Chapter 6 - The Man They Buried
By the time Matteo returned to the Moretti estate, daylight had turned the rain silver.
The iron gates opened slowly.
For the first time in his life, he looked at his own home and wondered how much of it belonged to him only on paper.
How many cameras had Dominic controlled? How many schedules had Salvatore Rizzo seen? How many doors had been guarded by men loyal to salaries rather than family?
Mia sat beside him in the back seat eating crackers from a paper diner bag. Grace had tried to brush the child’s hair with her fingers and lost the battle.
Matteo preferred it messy.
It made Mia look six instead of like the tiny Moretti heiress his mother dressed for photographs.
“Daddy,” Mia said.
“Yes?”
“Are we still hiding?”
“A little.”
“Okay.”
He waited for fear.
Instead she offered him a cracker.
He took it.
Grace watched from the other side of the seat, her eyes tired but warm.
The front doors opened before the car stopped.
Isabella Moretti stood beneath the stone portico in a black silk robe and pearls, because even at seven in the morning his mother dressed as if history might arrive with a camera.
She ignored Matteo at first and went directly to Mia.
“Tesoro.”
Mia let herself be hugged, but after a few seconds she reached backward for Grace’s hand.
Isabella noticed.
So did Matteo.
His mother’s mouth tightened, then relaxed.
“Come inside,” she said.
They met in the library.
Matteo placed Elena’s recorder on the desk.
Isabella did not touch it.
“That voice is Salvatore Rizzo,” she said.
Grace stood near the window with Mia, who was drawing at a low table.
Matteo kept his voice even. “You told me Rizzo died.”
“He was ill.”
“That is not an answer.”
“He had pancreatic cancer. He stopped treatment. Six months later, Dominic told us he had died at a private clinic in Switzerland.”
“You saw the body?”
“No.”
“You attended the funeral.”
“A closed casket.”
Matteo laughed without humor. “We are a family of suspicious people who apparently become idiots around coffins.”
Isabella flinched.
Mia looked up from her drawing.
Matteo softened his volume immediately.
His mother noticed that too.
“What did Rizzo do for my father that no one ever wrote down?” Matteo asked.
Isabella sat in a leather chair.
“Everything ugly.”
Grace’s gaze shifted toward Mia.
Isabella amended, “Everything adults did not discuss at dinner.”
Mia returned to coloring.
“He managed transportation,” Isabella continued. “Security rotations. Quiet payments. He believed information was more valuable than money.”
“And Dominic worked with him.”
“After your father died, Dominic inherited many of those systems.”
“Why not me?”
“Because you were the one everyone followed. Dominic was the one who knew where everything was buried.”
Matteo leaned against the desk. “Elena discovered something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I don’t know exactly. She told me she thought money was disappearing through the transportation companies. She believed someone was manufacturing threats so that you would approve larger security budgets.”
Grace said, “A fake war that paid for itself.”
Isabella nodded. “Perhaps.”
Matteo thought of the three years after Elena’s death. The panic. The retaliation. The new armored fleet. The contractors. The emergency purchases approved without questions because everyone believed Ferraro soldiers were coming through the gates.
Fear had been expensive.
Someone had become rich from it.
His phone buzzed.
A message from Dominic.
I FOUND HIM.
Then another.
OLD MERCY CHURCH. NOON. COME ALONE.
Matteo stared at the screen.
Grace knew before he spoke. “Dominic?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going alone.”
Isabella stood. “You’re not going at all.”
Matteo looked at his mother.
“Three years ago, that sentence would have guaranteed I went.”
“And now?” Grace asked.
He looked toward Mia.
The child had drawn four people beneath a giant yellow sun. One was very tall and wore a black square that was probably a suit. One had brown hair. One had white hair. The smallest figure stood between them holding everyone’s hands.
At the top, in uneven letters, she had written HOME.
Matteo’s chest tightened.
“Now I make sure she’s safe first.”
He called Thomas.
Within twenty minutes, every guard at the estate was reassigned in pairs. Exterior access codes changed. Dominic’s men were removed from the property. Matteo sent Mia, Grace, and Isabella not upstairs but to a guesthouse beyond the formal gardens with two retired police officers who had protected Elena during charity events and owed Dominic nothing.
Grace stopped him at the guesthouse door.
“You’re still going.”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“No.”
“Dominic told you to.”
“Dominic has been lying to me for three years. I’m done following his instructions.”
Grace folded her arms. “That might be the first sensible thing you’ve said since dinner.”
His eyebrow lifted.
She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Matteo, if Salvatore Rizzo is alive, he knows Elena left evidence. He may know about me. He definitely knows about Mia.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t go there to punish anyone.”
His jaw tightened.
“What should I go there for?”
“The truth.”
He held her gaze.
“You sound like Elena.”
Grace’s expression changed. “That’s not always a compliment.”
“It was meant as one.”
For a second, neither moved.
Then Mia ran out holding her rabbit.
“Daddy.”
Matteo crouched automatically now.
That surprised him.
She pressed the rabbit into his hands.
“You take Mr. Hops.”
“I think you need him more.”
“No. He’s brave.”
Matteo looked at the worn stuffed animal.
“I have armed men.”
Mia frowned. “Mr. Hops is better.”
Grace covered a smile.
Matteo accepted the rabbit with complete seriousness. “Then I’ll bring him back.”
“And you.”
He looked at his daughter.
“Yes.”
“You bring you back too.”
Something inside him broke open quietly.
He kissed her forehead.
“I promise.”
Old Mercy Church had been abandoned for twelve years. Matteo arrived at eleven forty with two men positioned blocks away and no visible escort.
The church smelled of dust and wet stone.
Dominic stood before the empty altar.
His suit jacket was gone. There was blood on one cuff, not much, and a bruise darkening his cheek.
Matteo’s first emotion was anger.
His second, against his will, was concern.
“What happened?”
Dominic laughed bitterly. “Nice to see you too.”
“Where’s Rizzo?”
“Alive.”
“I gathered that.”
Dominic turned.
For the first time in years, he did not look polished. He looked older than Matteo remembered.
“I didn’t kill Elena.”
Matteo said nothing.
“I know you think I did.”
“I think you lied about things that might have saved her.”
Dominic’s face tightened.
“Yes.”
The admission echoed through the empty church.
Matteo stepped closer.
Dominic continued before he could speak.
“I built the tracking system with Rizzo. I approved the off-book accounts. We were trying to identify who was leaking your routes to the Ferraros.”
“You told me there was no leak.”
“Because there wasn’t one.”
Matteo stopped.
Dominic looked sick.
“The Ferraros weren’t tracking us. Rizzo was creating incidents and blaming them.”
“Why?”
“Money at first. Control after that. Every threat made you approve more contracts. More vehicles. More private security. Companies he secretly owned got paid.”
Matteo’s hands curled.
“And Elena?”
“She found one of the shell companies.”
The church went silent.
Dominic looked at the floor.
“She came to me. I told her I would handle it.”
“You didn’t.”
“I confronted Rizzo. He swore he was only skimming money. I believed him because admitting the truth meant admitting I had built the system he used.”
Matteo’s voice dropped. “The driver.”
Dominic swallowed.
“Rizzo replaced Elena’s driver with Raymond Cole because Cole owed him money. Cole was supposed to take Elena to a warehouse where Rizzo could search her briefcase and scare her into silence.”
Matteo moved before thought.
He grabbed Dominic by the shirt and slammed him back against a pew.
“You knew?”
“Not until after the crash!”
Matteo’s fist drew back.
Then he felt soft fabric under his left arm.
Mr. Hops.
Mia’s rabbit.
You bring you back too.
His fist stopped.
Dominic stared at him.
Matteo released his shirt.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
That choice cost him more than the punch would have.
“Finish.”
Dominic straightened.
“Cole panicked when Elena realized they weren’t going toward home. She grabbed the wheel. The car crossed the median. Rizzo’s men fled before police arrived.”
Matteo closed his eyes.
It was not an assassination.
It was still murder by greed and fear.
“Why fake Rizzo’s death?”
“I didn’t.”
Matteo opened his eyes.
Dominic looked toward the dark balcony above them.
“I helped him leave the country because he told me he was dying. Eighteen months later, I received proof of death.”
A slow clap came from the balcony.
Both brothers looked up.
An elderly man stepped from the shadows.
Thin. Pale. Silver-haired.
May you like
Salvatore Rizzo smiled down at them.
“Family,” he said. “Always so dramatic when the accounting finally comes due.”
