Chapter 11 - Brett Finally Told Me Why My Father Frightened Him

Brett refused to meet at Aurelia House.

He refused Salvatore’s office too.

We ended up in a conference room at Lucia’s law firm, twelve floors above LaSalle Street, with glass walls that made Brett keep glancing over his shoulder even though the blinds were closed.

He looked smaller outside the restaurant.

No manager suit. No clipboard. No staff waiting for orders.

Just a thirty-three-year-old man in a wrinkled jacket who had spent too long pretending arrogance could protect him.

Lucia set a recorder on the table.

“Are you speaking voluntarily?”

“Yes.”

“Has anyone threatened you to come here?”

Brett looked at Salvatore.

“No.”

Salvatore sat across from him with June beside him, though I knew he could read most of Brett’s lips if Brett faced him. June interpreted anyway. After everything we knew about Danner, nobody skipped procedure anymore.

I asked the first question.

“How did you know Daniel Cole?”

Brett rubbed his palms against his jeans.

“I didn’t. Not really.”

“You recognized his name.”

“My father did business with him.”

“What business?”

Brett swallowed.

“Shoreline.”

The room tightened.

His father, Raymond Hale, had managed Shoreline’s Chicago warehouse and truck routes from the late nineties until the company dissolved on paper.

“On paper?” Lucia repeated.

Brett laughed once without humor. “You already know.”

He told us Shoreline never truly disappeared. The trucks changed ownership. The accounts moved. The labels remained because certain restaurants and clubs had used the name so long nobody questioned it.

“My father said the invoices were fake?” I asked.

“Some. Not all.”

“For what?”

Brett shook his head. “Money moving. Cash becoming clean. Payments to people who didn’t want their names on payments.”

Salvatore’s face went cold.

Brett continued quickly. “I was nineteen. I didn’t know any of that then.”

“What did you know?”

“That my dad was scared.”

He had been a busboy at the restaurant that occupied Aurelia House’s location before the renovation. Different name. Same private dining room.

One Thursday night, Daniel Cole arrived carrying a brown document case.

My breath caught.

“He met someone?”

“Carlo Marquetti.”

Enzo’s father.

Brett’s eyes moved toward Salvatore, then away.

“Your dad came in angry,” he told me. “Not drunk. Not scared at first. Angry. He kept saying he had copies.”

“Copies of what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who else was there?” Lucia asked.

Brett stared at the recorder.

“Danner.”

Marco swore softly.

Danner had not yet worked for Vittorio, but he had been in the room with Carlo.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I was told to clear the hall.”

“But you didn’t.”

He looked ashamed.

“I listened from the service pantry.”

Of course he had.

He heard shouting, a chair fall, my father saying he would go to federal investigators in the morning.

Then Carlo said something Brett remembered word for word.

“You won’t have a morning if you make this family choose.”

My hands went numb.

“Did you see my father leave?”

“Yes.”

Hope and dread collided.

“With who?”

Brett looked at me.

“My dad.”

The answer made no sense.

Raymond Hale drove Daniel away in a Shoreline truck shortly after midnight.

Brett never saw Daniel again.

The next morning, Raymond came home with blood on one sleeve and burned his work jacket in a metal barrel behind their garage.

“I asked him what happened,” Brett said. “He slapped me hard enough to split my lip and told me Daniel Cole had run away.”

I stood so fast my chair rolled backward.

“You knew this and you let me work for you for four years?”

“I didn’t know you were his daughter at first.”

“When did you know?”

“Two years ago.”

“How?”

“Danner.”

My vision blurred with anger.

“He came to the restaurant. Saw your employee file. Saw your emergency contact was Eli Cole.”

“And then?”

“He told me to keep you ordinary.”

I stared at him.

“What does that mean?”

Brett’s face crumpled in a way I had never seen.

“Don’t promote you. Don’t put you around private clients. Don’t let you start asking questions.”

The cruelty of the last four years rearranged itself.

Not into kindness.

Brett had humiliated me because he enjoyed power. He had cut shifts because he was petty. But underneath it had been fear and instruction.

“Then why send me to Salvatore?”

He closed his eyes.

“Because I was drunk on being funny.”

No noble motive.

No secret attempt to save me.

Just a cruel joke that accidentally broke fourteen years of silence.

Brett opened his eyes again.

“And because I didn’t know you could sign.”

Salvatore leaned forward.

June voiced his question.

“Where is your father now?”

Brett’s mouth went dry.

“He died last year.”

“Did he leave anything?” Lucia asked.

A long pause.

Then Brett reached into his jacket and placed a brass key on the table.

“My father told me if anyone ever asked about Daniel Cole, I was supposed to destroy what this opens.”

May you like

[COMPLETED] “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DRESS! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT AN OLD SEAM...

[COMPLETED] At the Mafia Boss's Engagement Party, I Served His Hungry So...

[COMPLETED] The Mafia Boss’s Fiancée Tried to Dismiss His Father’s Loyal...

He pushed it toward me.

“I think I’ve destroyed enough.”