Chapter 5 - THE NAME MY FATHER NEVER USED
I did not sleep.
At three in the morning, I gave up pretending.
The guest room Luca’s housekeeper had assigned me was larger than my apartment and approximately one hundred times quieter.
I lay beneath linen sheets staring at the ceiling while the sentence repeated inside my head.
The north service exit is meant for her.
Me.
A tired seamstress with overdue electricity bills, two decent pairs of shoes, and exactly zero enemies that I knew about.
Why would anyone build an operation around kidnapping two women, planting devices inside Luca Moretti’s suit, compromising a wedding, and manipulating an elite designer just to get me near a service exit?
At three fifteen, I got dressed.
At three twenty, I found Luca’s tailoring room.
He was already there.
Of course he was.
He stood alone at the far worktable in shirtsleeves, examining the numbered cards we had removed from the wedding garments.
“You should be sleeping,” he said without turning.
“So should you.”
“I rarely do.”
“That sounds unhealthy.”
“People have mentioned it.”
I walked closer.
“What are you looking for?”
“Patterns.”
“That’s my department.”
He glanced at me.
“Sit.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“Elena.”
“I’m sitting.”
I pulled out a chair.
He slid eight cards toward me.
“Any meaning?” he asked.
“Not to tailoring.”
“Birthdays?”
“No.”
“Addresses?”
“Maybe.”
I rearranged them automatically from smallest to largest.
4, 5, 8, 12, 14, 17, 21, 31.
The sequence bothered me.
Not arithmetic.
Not random either.
I stared.
Then I noticed the small notches cut into one edge of every card.
“Do you have a ruler?”
Luca handed me one.
I measured the cards.
All identical.
But the notches sat at different positions.
I placed them in a line.
The notches created a staggered pattern.
Like—
“Stitch lengths.”
Luca frowned.
“What?”
“These aren’t numbers.”
“They’re clearly numbers.”
“The numbers aren’t the important part.”
I rotated each card.
The notches aligned like marks on a clothing pattern.
I found tracing paper in a drawer and copied their positions.
When connected, they formed something resembling a narrow zigzag.
Then I understood.
“It’s shorthand.”
“For?”
“Tailoring notation.”
Luca leaned closer.
“Explain.”
“Old-school cutters mark pattern changes with combinations of numbers and notch placements. Bastion doesn’t use this system. Almost nobody does anymore.”
“Who does?”
I hesitated.
“My father did.”
Luca became very still.
I looked at him.
“What?”
“Your father was a tailor?”
“Yes.”
“Name?”
“Thomas Ward.”
Something in his face changed.
Not recognition.
Calculation.
“Always Thomas?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Did he have a middle name?”
“Andrew.”
Luca stepped away from the table.
My irritation vanished.
“You know something.”
He said nothing.
“Luca.”
He walked to a cabinet built into the wall.
Unlocked it.
Inside were old files.
Not the type of sleek digital records I expected from a man like him.
Paper.
Photographs.
Newspaper clippings.
He removed a narrow black folder.
The label was faded.
A. WARD.
My mouth went dry.
“Why do you have my father’s name in your house?”
Luca placed the folder on the table.
“You said Thomas Andrew Ward.”
“Yes.”
“Your father went by Andrew before you were born.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not.”
I opened the folder.
The first photograph hit me like a physical blow.
My father stood beside a much younger man outside a tailor shop.
He was maybe thirty.
Dark hair.
Thin face.
Same crooked smile I remembered.
Beside him stood another man with Luca’s eyes.
“That’s my father,” Luca said.
I couldn’t speak.
The photograph had been taken decades ago.
My father had never once mentioned knowing the Moretti family.
I turned it over.
Two names were written on the back.
Vittorio Moretti and Andrew Ward.
My hand trembled.
“What is this?”
Luca sat opposite me.
“Your father worked for mine.”
“As a tailor?”
“At first.”
My skin prickled.
“What does that mean?”
“My father believed clothing could tell him things.”
“So did mine.”
“That is why he hired him.”
Luca’s voice remained calm.
“Andrew Ward became responsible for inspecting anything my father wore to public events.”
I stared.
“You had a security tailor?”
“My father had enemies.”
“You have enemies.”
“I inherited some.”
“Apparently.”
He almost smiled.
I looked down at the photograph.
“My father told me he worked theater costumes before opening his repair shop.”
“He did. After he left my father.”
“Why did he leave?”
Luca didn’t answer immediately.
That told me I wasn’t going to like it.
“Because someone tried to kill Vittorio using a formal coat.”
My eyes lifted.
“How?”
“A concealed object. The details don’t matter.”
“Who found it?”
“Your father.”
My chest tightened.
“So this happened before.”
“Yes.”
“Red thread?”
“No.”
“Then why does this notation look like his?”
Luca opened the folder to a photocopied page.
My father’s handwriting covered the margins.
Numbers.
Notches.
Fabric diagrams.
I recognized every curve.
When I was nine, he taught me to mark patterns exactly that way.
I traced one line.
“I thought he invented this because he hated commercial patterns.”
“He adapted it.”
“From what?”
“A code he and my father used.”
I looked at him.
“A code for what?”
“Threat levels.”
The room suddenly felt colder.
Luca pointed to the cards.
“Can you translate them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said you recognize the system.”
“I recognize the markings, not what they meant to your father.”
I kept turning pages.
Then I saw a symbol.
Three short diagonal lines crossing a vertical mark.
My heart stopped.
I had seen it hundreds of times.
My father used to draw it on the inside cover of my school notebooks.
On lunch bags.
Birthday cards.
He told me it meant luck.
“What does this mean?”
I pointed.
Luca’s face hardened.
“Immediate danger.”
I stared at him.
“My father told me it meant luck.”
“Maybe for you it did.”
I turned the page.
Another photograph.
This one showed my father outside a hospital.
He was holding a baby.
Me.
Across the street, slightly blurred, stood Vittorio Moretti.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Why was your father at the hospital when I was born?”
Luca looked away.
That frightened me more than the answer.
“Tell me.”
“Elena—”
“Tell me.”
“My father believed someone was looking for Andrew.”
“Why?”
“Because of what he knew.”
“What did he know?”
“A name.”
My hands went cold.
“What name?”
“We never found out.”
I laughed once.
Harsh.
Unsteady.
“This is insane.”
“Yes.”
“My father repaired prom dresses in a shop beside a laundromat.”
“After leaving organized crime behind.”
“He wasn’t a criminal.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“You said he worked for your father.”
Luca accepted that without defending himself.
“Andrew kept Vittorio alive. More than once.”
I pushed away from the table.
“Then why did he die broke?”
The question escaped before I could stop it.
My father had died when I was nineteen.
Heart attack.
At least that was what I had been told.
We had barely been able to afford the funeral.
Luca’s expression changed.
“What?”
“If he was so important to your family, why did no one help him?”
“Elena.”
“No. You have a file about him. Your father stood outside the hospital when I was born. You knew his old name in three seconds. So where were all of you when he died?”
Luca stood slowly.
“How did your father die?”
“Heart attack.”
“When?”
“December eighteenth, twenty years ago.”
His face drained of color.
I had never seen fear on Luca Moretti.
Until then.
“What?”
He crossed to the cabinet.
Pulled out another file.
Flipped through it.
His movements were suddenly urgent.
“December eighteenth?”
“Yes.”
“What year?”
I told him.
He stopped.
“No.”
“What?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because Andrew Ward was seen in Philadelphia eight months after that.”
The room went silent.
I stared at him.
“My father was buried.”
“Did you see the body?”
I hated him for asking.
“Closed casket.”
“Did you identify him?”
“My aunt did.”
“Your mother?”
“She was already dead.”
Luca looked at me as though the entire world had just changed shape.
“Who was your aunt?”
“Margaret Ward.”
He stepped backward.
I knew immediately.
“What?”
His voice dropped.
“Margaret Ward was not your aunt.”
Every childhood memory inside me seemed to fracture at once.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“She worked for my father.”
“As what?”
Luca looked toward the locked door.
“Counterintelligence.”
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“My aunt sold insurance.”
“Maybe afterward.”
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
I grabbed the old folder.
“If my father was alive after his funeral, where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then find out.”
“I will.”
“No. Now.”
Luca stared at me.
Then pressed a button beside the table.
Marco entered less than thirty seconds later.
“What happened?”
Luca handed him a sheet.
“Find everything on Thomas Andrew Ward after December eighteenth, twenty years ago.”
Marco looked at the photograph.
Then at me.
“Her father?”
“Yes.”
“And Margaret Ward.”
Marco’s expression tightened.
“That Margaret Ward?”
I stared at him.
“You know her too?”
Nobody answered.
“Wonderful.”
I stood.
“Apparently I’m the last person on Earth to know my own family.”
Marco looked uncomfortable.
“Miss Ward—”
“Elena.”
He nodded.
“Elena. Margaret disappeared nine years ago.”
My anger vanished.
“What?”
“She didn’t retire to Arizona?”
“No.”
My knees nearly gave out.
I sat again.
Aunt Margaret sent me birthday cards from Arizona for years.
Cheap postcards.
Cactus pictures.
Messy handwriting.
Then they stopped.
I thought she had died somewhere without anyone telling me.
Luca crouched beside the table.
His voice was quieter.
“When did you last speak to her?”
“Nine years ago.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing important.”
“Think.”
I closed my eyes.
Her last phone call.
I had been working late in a dry cleaner, repairing a bridesmaid dress.
Margaret had sounded nervous.
She asked whether I still used Dad’s old sewing box.
I had laughed.
Then—
My eyes opened.
“She asked me about the brass thimble.”
Luca and Marco exchanged a look.
“What brass thimble?” Luca asked.
“My father’s.”
“Where is it?”
“At my apartment.”
Luca stood.
“We’re going.”
Marco shook his head.
“No. I’ll send a team.”
“I’m going.”
“So am I,” I said.
Both men looked at me.
I folded my arms.
“Try stopping me.”
Forty minutes later, we entered my apartment under armed escort.
Nothing looked disturbed.
My old wooden sewing box sat in the bedroom closet.
I opened it.
Spools.
Needles.
Buttons.
My father’s silver scissors.
And the brass thimble.
I picked it up.
Luca took it gently.
The base was thicker than I remembered.
He twisted it.
The bottom unscrewed.
Inside was a tiny rolled strip of paper.
My hands shook as Luca unfolded it.
A single name had been written in my father’s handwriting.
ENZO BELLINI.
Below it were six words.
IF THEY FIND ELENA, RUN.
I stared at Luca.
Neither of us spoke.
Then Marco’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“Boss.”
“What?”
Marco looked directly at me.
“Rosa Delgado regained consciousness.”
My pulse jumped.
“She identified the man she saw in Bastion’s workroom.”
“Who?” Luca asked.
May you like
Marco swallowed.
“Enzo.”
