Chapter 3 - A WARNING WRITTEN IN ITALIAN|
Dante did not take Nora home.
He took her to a secure office on the second floor of the mansion, where three monitors showed the entrances, the garden, and the street beyond the iron gates.
Nora sat on the edge of a leather chair, wishing she were back at the diner washing coffee cups.
“Am I under arrest?” she asked.
Dante looked up from his phone.
“No.”
“Am I free to leave?”
“Technically.”
“That's not an answer.”
He set down the phone.
“You can leave whenever you want. But if someone has accessed a restricted archive to find information about your grandmother, I need to know whether you are in danger.”
“I don't know anything about your archives.”
“That's precisely what concerns me.”
A knock interrupted them. Marcus Rinaldi, Dante's head of security, entered carrying a tablet.
“We found the access point. The archive was opened remotely using your code, but the command was routed through three external servers.”
“Can you identify the user?”
“Not yet.”
Marcus placed the tablet on the desk.
“However, the person downloaded one file before the connection ended.”
Dante read the screen.
His jaw tightened.
“What file?”
“The Bellamy file.”
Nora stood.
“What is in it?”
Dante looked at her, then at Marcus.
“Leave us.”
Marcus hesitated.
“Sir—”
“Now.”
When the door closed, Dante turned the tablet toward Nora.
A scanned document filled the screen. It contained names, dates, and a list of financial transfers made decades earlier. One name appeared repeatedly.
Isabella Vescari.
Beside it was another name.
Lucia Bellamy.
“My grandmother's maiden name was Vescari,” Nora whispered.
Dante nodded.
“According to this file, Isabella left Sicily in 1975 with a small amount of money and a sealed letter. The letter was supposed to be delivered to a man in New York.”
“Who?”
Dante enlarged the image.
The recipient's name had been crossed out in black ink.
“Someone removed it deliberately.”
Nora stared at the document.
“Why would your family keep records of a letter my grandmother never mentioned?”
“Because the letter may have contained information someone wanted buried.”
He opened a second file.
It showed an old photograph of a harbor, with several men standing beside a cargo vessel. One man was Aurelio, younger and clean-shaven. Another was a woman whose face had been scratched out.
A note beneath the image read:
The Calatrano shipment was never recovered. The witness left the country.
“What shipment?” Nora asked.
Dante did not answer.
She looked at him.
“You know something.”
“I know the Vescari family has enemies who would do anything to obtain the contents of that letter.”
“Then tell me what was in it.”
“I don't know.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect you to understand that I don't lie when I can avoid it.”
“That sounds like a very convenient philosophy.”
His mouth twitched, almost a smile.
Then the tablet chimed.
Marcus appeared on the screen.
“Sir, we've identified the source of the intrusion.”
“Who?”
Marcus looked uncomfortable.
“The command originated inside the mansion. The user account belongs to your father.”
Dante went still.
“My father doesn't use the security system.”
“That's what we thought.”
A second notification appeared.
The system had detected a new message attached to the stolen file.
Dante opened it.
The message was only one sentence, written in the old Calatrano dialect.
Nora read it aloud.
“The girl must never reach the sea.”
Dante looked at her.
“Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes,” Nora said, her voice suddenly unsteady.
“It means someone knows exactly who I am.”
May you like
Then she recognized the handwriting beneath the message.
It belonged to her grandmother.
