Chapter 5 - The Father Who Was Supposed to Be Dead

Dante called back.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

He stared at the phone.

Grace looked like she might collapse.

“That voice.”

Frank nodded.

“Antonio.”

Dante turned toward him.

“You are sure?”

“I drove him for thirty-five years.”

Frank’s voice broke.

“I know his voice.”

Dante looked at Grace.

She was crying silently.

Thirty years apart.

And suddenly the dead were speaking.

A guard called from upstairs.

“Mr. Moretti.”

Dante went up.

A black sedan had stopped outside the warehouse.

Marina stepped out.

Alone.

Dante’s face hardened.

“You should not be here.”

“I know where my father went.”

Grace appeared behind him.

Marina saw her.

Everything in her expression changed.

Guilt.

Fear.

Recognition.

Grace stared at Marina.

“You are Elena’s daughter.”

Marina froze.

“My mother?”

Grace nodded.

“You have her eyes.”

Marina stepped closer.

“You knew her?”

“She was my sister.”

Marina began crying.

Dante looked between them.

“Marina.”

She wiped her face.

“My mother died when I was twelve.”

Grace whispered:

“I know.”

Marina stared.

“How?”

Grace looked at Robert’s papers.

“Because she found me.”

The room went silent.

Dante’s eyes narrowed.

“When?”

“Three weeks before she died.”

Marina’s hand went to her mouth.

Grace continued.

“She came to Saint Catherine’s old convent in Wisconsin.”

“What did she say?”

“That she learned what our father had done.”

Marina shook her head.

“My mother died in a highway accident.”

Grace looked at her.

“Maybe.”

Dante stepped forward.

“What do you mean maybe?”

Grace reached into her coat.

A folded photograph.

Two women.

Grace.

And a younger woman.

Elena Blake.

Date stamp.

Seventeen years earlier.

Marina took it with shaking hands.

“My father told me she had never seen you after you disappeared.”

“He lied.”

Marina looked toward the Harbor House documents.

Dante’s voice softened slightly.

“Where did Robert go?”

She looked at him.

“The old Moretti estate.”

Frank inhaled.

“That place burned.”

“Not all of it.”

Marina took a key from her bag.

“My father keeps this in his private safe.”

A brass key.

Engraved:

NORTH LODGE.

Dante stared.

“That property belongs to the family trust.”

Marina nodded.

“No one has lived there officially for ten years.”

Grace whispered:

“Officially.”

Dante looked at the key.

“Why would Antonio be there?”

Marina answered:

“Because my father has been paying the utilities.”

Dante laughed once.

Quietly.

“Three years of funding my mother.”

“Ten years of funding my father.”

Marina lowered her eyes.

“I found the payments this morning.”

Dante stared at her.

“After the ball?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you looking?”

“Because for the first time I understood that every time my father said he was protecting me, somebody else lost a life.”

Grace looked at her.

Marina turned toward Grace.

“I am sorry.”

Grace’s expression was unreadable.

Marina continued.

“I knew Dante was your son.”

Dante looked away.

“I did not know where you were.”

Grace stayed quiet.

“I believed you were dead too.”

Still nothing.

Marina’s voice broke.

“I should have told him the moment we met.”

“Yes.”

Grace’s answer was simple.

Marina closed her eyes.

Dante looked at the key again.

Then at Frank.

“We go now.”

The North Lodge stood two hours from the city.

Snow covered the road.

The main estate had burned ten years earlier.

Only stone walls remained.

But beyond the trees was another building.

Smaller.

Hidden.

Lights on.

Dante’s guards surrounded it.

He stopped them.

“No shooting unless someone shoots first.”

Frank nodded toward the door.

Dante inserted the key.

It turned.

Inside smelled like coffee.

Wood smoke.

Medicine.

Someone had lived there.

For years.

A photograph sat on a shelf.

Dante at sixteen.

Another.

Dante at twenty-one.

Another.

Dante at his father’s funeral.

Dante picked it up.

His own face beside an empty casket.

He heard footsteps.

A man appeared in the hallway.

Gray hair.

Thin face.

Scar along his jaw.

But the eyes were the same.

Dante froze.

The man did too.

Grace entered behind him.

Her breath caught.

“Antonio.”

Antonio Moretti looked at her.

Thirty years disappeared from his face for one second.

“Grace.”

She began crying.

Dante did not move.

Antonio looked at his son.

“Dante.”

Dante’s eyes were wet.

But his voice was cold.

“You watched your own funeral.”

Antonio closed his eyes.

“Yes.”

“You watched me bury you.”

“Yes.”

“You watched me become head of everything.”

“Yes.”

Dante threw the framed photograph against the wall.

Glass shattered.

Grace flinched.

Frank stepped forward.

“Antonio.”

Antonio looked at him.

“Frank.”

“Why?”

Antonio glanced toward the back room.

“Because Victor did not die when they said he did.”

Dante stopped.

Frank whispered:

“Victor is dead.”

Antonio shook his head.

“No.”

A floorboard creaked behind us.

Dante turned.

Robert Blake stood in the doorway.

And behind him was another man.

Older.

Broad shoulders.

White hair.

A cane in one hand.

Dante stared.

The family portrait in the library flashed through his mind.

Uncle Victor.

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The dead man smiled.

“Hello, nephew.”