Chapter 3 - The Photograph Outside Room 804
Vincent reached St. Catherine’s in eleven minutes.
He did not remember the drive.
He remembered only Rachel’s voice from the recorder and the image Dr. Patel had described: a photograph of Rachel’s wrecked car lying outside Sophie’s hospital room like a threat.
Eli followed two steps behind him as they crossed the private floor.
Four Moretti security men stood at the elevators. Two hospital guards had sealed the stairwell. A detective from the Chicago Police Department was already speaking with an administrator.
Vincent barely acknowledged any of them.
“Where is my daughter?”
“In her room,” Dr. Patel said. “She’s safe.”
Vincent went in.
Sophie was sitting upright against the pillows, coloring a picture of a horse with a blue marker. Her right leg now rested inside a fresh pale pink cast.
She looked up.
“You came back.”
The words hurt more than they should have.
Vincent crossed the room and kissed her forehead.
“I pinky promised.”
She smiled faintly.
“Did you find Mommy’s thing?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
He looked at the seven-year-old face watching him.
There were truths a child deserved.
There were also truths a child should never have to carry.
“Something Mommy wanted me to know.”
“About Grandma?”
“Yes.”
Sophie lowered the marker.
“Is Grandma mad?”
Vincent pulled a chair close to the bed.
“Grandma isn’t coming near you.”
Her shoulders loosened immediately.
That alone was an answer.
“Ever?”
“Not unless you want her to.”
Sophie stared down at the horse.
“I don’t.”
Vincent took her hand.
“Then she won’t.”
A social worker named Helen Brooks arrived twenty minutes later. Vincent did exactly what he had promised Dr. Patel he would do.
He left the room.
It was one of the hardest things he had ever done.
From the hallway, he could see Sophie through the glass panel in the door. Helen sat beside the bed while Sophie spoke. Sometimes Sophie nodded. Sometimes she pointed toward her cast. Once she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.
Vincent turned away.
Eli approached with a clear evidence sleeve.
Inside was the photograph.
Rachel’s black Mercedes rested against a guardrail, crushed along the driver’s side. Rainwater shone across twisted metal.
Vincent had seen official photographs after the accident.
This one was different.
It had been taken before emergency crews arrived.
“How do we know?” Vincent asked.
Eli pointed toward the road behind the wreck.
“No police lights. No fire truck. No flares. According to the crash report, first responders arrived in six minutes.”
“Then whoever took this was already there.”
“Yes.”
Vincent stared at it.
“Anything on the back?”
Eli turned the sleeve.
Three handwritten words.
SHE SHOULD’VE LISTENED.
Vincent’s expression did not change.
His voice did.
“Find the woman in scrubs.”
“We have camera footage from the hospital garage. Baseball cap, surgical mask. She got into a gray Ford registered to a shell company.”
“Whose shell company?”
“We’re working on it.”
Vincent handed the photograph back.
“Work faster.”
Helen came out of Sophie’s room forty minutes later.
Her face told Vincent the interview had been worse than he expected.
“What did she say?”
“I need to make something clear first,” Helen replied. “Sophie’s statements have to remain hers. If there is a criminal investigation, you cannot repeatedly question her about details.”
“I understand.”
“She described two separate incidents involving Lucia.”
Vincent’s hands went still.
“The broken leg?”
“Yes.”
Helen opened her notebook.
“Sophie says she was in the greenhouse at your mother’s home. She heard Lucia arguing with a man she calls ‘Uncle Adrian.’ She saw him hand Lucia a yellow envelope. Sophie said she heard your wife’s name.”
“Rachel?”
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
“She remembers Lucia saying, ‘Rachel almost ruined everything once.’ Adrian answered, ‘Then stop keeping souvenirs.’”
Vincent felt a pulse at his temple.
“Sophie walked into the room?”
“She says Lucia saw her listening through the open greenhouse door. Lucia grabbed her by the arm and told her never to spy on adults. Sophie tried to pull away. Her foot remained caught between two stone pavers while Lucia twisted her around.”
Vincent looked through the glass.
Sophie was coloring again.
His daughter had described abuse in the plain language of a child.
No drama.
No exaggeration.
That made it worse.
“She told me Grandma said it was an accident,” Helen continued. “She also said Lucia told her that if she told you a different story, you might stop loving her because liars don’t belong in the Moretti family.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
He remembered sitting beside Sophie in the emergency room two weeks earlier.
“Were you running too fast, peanut?”
Sophie had looked at Lucia before nodding.
He had kissed her forehead and said, “You’ve got to be careful.”
The memory sickened him.
“What happened tonight?” he asked.
Helen’s voice remained measured.
“Sophie says Lucia asked her to come upstairs because she had a gift from Rachel. Once they were near the balcony, Lucia demanded the necklace. Sophie refused. Lucia brought out the scissors. Sophie backed away, but moving with the cast made her lose balance. Lucia grabbed her wrist.”
“So Lucia tried to catch her?”
Helen hesitated.
“Sophie says she thought so at first.”
“At first?”
“She says Lucia looked at the necklace, then at the people below.”
Vincent stopped breathing.
“And?”
“Sophie said, ‘Grandma let go.’”
Vincent stared through the glass at his daughter.
Seven years old.
One leg broken.
Standing beside a balcony while the woman who should have protected her made a choice.
Helen continued carefully.
“Sophie does not say Lucia pushed her over the railing. She says she was already falling backward and Lucia could have held her, but instead Lucia released her wrist.”
The distinction mattered legally.
It did not matter to Vincent.
“Thank you.”
Helen watched him.
“Mr. Moretti, Sophie is worried about you.”
He looked at her.
“She thinks telling the truth is going to start a war.”
Vincent almost said that war had already started.
Instead he asked, “What should I tell her?”
“Tell her adults are responsible for adult choices. Tell her the truth was not wrong.”
Vincent nodded.
His phone vibrated.
Eli looked at his own screen at the same time.
“What?”
“The shell company tied to the gray Ford.”
Vincent waited.
“Bellweather Holdings.”
The name from Rachel’s letter.
Bellweather Foundation had been moving money.
Now Bellweather Holdings owned the escape car.
“Who controls it?”
Eli’s jaw tightened.
“Adrian.”
Vincent looked toward the elevators.
“Bring him in.”
“We found him.”
“Where?”
“That’s the problem.”
Eli held out his phone.
A traffic camera photograph showed Adrian Moretti’s black SUV entering the Moretti estate twenty-three minutes earlier.
Vincent stared.
“My mother is there.”
“Yes.”
“With two guards.”
“I called them.”
“And?”
“They’re not answering.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
He turned toward the detective down the hall.
For most of his adult life, Vincent had solved family problems inside the family.
Not tonight.
He walked directly to Detective Alvarez.
“My mother may be attempting to leave my property with a man connected to evidence in my wife’s death.”
Alvarez studied him.
“You want police involved?”
Vincent glanced through the window at Sophie.
“Yes.”
That single word represented a break with nearly a century of Moretti tradition.
“Give me the address.”
Vincent did.
Then he went into Sophie’s room.
She looked up from her horse.
“Daddy, did I do something bad?”
Vincent sat beside her.
“No.”
“But everyone is upset.”
“That is because grown-ups made bad choices.”
“Grandma?”
“Yes.”
Sophie looked at her cast.
“I didn’t want her to get in trouble.”
“I know.”
“I just wanted her to stop hurting me.”
Vincent’s throat tightened.
He touched her cheek.
“You should never have had to ask for that.”
She leaned into his hand.
His phone rang again.
Eli answered his first.
His face changed.
“What?”
Eli lowered the phone.
“The police reached the estate.”
“And?”
“Lucia’s gone.”
Vincent stood.
“What about the guards?”
“Alive. Drugged.”
“Adrian?”
“Gone too.”
Sophie watched from the bed.
Vincent forced his voice calm.
“Stay with Dr. Patel.”
“Daddy?”
He looked back.
“Don’t go somewhere dangerous.”
Vincent returned to her bedside.
He crouched so their eyes were level.
“I’m not going to chase anybody tonight.”
She searched his face.
“Promise?”
He held out his pinky.
“Promise.”
Sophie linked hers around it.
Only after she released him did Vincent step into the hall.
Eli handed him another item police had found in the blue sitting room.
A torn piece of paper.
Lucia had left a message on it.
Not for the police.
For Vincent.
You still don’t understand what Rachel found.
Underneath, in Adrian’s handwriting, was an address.
Vincent knew it.
It belonged to the abandoned Moretti textile warehouse on the river, the building where Salvatore Moretti had died eight years earlier.
The official story said Vincent’s father suffered a heart attack after his car accident and was taken there by one of his men while waiting for an ambulance.
Rachel’s letter had told Vincent to ask why his father’s driver changed three days before his accident.
Now Lucia had fled toward the last place Salvatore Moretti had been alive.
Vincent folded the paper.
May you like
The past was no longer buried.
It was waiting for him by the river.
