaired security systems.”
I remembered Dad arriving home after midnight when I was young, smelling like machine oil and salt.
“He once told me he hated the waterfront.”
“He had reason.”
“What did he see?”
“We don’t know.”
I laughed once.
No humor.
“Wonderful. Nobody knows anything.”
“We know he helped Sebastian.”
“How?”
Adrian took out his phone and showed me an old scanned ledger.
One entry had initials beside it.
T.H.
Thomas Hart.
My father.
“He signed out a maintenance boat on the night Sebastian disappeared.”
I stared at the initials.
“Did he help him escape?”
“That’s one possibility,” Dante said.
“And the other?”
“That Sebastian never escaped.”
The next afternoon, Ruiz called.
Marco had begun talking.
Not much.
Enough.
He admitted someone had paid off his gambling debt.
In exchange, he was told to inject Dante during dinner.
He had been promised Dante would survive.
A van would be waiting near the service entrance.
Marco claimed he didn’t know who hired him.
I didn’t believe that.
Neither did Ruiz.
Then came the part that mattered.
“The syringe wasn’t only meant to immobilize Russo,” Ruiz said over speakerphone.
“What do you mean?”
“There were trace amounts of another compound.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“What compound?”
Ruiz named something I didn’t recognize.
Adrian did.
“Memory suppressant.”
“Exactly,” Ruiz said. “Not enough to erase memory permanently. Enough to create confusion around several hours.”
I looked at Dante.
“They wanted you alive and unable to remember where they took you.”
“That would be my interpretation.”
Ruiz continued.
“Marco also had a second phone.”
My stomach sank.
“Was my number in it?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“And?”
“There was a photo folder.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed.
“Of Eleanor?”
“Mostly.”
I felt sick.
“What kind of photos?”
“Outside your apartment. Grocery store. Hospital cemetery.”
My breath caught.
Cemetery.
I visited Dad’s grave every Sunday.
“How long?”
“Oldest timestamp is six weeks ago.”
Six weeks.
Before Dante entered La Stella.
Before I spilled the water.
Before I knew any of this.
The room became impossibly still.
“So they weren’t watching me because I saved Dante.”
“No,” Ruiz said.
“They were watching you already.”
“Why?”
Ruiz hesitated.
“Marco claims he doesn’t know.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No.”
The call ended.
I walked to the window.
The harbor stretched dark beneath gray clouds.
Dante stood behind me at a careful distance.
“Whatever your father knew, somebody thinks you inherited it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You may have something without knowing its importance.”
“Dad left me bills, an old watch, and a storage unit full of things I haven’t had the courage to sort.”
Dante’s gaze sharpened.
“A storage unit?”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
The unit sat north of town in a converted warehouse complex.
Dad had rented it for almost fifteen years.
After his death, I kept paying because grief made deciding what to throw away feel impossible.
We arrived before sunset.
Gabriel checked the hallway first.
Unit 214 looked untouched.
My key still worked.
The door rolled upward.
Boxes.
Tools.
Old fishing equipment.
Christmas decorations.
A folding chair.
Dad’s entire practical life packed into rectangles of cardboard.
I walked inside.
Dante stayed near the entrance.
“You don’t have to help.”
“I know.”
I opened boxes one by one.
Nothing.
Then Gabriel called from the back wall.
“Eleanor.”
A metal toolbox sat beneath a tarp.
Dad’s initials were scratched into the lid.
T.H.
I remembered it.
He never let me touch it as a child.
“That was his.”
I opened the latches.
Wrenches.
Screwdrivers.
Wire cutters.
Beneath them lay a false metal panel.
My fingers shook as I lifted it.
Inside was a cassette tape.
A small brass key.
And an envelope.
My name was written across the front.
Eleanor.
Not Ellie.
Dante saw it.
Neither of us spoke.
I tore the envelope open.
The handwriting was Dad’s.
If you are reading this, then I failed to keep the past buried.
I sat on the concrete floor.
Dante crouched beside me.
The letter continued.
Sebastian Vale did not steal from Vittorio Russo.
He found the person who did.
I helped him collect proof.
We were supposed to deliver it together.
But someone discovered us.
Sebastian disappeared.
I survived because I promised to remain silent.
For years, I believed silence kept you safe.
I was wrong.
There is one person you can trust if this begins again.
Not the police.
Not the company.
Dante Russo.
I looked at him.
He looked just as shaken as I felt.
The final lines were worse.
Dante’s father never knew the full truth.
The man responsible is still close to the Russo family.
And if he realizes you have this letter, he will come for you.
Beneath the signature was one final sentence.
Do not trust anyone wearing the Russo crest.
Gabriel inhaled sharply.
Adrian swore under his breath.
I looked from one man to another.
“What does that mean?”
Dante’s face had gone completely still.
“My company executives wear a silver crest at formal events.”
“So?”
“So did my father’s original partners.”
“How many are still alive?”
“Two.”
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number again.
This time there was no message.
Only a photograph.
It had been taken seconds earlier.
Dante and me were visible inside the storage unit.
The camera angle came from somewhere behind us.
We all turned.
The hallway was empty.
Then another message appeared.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO YOUR FATHER, ELEANOR.
May you like
And for the first time, I understood that the person watching me wasn’t trying to learn what I knew.
He was waiting to see whether I would discover it.
