The room seemed to hold its breath.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Neither do I. Not fully.”
But we both understood enough.
A knock sounded before she could answer. Patricia entered, followed by Marco. One look at Marco’s face told me something had happened.
I stood slowly. “What is it?”
Marco glanced at Elena, then back at me.
“Say it,” Elena whispered. “I’m tired of people protecting me with silence.”
Marco looked to me.
I nodded.
“We found Vivian Carter,” he said.
Elena’s hand went still in mine. “My aunt?”
“She’s alive,” Marco said quickly. “But she’s gone into hiding. We traced her to a church shelter in Jersey City. She left this morning before our people arrived.”
“Why would she run?”
Marco removed a folded note from his pocket. “Because she knew we were coming.”
He handed it to me.
The paper was plain. The writing elegant.
Dominic,
Elena must hear the recording before she hears anyone else’s version of the truth. Especially yours.
Tell her I am sorry.
V.
Elena stared at the note, her face pale with more than pain.
“The recording,” she whispered.
“The cedar trunk,” I said.
Patricia stepped closer to check Elena’s monitor, but Elena kept looking at me.
“I need to hear it.”
“Not now.”
Her eyes sharpened.
I lifted a hand before she could speak. “Not because I want to keep it from you. Because you just came out of surgery.”
“I can still decide.”
“Yes,” I said. “You can. And I’m asking you to decide after you’ve slept.”
That stopped her more effectively than an order would have.
A faint, weary smile touched her mouth. “That was almost reasonable.”
“I’m practicing.”
“Needs work.”
“I know.”
For the first time since the call at 2:17 a.m., the room held something other than fear. It was fragile and brief, but real.
Then Adrian Vale woke up.
The news came twenty minutes later. Patricia made Elena rest, though Elena argued until the medication pulled her back under. I left her with two guards outside and Patricia at her side.
Adrian’s room was down the hall, guarded now by police and my men in a tense arrangement that satisfied no one. The breathing tube had been removed. His face was gray, lips cracked, eyes sunken with pain.
But when I entered, he recognized me.
Not as a stranger.
As a memory.
“You have his eyes,” Adrian rasped.
“My father’s?”
He gave a small nod.
I sat in the chair beside his bed. Marco remained by the door.
“You protected Elena,” I said.
“I owed her mother.”
“Why?”
Adrian closed his eyes. “Because Lucia saved my soul too late to save my life.”
“That sounds poetic. I need useful.”
A weak smile touched his mouth. “You are his son.”
“Tell me why Elena was targeted.”
“Because Vivian panicked. She contacted an old number. Thought she was reaching me safely. Someone else heard.”
“Who?”
Adrian’s gaze moved toward Marco, then back to me. “The same person who has been listening for twenty years.”
“My uncle is dead.”
“I didn’t say Salvatore.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Marco took one step forward. “Then who?”