Chapter 7 - BLOOD ON THE OLD FLOORBOARDS|
The gunshot shattered the office window.
Elena dropped behind her father's desk as glass scattered across the floor. Teresa pulled her down, covering her head with one arm.
“Stay low!” Teresa shouted.
A second shot struck the wall.
Elena's heart hammered against her ribs. She had spent years treating people whose lives changed in a single violent second. She knew how quickly a room could become a place of death.
She also knew that whoever was shooting had not come to frighten her.
They had come to silence her.
Teresa pointed toward the back hallway.
“The service door!”
They crawled through the narrow corridor, passing the old examination room where Elena had changed Matthew's dressings ten years earlier. For one terrible moment, she remembered his fingers closing around hers.
Then another shot rang out.
They reached the service door and stumbled into the cold night.
A car waited near the road.
Teresa shoved Elena toward it.
“Get in!”
“Who is shooting at us?”
“I don't know.”
“That's a lie!”
Teresa's face tightened.
“I know who ordered it. I don't know who pulled the trigger.”
A black SUV turned onto the road, headlights blazing.
Teresa pushed Elena into the passenger seat and climbed behind the wheel.
The engine roared.
They sped away as the SUV followed.
Elena gripped the dashboard.
“Call the police!”
“Not yet.”
“People are trying to kill us!”
“And the police may be working for the people who sent them.”
Teresa made a sharp turn onto a narrow road. The SUV overshot the intersection, giving them a few precious seconds.
She drove to a roadside motel and parked behind the building.
Only when the engine stopped did Elena realize her hands were bleeding from the broken glass.
Teresa handed her a clean cloth.
“Your father knew the truth about Adrian's family. He kept evidence because he believed the truth would eventually save the boy.”
“Boy? Adrian was twenty-four.”
“He was still a boy in the ways that mattered. He trusted his uncle. He trusted his mother. He thought loyalty meant obeying the people who raised him.”
Elena pressed the cloth against her palm.
“What did Vincent do?”
“He was moving money through legitimate businesses and using the family's criminal network to eliminate anyone who threatened the operation. Adrian discovered something he wasn't supposed to see.”
“What?”
Teresa looked toward the window.
“A ledger. Names, payments, police contacts, and the identities of people who had been killed to protect the enterprise.”
Elena felt sick.
“Why would my father get involved?”
“Because he treated Adrian after the attack. He saw what the family was doing to him. He refused to let them turn a wounded young man into another weapon.”
Teresa handed Elena the small key.
“Your father hid a second recorder in a storage locker. The key opens it.”
Elena looked down at the metal.
“Why didn't you tell me this before?”
“Because I was afraid.”
The honesty in Teresa's voice was more frightening than any excuse.
“Now someone knows you have the letter,” Teresa continued. “They will keep coming.”
Elena stared at the road.
She could return to her ordinary life, report the attack, and pretend the last twenty-four hours had been a nightmare.
But her father's final secret was out in the open.
And if his death had not been natural, then the man she had mourned for seven years might have been murdered by the same people who stole Matthew from her.
She took out her phone.
There was only one person who could help her reach the heart of the Moretti family.
May you like
She called Adrian.
When he answered, she said, “I think someone killed my father to keep you from remembering me.”
