Chapter 4 - Blood Inside the Family
By noon, Dante had summoned his family.
Not to the main Moretti headquarters.
That would have been expected.
He chose an old machine shop on the South Side that his father had purchased in 1998 and never sold.
Concrete walls.
One entrance.
No windows at ground level.
Everyone arrived angry.
Luca first.
Thirty-five. Handsome. Fast smile. Faster temper.
“What the hell is going on?”
Dante ignored him.
Carlo Moretti came next, sixty-eight, silver-haired, carrying the same cane he had carried since a bullet shattered his knee twenty years ago.
Vincent Bellini arrived without complaint.
That worried Cassidy.
Men who didn't complain when summoned to dirty buildings usually understood power too well.
Matteo closed the door.
Cassidy stood near the rear wall.
Luca noticed.
“The waitress?”
“She has a name,” Dante said.
“Why is she here?”
“Because she was at the diner.”
Luca laughed once.
“So now she's family?”
Dante's eyes moved to him.
“No.”
Something in his tone ended the conversation.
Dante placed the photograph from CST on the table.
Antonio Moretti.
Carlo.
Vincent.
Daniel Hale.
Luca leaned closer.
“Who is that?”
Cassidy answered.
“My father.”
Vincent's eyes flicked toward her.
Tiny.
But Cassidy saw it.
She had become good at tiny things.
“My father worked for Meridian,” she said.
Carlo's hand tightened around his cane.
Dante noticed.
“Uncle?”
“Old name.”
“You know it?”
Carlo looked at Vincent.
Vincent remained calm.
“Everybody knew Meridian.”
Luca frowned.
“I didn't.”
“Before your time,” Carlo said.
Dante circled the table.
“Meridian laundered money for us.”
Vincent corrected him.
“For everyone.”
“Who controlled it?”
Nobody answered.
Dante looked at Carlo.
Then Vincent.
“I'm not asking twice.”
Carlo sighed.
“Your father created it.”
Dante stopped.
Cassidy looked at him.
“You told me someone built it behind the families.”
“Antonio started it as a financial clearing system,” Carlo continued. “Less exposure. Fewer middlemen.”
“And then?”
Vincent spoke.
“Then people got ambitious.”
Dante looked at him.
“Who?”
Vincent met his gaze.
“Your father.”
Cassidy watched Dante's jaw tighten.
“Careful.”
“Antonio wanted control.”
“My father hated consolidation.”
“Toward the end, he changed.”
“You're lying.”
Vincent gave him a tired look.
“You were twenty-nine when he died, Dante. You worshipped him.”
Dante stepped forward.
“I knew him.”
“No son knows his father completely.”
Cassidy flinched.
Her own father seemed to whisper through that sentence.
Dante leaned both hands on the table.
“Did Daniel Hale steal the Meridian ledger?”
Vincent's eyes shifted.
“Yes.”
Cassidy felt something tighten in her chest.
“You knew him.”
“I did.”
“Were you at my house the night he died?”
Vincent looked at her.
“No.”
“You're lying.”
Luca moved between them.
“Watch yourself.”
Cassidy stared at him.
“You have no idea what you're standing in front of.”
Luca laughed.
Dante said, “Move.”
“Dante—”
“Move.”
Luca stepped aside.
Vincent's face remained calm.
Cassidy hated him for that.
“I heard your voice,” she said.
“Trauma changes memory.”
“I heard you tell my father, ‘Antonio should've burned the book when he had the chance.’”
Dante's head turned sharply.
Vincent said nothing.
Cassidy continued.
“That sentence was the last thing I heard before the gunshot.”
Carlo closed his eyes.
There.
Cassidy saw it.
“You knew,” she whispered.
Carlo looked at her.
“What?”
“You knew my father was going to die.”
“No.”
“You knew something.”
Dante turned.
“Carlo.”
His uncle's shoulders dropped.
“Antonio found out Meridian had become something else.”
“What?”
“A marketplace.”
“For money?”
“For power.”
Carlo's voice was rough.
“Contracts. blackmail. political favors. police protection. assassinations.”
Dante looked at Vincent.
“And you?”
“I tried to stop it.”
Cassidy laughed.
Nobody joined her.
“You expect anyone to believe that?”
Vincent ignored her.
“Antonio wanted out.”
Dante asked, “Who wouldn't let him?”
Carlo stared at the floor.
Dante's voice dropped.
“Who?”
Carlo looked up.
“Thomas Bellini.”
Dante froze.
Vincent's younger brother.
Dead eleven years.
Vincent shook his head.
“No.”
Carlo slammed his cane against the floor.
“You protected him then. You're still protecting him!”
Vincent stepped forward.
“Thomas was used.”
“By who?”
“Antonio.”
Dante's patience snapped.
He overturned the table.
The crash echoed through the machine shop.
“Enough!”
Everyone went silent.
“My father is dead. Thomas is dead. Daniel Hale is dead. And somebody sent thirty men to kill me last night.”
Dante looked around the room.
“One of you told them where I was.”
Luca stared.
“You think it was us?”
“I know it was someone with access.”
“Then look at Matteo.”
Matteo didn't react.
Luca pointed.
“He controls your schedule.”
Matteo said, “You knew too.”
“So did you.”
Carlo said, “Stop.”
Nobody listened.
Vincent spoke quietly.
“Dante, whoever is doing this wants exactly this. Division.”
Dante looked at him.
“You're right.”
Vincent relaxed slightly.
Then Dante continued.
“So nobody leaves.”
The doors were locked.
Phones collected.
Accounts frozen.
By evening, the Moretti organization had effectively arrested itself.
Cassidy sat in an upstairs office studying the number sequences she remembered from childhood.
Her father used to call them constellation games.
“Find the stars.”
He'd give her sixteen digits.
She would repeat them.
Then thirty-two.
Then sixty-four.
She had thought he was proud of her memory.
Maybe he had been.
Maybe he had also been terrified.
Dante entered carrying two coffees.
Cassidy looked at the cup.
“You poisoned it?”
“Not yet.”
He sat.
She took the coffee.
“What did you find?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Try me.”
She pushed a notebook toward him.
Columns of numbers.
“Some come back clearly. Others don't.”
“Could be encryption.”
“Could be my dad's grocery list.”
“Your father had strange groceries.”
Cassidy almost smiled.
Dante watched her.
Then she noticed him watching.
“What?”
“You don't look like someone whose mother is missing.”
Her face closed.
“What am I supposed to look like?”
“I don't know.”
“Neither do I.”
She lowered her eyes.
“If I panic, I can't think. If I can't think, she's dead.”
Dante said nothing.
Cassidy rubbed her forehead.
“My mother spent seven years telling me to forget everything. Now the only way to save her is to remember.”
Dante leaned back.
“My father used to tell me memory was dangerous.”
“Why?”
“Because eventually you remember people accurately.”
That landed between them.
Cassidy looked at him.
“You loved him.”
“Yes.”
“You still do.”
Dante stared at the coffee.
“That's the problem.”
His phone buzzed.
One of the temporary devices.
Matteo.
Dante answered.
“We traced Evelyn's photograph.”
Cassidy was standing before he finished.
“Where?”
“Old meatpacking district. Three possible warehouses.”
“Which?”
“Number seventeen has the same floor drain.”
Cassidy grabbed her coat.
Dante stood.
“Wait.”
“No.”
“It could be bait.”
“My mother is there.”
“Exactly.”
Cassidy moved toward the door.
Dante caught her wrist.
She turned.
“Let go.”
“If you run into that building angry, they win.”
“She is my mother.”
“And you're the only reason she's still alive.”
Cassidy stared at him.
He released her.
“We go smart.”
Three hours later, they entered warehouse seventeen through an adjacent building.
No lights.
No guards.
Too easy.
Dante hated easy.
Cassidy hated silence.
They found the chair from the photograph.
Empty.
Rope on the floor.
Still warm.
Cassidy touched it.
“They moved her.”
Dante searched the room.
A camera sat on a tripod.
A single red light blinked.
“We're being watched.”
Cassidy looked up.
A speaker crackled.
Then Evelyn's voice filled the warehouse.
“Cassie, if you're hearing this, don't trust—”
Static.
Cassidy stepped closer.
“Mom?”
The recording continued.
“Don't trust anyone named—”
A gunshot in the recording.
Cassidy froze.
Dante looked at the speaker.
Then another voice.
Male.
Distorted.
“Bring the sequence to Pier 41 tomorrow at midnight.”
Dante scanned the ceiling.
“Sequence?”
“They know.”
Cassidy looked sick.
The speaker continued.
“Come alone, Cassidy.”
Dante almost laughed.
Nobody came alone anymore.
Then the voice added:
“And Dante?”
He stopped.
“We know you're there.”
Cassidy looked at him.
The speaker crackled again.
“You still don't understand why your father died.”
Dante's hand tightened around his gun.
“Antonio Moretti discovered the traitor too late.”
A light switched on across the warehouse.
One wall illuminated.
Hundreds of photographs.
Dante.
Luca.
Carlo.
Vincent.
Matteo.
Cassidy.
Evelyn.
Years of surveillance.
At the center was a photograph of Antonio Moretti.
A red X across his face.
Beside it, Daniel Hale.
Another X.
And beneath both men, one name written in black marker.
VINCENT BELLINI
Cassidy whispered, “They want us to think it's him.”
Dante stared.
“Or they know it is.”
Then he saw something else.
A photograph pinned lower on the wall.
Luca.
Meeting with Marek Voss.
Three months earlier.
Dante's face hardened.
Cassidy stepped beside him.
“Your brother knew him.”
Dante removed the photo.
Behind it was a receipt.
A private club.
Date.
Time.
Signature.
Luca Moretti.
Cassidy looked at Dante.
“What are you going to do?”
Dante stared at his brother's name.
For years, he had believed betrayal would arrive with ambition.
Money.
Jealousy.
Power.
He had never imagined it might arrive wearing his father's smile.
Then Cassidy noticed a second signature at the bottom of the receipt.
She went still.
“Dante.”
He looked.
The second name was not Vincent.
Not Matteo.
Not Carlo.
It was Evelyn Hale.
Cassidy's mother.
May you like
And the meeting had taken place only six weeks ago.
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