Chapter 5 - THE LEDGERMatteo had spent most of his adult life believing fear was useful only when properly aimed.
His real father.
He closed the laptop.
Elena said nothing.
That helped.
Most people spoke when silence became uncomfortable.
Matteo had always preferred silence.
Tonight it felt like suffocation.
“My father was Antonio DeLuca.”
Elena nodded carefully.
“The document could be wrong.”
“It is wrong.”
“Okay.”
He looked at her sharply.
“You don’t believe that.”
“I believe someone wrote it.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
She moved closer.
“But if we want the truth, we should investigate instead of deciding which answer hurts least.”
Matteo almost laughed.
“You have a talent for saying dangerous things.”
“I discovered financial crimes committed by a man who tried to kill me. Caution clearly isn’t my strongest quality.”
Despite himself, Matteo smiled.
Then Luca entered.
“We found Russo.”
Matteo stood.
“Where?”
“Dead.”
The smile vanished.
Luca placed a phone on the table.
“His body was found near the river. Police think robbery.”
“We don’t.”
“No.”
Matteo looked toward the laptop.
“Russo was cleaning evidence.”
“Or Sloane was.”
Matteo paced.
“Pull Russo’s finances for five years.”
“Already doing it.”
“And find everything on Victor Sloane.”
Luca hesitated.
“There’s almost nothing.”
“Then find what doesn’t exist.”
After he left, Elena reopened the laptop.
“Matteo Sloane.”
Matteo looked at her.
“That was the name beside Victor.”
“He could have changed it.”
“To Victor?”
“Or Matteo was a code.”
Matteo remembered something.
His father had sometimes called him Teo.
Never Matteo.
He had assumed affection.
Maybe Antonio hated the name.
“Search birth records,” Elena said.
“They’ll be falsified if this goes where I think it does.”
“Then search death records.”
Matteo looked at her.
“Why?”
“People are more careful inventing lives than erasing deaths.”
They searched.
Nothing.
Then Elena tried newspaper archives.
A result appeared from 1971.
A photograph of two boys outside Saint Vincent Home for Children.
ANTONIO AND MATTHEW DELUCA, AGES TEN AND TWELVE, ADOPTED BY LOCAL BUSINESSMAN GIANCARLO DELUCA.
Matthew.
Not Matteo.
Matteo stared.
“They were brothers.”
“Looks like it.”
“Antonio never mentioned one.”
Elena enlarged the picture.
The older boy wore a ring on a string around his neck.
Even in black-and-white, the stone was visible.
A dark oval.
Blue.
Matteo stood.
“Victor Sloane is my uncle.”
The words felt ridiculous.
Impossible.
Yet they fit.
The pendant.
His father’s secrecy.
Sloane knowing the estate.
Project Cerulean.
Elena scrolled further.
A later newspaper article reported Matthew DeLuca missing after a warehouse fire in 1986.
Presumed dead.
Three years later, Victor Sloane appeared in corporate filings in Canada.
No childhood.
No parents.
No history before age twenty-seven.
A ghost born fully grown.
“That’s him,” Elena said.
Matteo looked at the photo.
“Why kill Antonio?”
“Because your father tried to expose him.”
“Then why let me live?”
The question hung between them.
Elena didn’t answer.
Matteo knew why.
Because Victor might be his father.
The possibility turned his stomach.
His phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
Elena asleep in the penthouse bedroom.
Taken ten minutes earlier.
Matteo’s head snapped toward the hallway.
Another message.
You still believe your walls protect her.
Matteo grabbed Elena’s hand.
“We leave now.”
“What happened?”
He showed her.
Her face drained.
“How did they—”
“Camera.”
“They’re inside?”
“Maybe.”
Luca returned.
“Emergency stairwell.”
They moved toward the service elevator.
Matteo stopped.
Too obvious.
“Roof.”
“Helicopter?”
“No. Adjacent building.”
The hotel rooftop connected by maintenance bridge to another tower.
They climbed.
Halfway up, gunfire erupted below.
Elena stumbled.
Matteo caught her.
“Keep moving.”
The rooftop door burst open.
Wind hit them.
Chicago stretched beneath them in lights.
They crossed the bridge.
A bullet struck the railing.
Elena screamed.
Matteo pushed her forward.
Luca fired behind them.
They reached the next roof.
A black SUV waited thirty floors below.
Ten minutes later they were moving through traffic.
Matteo watched mirrors constantly.
Elena sat beside him.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere Victor doesn’t know.”
“Does that exist?”
Matteo looked at her.
“My mother’s house.”
Elena blinked.
“Your mother is alive?”
“Yes.”
“You think she knows about Victor.”
“I think she knows everything.”
Isabella DeLuca lived in a quiet house outside Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, surrounded by trees and enough security to make it look accidentally peaceful.
She opened the door herself.
At seventy-two, Isabella still carried herself like the wife of a man who had once controlled half of Chicago’s underground economy.
She looked at Matteo.
Then Elena.
Then the pendant around Elena’s neck.
The color vanished from her face.
“Where did you get that?”
Elena answered.
“My mother.”
“Name.”
“Rose Marlowe.”
Isabella grabbed the doorframe.
“Oh, God.”
Matteo stepped closer.
“You know her.”
Isabella stared at Elena.
“You have Rose’s eyes.”
Elena went still.
“My mother knew Antonio?”
Isabella looked at her son.
“You should both come inside.”
“No.”
Matteo’s voice hardened.
“Tell me who Victor Sloane is.”
His mother closed her eyes.
“Matteo…”
“Now.”
“He was your father’s brother.”
“And?”
Her silence answered too much.
Matteo stepped closer.
“Was Antonio my father?”
Tears filled Isabella’s eyes.
“That depends on what you mean by father.”
Matteo felt the floor disappear beneath him.
Elena turned away, giving them privacy.
Isabella reached toward her son.
Matteo backed away.
“Don’t.”
“Victor was not a good man.”
“So he is my father.”
“Biologically.”
The word struck harder than any bullet.
Matteo stared at the woman who had raised him.
“You lied to me for forty years.”
“To protect you.”
“From what?”
“From him.”
“Antonio knew?”
“Yes.”
Matteo laughed once, bitterly.
“Of course.”
Isabella began crying.
“Antonio loved you from the moment you were born. Victor never wanted a son. He wanted an heir he could use.”
“What does that mean?”
“Project Cerulean wasn’t only smuggling.”
Elena turned back.
Isabella looked at her.
“Your mother discovered that.”
Elena approached.
“How did you know my mother?”
“Rose worked with Antonio.”
“Doing what?”
“Collecting evidence.”
Isabella swallowed.
“She was supposed to testify.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Because Antonio was murdered the night before they were going to meet federal investigators.”
Elena went pale.
“And my mother?”
“She disappeared.”
“She raised me.”
“Yes.”
Isabella looked at the pendant.
“Because she had something Victor needed.”
“What?”
“The Cerulean ledger.”
Elena frowned.
“I found digital files.”
“The real ledger wasn’t digital.”
“Where is it?”
Isabella’s eyes moved toward the necklace.
“The pendant is a key.”
Matteo lifted it.
“To what?”
“A deposit box Antonio created before he died.”
Elena stared.
“Where?”
Isabella whispered the answer.
“Union Continental Bank in Chicago.”
Matteo pulled out his phone.
Isabella stopped him.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if Victor knows Elena has the pendant, he will be waiting.”
“He already knows.”
“No.”
Isabella’s expression became terrified.
“You don’t understand.”
She grabbed Matteo’s arm.
“Victor didn’t come back because of Project Cerulean.”
“Then why?”
“Because Antonio hid proof that could destroy him.”
“We know.”
“No.”
Isabella shook her head.
“The evidence doesn’t only destroy Victor.”
She looked straight into Matteo’s eyes.
“It destroys the DeLuca family too.”
Outside, headlights appeared between the trees.
One car.
Then another.
Then six more.
Isabella looked through the window.
May you like
Her voice fell to a whisper.
“He found us.”
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