Chapter 3 - THE SECRET OUR MOTHERS DIED FOR
Niko had his gun out before I even processed the sound.
He pulled me behind him.
Arthur stared toward the library door.
Another creak.
Then a knock.
“Mr. Shaw?”
Marco’s voice.
Niko didn’t lower the weapon.
“Identify.”
“Marco Bellini. Blue team. Four men. Mrs. Santoro’s friend is secure.”
Mrs. Santoro.
For one absurd moment, that was what caught my attention.
Me.
I was Mrs. Santoro.
Niko unlocked the door.
Marco entered alone.
“The building is clear. One of Shaw’s guards disappeared approximately twenty minutes before the medical call.”
Arthur looked sick.
“Daniel Price?”
Marco nodded.
“He’s gone.”
“He’s been with me eleven years.”
Niko gave my father a humorless look.
“Loyalty has an expiration date when the price becomes high enough.”
Arthur sank deeper into the chair.
I stared at the photograph again.
My mother, Catherine Shaw, looked twenty-five in it.
Maybe twenty-six.
She had one arm around Niko’s mother.
Both women were laughing.
Not posing.
Not performing.
Happy.
“How did I never know they were friends?”
Arthur rubbed his face.
“We erased as much of the connection as possible.”
“We?”
“Your grandfather. Salvatore Santoro. Me. Others.”
Niko’s stare became hard.
“My grandfather knew?”
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t tell me.”
“He promised your mother.”
Niko turned away.
I recognized the emotion in his posture because I had felt it myself less than two days earlier.
Betrayal by a parent did not become less painful because the parent claimed love as the reason.
“What was in the ledger?” I asked.
Arthur looked toward me.
“Payments. Judges. Police commanders. Union officials. Developers. Politicians. Shell companies.”
“Vescari’s network.”
“Yes.”
“Why would Mom have access to that?”
“She was an attorney.”
I knew that.
My mother had practiced corporate law before I was born.
But my father had always described her career as ordinary.
“She represented one of Vescari’s companies?”
Arthur shook his head.
“She represented the whistleblower who worked inside it.”
Niko’s eyes narrowed.
“Who?”
“A financial controller named Elias Monroe.”
“I know the name.”
I looked at Niko.
“From where?”
“He supposedly died in a boating accident.”
Arthur nodded.
“Three weeks after giving Catherine copies of the books.”
I gripped the edge of the desk.
“Everyone dies in accidents around this story.”
“That was the point,” Arthur whispered.
Niko walked closer.
“Where is the ledger?”
“I don’t know.”
“You married us because of something you don’t have?”
“I married you because Vescari believes Sloane does.”
My blood went cold.
“Why would he believe that?”
“Because Catherine left something to you.”
“What?”
Arthur’s eyes lowered.
“The summer before she died, she created a trust.”
“I have a trust.”
“Not the one you know about.”
Niko cursed quietly.
“What did she leave?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared at my father.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother stopped trusting me.”
The words seemed painful for him to say.
“Why?”
Arthur was silent.
“Dad.”
He looked at me.
“Because I took money.”
My chest tightened.
“From Vescari?”
“I didn’t know where it came from at first.”
“You were a prosecutor.”
“I was running for state senate.”
Niko laughed without humor.
“Of course.”
Arthur’s eyes flashed.
“You think your family was clean?”
“No.”
The immediate answer silenced him.
Niko stepped closer.
“My family has blood on its hands. I don’t pretend otherwise.”
Arthur looked away.
Niko continued, “But you built a career selling righteousness to voters while taking money from the same men you condemned.”
“I made one compromise.”
“That’s what every corrupt man calls the first one.”
“Enough!” I shouted.
Both men looked at me.
I couldn’t believe they were turning my mother’s murder into a competition over whose family had done worse.
“I don’t care who gets to be morally superior,” I said. “I want to know why my mother died.”
Arthur’s anger vanished.
He nodded.
“I took the money. Catherine discovered it. We fought.”
My throat tightened.
“She was going to leave you?”
“Yes.”
The answer hit harder than I expected.
“She planned to take you with her. She also intended to turn the evidence over to federal prosecutors.”
“And then she died.”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell Vescari?”
My father looked horrified.
“No.”
“How do I know?”
“Sloane.”
“How do I know?”
Arthur stood.
“Because I loved your mother.”
“You lied about her death for sixteen years.”
“I was terrified.”
“So was she!”
His face crumpled.
The sight should have satisfied me.
It didn’t.
It only made me tired.
Arthur reached for me.
I stepped back.
His hand fell.
“I thought the ledger died with her,” he said. “Then three months ago, a man came into my office.”
“Who?”
“He called himself Gabriel.”
Niko and Marco exchanged a look.
“You know him?” I asked.
Niko nodded.
“Vescari’s fixer.”
Arthur continued.
“He placed a photograph of you on my desk.”
My stomach turned.
“What photograph?”
“You leaving campus.”
“Then what?”
“He told me Catherine’s daughter had inherited what Catherine stole.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Then why the marriage?”
“Because he gave me ninety days.”
“For what?”
“To deliver the ledger.”
“And if you didn’t?”
Arthur’s eyes filled.
“He said he’d make your death look like an accident too.”
Silence.
Suddenly the wedding dress tracker made sense.
The searched apartment.
The sniper.
Someone was trying to find something through me.
I sat down because my knees stopped cooperating.
Niko came closer.
He didn’t touch me.
He simply stood near enough that I knew he would catch me if I fell.
“What did Salvatore offer?” I asked.
Arthur answered reluctantly.
“Protection.”
“In exchange for marriage?”
Niko spoke before he could.
“No.”
I looked at him.
“My grandfather suggested marriage because it made an attack on you an attack on the entire Santoro family.”
“So I’m a flag planted in enemy territory.”
“No.”
“That sounds exactly like what I am.”
Niko’s voice hardened.
“You’re also under legal spousal privilege in several circumstances, tied financially to our security structure, and protected by every alliance carrying our name.”
I stared.
He continued.
“Marriage made you harder to isolate.”
“Did your grandfather tell you about Vescari?”
“No.”
“Then why did you agree?”
Niko looked at Arthur.
“My grandfather told me Arthur Shaw had information that threatened our family and yours. He said marriage would stop an old war before it restarted.”
“You agreed because your grandfather told you to?”
“No.”
He paused.
“I agreed because six weeks ago someone tried to run you off the West Side Highway.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
Arthur closed his eyes.
I looked at my father.
“You said that was a drunk driver.”
Arthur said nothing.
“Dad!”
“The driver wasn’t drunk.”
My hands became cold.
I remembered everything.
Rain.
Headlights.
A black SUV slamming the side of my car.
My car spinning across two lanes.
The metal barrier stopping me inches from the river.
I had spent a night in the hospital with a concussion.
Dad had insisted the driver had been intoxicated and fled.
“You knew.”
Arthur nodded.
Niko’s voice was quiet.
“I saw the incident report through someone in law enforcement. The vehicle was stolen twelve minutes before the collision and abandoned six blocks away.”
“You investigated me before the marriage.”
“Yes.”
“Because of the crash.”
“At first.”
I looked at him.
“And you thought marrying you would protect me?”
“No.”
His eyes held mine.
“I thought making you a Santoro would make people afraid to try again.”
There was no arrogance in the statement.
Only grim reality.
A strange chill moved through me.
“So why did someone try tonight?”
Niko looked toward the transmitter.
“Because whoever is behind this is no longer afraid.”
Marco’s phone buzzed.
He looked down.
Then his face changed.
“What?”
He showed Niko the screen.
Niko read silently.
“Tell me,” I said.
No response.
“Niko.”
He turned the phone toward me.
A photograph filled the screen.
Stella.
She stood outside a hotel beside one of Niko’s men.
Timestamp: eleven minutes ago.
But that wasn’t the photograph that mattered.
The second image had been taken from across the street.
Through a long camera lens.
A red circle had been drawn around Stella’s head.
Underneath were five words.
THE FRIEND DIES FIRST.
My lungs stopped working.
“Where is she?”
“Secure location.”
“Then move her!”
“They already are.”
I looked at Marco.
“Who sent that?”
“Untraceable number.”
Another message arrived.
This time it contained an address.
And a sentence.
BRING CATHERINE’S KEY BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
I stared at the words.
“My mother’s key?”
Arthur whispered something.
Niko’s head snapped toward him.
“What did you say?”
Arthur went pale.
“I said… impossible.”
“Why?”
My father looked at me.
“When Catherine died, the police returned her personal effects.”
“I know.”
“There was a gold chain.”
I remembered.
The necklace lived in a jewelry box inside a safe-deposit box.
A tiny oval pendant.
The only piece of my mother’s jewelry I had refused to wear because touching it hurt too much.
“There was a key on it,” Arthur said.
“No. It was a pendant.”
Arthur shook his head.
“It looked like one.”
Niko stepped closer.
“Where is it?”
My heart pounded.
“Safe-deposit box.”
“Which bank?”
“Hudson National.”
Arthur cursed.
Niko was already reaching for his phone.
“What?”
Arthur looked at us both.
“Hudson National was purchased last month.”
“By whom?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
Niko searched something on his phone.
Then his expression became grim.
“Vescari Capital Holdings.”
I stared.
Niko looked at Marco.
“Lock down the bank.”
Marco began making calls.
Arthur sank into the chair.
And I suddenly understood.
This marriage hadn’t trapped me inside Niko Santoro’s world.
I had been born inside that world.
My mother had simply died before she could tell me.
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
One photograph.
My safe-deposit box.
Open.
Empty.
May you like
Beneath it, another message.
THANK YOU FOR KEEPING IT SAFE, SLOANE.
