Chapter 4 - What My Father KnewMy father’s watch had stopped at 2:17.
It had been stopped for sixteen years.
I never repaired it.
People thought that was strange.
To me, fixing it would have felt like changing the last thing that belonged entirely to Dad.
Michael Blake died at 2:17 on a Tuesday afternoon.
A heart attack, according to the medical examiner.
He had been forty-four.
Healthy.
Strong.
And gone before the ambulance reached our street.
Now I sat in Roman Moretti’s private study while three security specialists examined the watch beneath bright white lamps.
“You’re going to break it,” I said.
Marcus Shaw didn’t look up.
“We won’t.”
“You removed the back.”
“That’s generally how you inspect the inside.”
“It hasn’t been opened since Dad died.”
Across the room, Roman watched quietly.
I had spent the drive home refusing to acknowledge how badly my hands were shaking.
Now I failed.
Roman noticed.
He always noticed too much.
“Coffee?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
“No.”
“Whiskey?”
I looked at him.
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“You’re the one who nearly threatened Marcus with a lamp when he opened the watch.”
“It looked expensive.”
“It was.”
That earned the first weak laugh I had managed all morning.
Marcus glanced up.
“Found something.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
He turned the watch over.
Inside the case, beneath the old mechanical movement, was a tiny circle of black plastic no bigger than my thumbnail.
“What is that?”
“One second.”
Marcus used tweezers.
The plastic disk lifted.
Underneath sat a micro-storage chip.
Roman stepped closer.
“How old?”
“Could easily be fifteen to twenty years.”
My heart started pounding.
“Dad hid that?”
“Looks like it.”
Marcus inserted the chip into an isolated reader.
The laptop remained blank for several seconds.
Then a directory appeared.
Four folders.
MORETTI EAST.
INSPECTIONS.
BELLAMY.
And one labeled:
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME.
Nobody breathed.
I stared at the screen.
Roman said, “Nora, you don’t have to open it.”
I looked at him.
“Someone shot at your son because they were looking for this watch.”
“We don’t know that.”
“They paid Gerald to put me near your table. They asked him to confirm the watch. I think we know enough.”
Roman nodded to Marcus.
Marcus clicked.
There was one video file.
The timestamp showed it had been recorded sixteen years and eleven days earlier.
My father appeared onscreen.
I stopped breathing.
His hair was messier than I remembered.
His cheeks fuller.
He sat in our old garage, wearing the red flannel shirt Mom hated because it had paint on the sleeve.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
Roman turned toward me.
I couldn’t look away.
Dad leaned toward the camera.
“If Nora ever sees this, then either I’ve gotten paranoid in my old age…”
He smiled.
My heart broke.
“…or somebody finally proved me right.”
Tears blurred the screen.
Dad continued.
“I’ve been doing electrical subcontracting on the Moretti East redevelopment. Three weeks ago I discovered bypass wiring in Building C. It wasn’t on the plans. It leads into a secured records room.”
Roman’s face tightened.
Moretti East had been one of the projects that launched his company.
Dad lifted a folder.
“I thought it was sloppy work. Then I found inspection certificates approving wiring that was never installed.”
Marcus leaned closer.
Dad kept talking.
“The signatures belong to inspectors who say they never signed them. Someone inside Moretti Construction has been falsifying safety reports and diverting materials.”
Roman swore quietly.
“I brought it to Vittorio Moretti.”
“Your father?” I asked.
Roman nodded.
Onscreen, Dad’s expression changed.
“Mr. Moretti believed me. He told me he would investigate quietly because he suspected someone close to him.”
Roman stared at the screen.
“My father never told me.”
Dad continued.
“Yesterday, someone followed Nora home from school.”
My stomach dropped.
I was seventeen then.
I remembered.
A gray car.
I had thought it belonged to a neighbor.
“I’m done pretending this is about invoices.”
Dad held up several documents.
“There are shell companies connected to Moretti projects. Money is being siphoned out. Somebody is making millions, and I think the safety fraud is hiding it.”
The video skipped.
Then Dad leaned closer.
“If I’m wrong, destroy this.”
His face softened.
“If I’m right, Nora, I’m sorry.”
My tears fell.
“You were never supposed to inherit my problems.”
The screen went black.
Silence filled the study.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Roman punched the desk.
I jumped.
He immediately stepped back.
“Sorry.”
I wiped my face.
“Don’t apologize to me.”
His fist was bleeding.
“Apologize to your desk.”
Marcus looked at the folders.
“We need to copy everything before opening the rest.”
Roman stared at his father’s name on the screen.
“Do it.”
The second folder contained scanned inspection reports.
The third contained bank transfers.
Millions moved through companies with names that meant nothing to me.
The fourth contained photographs taken inside Bellamy House.
Not last week.
Sixteen years ago.
“What was Bellamy House then?” I asked.
Roman answered.
“Owned by my uncle.”
“Which uncle?”
“Victor.”
The same uncle who owned falcon cuff links.
Marcus opened a spreadsheet.
Roman leaned toward the screen.
His face changed.
“What?”
Marcus looked grim.
“These payment routing numbers…”
“What?”
“They match accounts we flagged after the gala.”
The past and present connected in one terrible line.
Victor Moretti.
Roman’s father’s younger brother.
A senior board member.
The beloved uncle who appeared at charity events, baseball games, family holidays.
“He’s been stealing from you for twenty years?” I asked.
Roman shook his head.
“Not just stealing.”
He pointed to a date.
“That transfer happened two days before the warehouse fire.”
The warehouse where my father saved Roman.
My skin prickled.
Another transfer.
“Three days before a crane collapse in Milwaukee,” Marcus said.
Another.
“Week before a fire suppression failure.”
Roman’s face had become stone.
“These weren’t accidents.”
I stared at him.
“You think Victor caused them?”
“I think we need proof.”
Then Marcus opened the final spreadsheet.
One row had been highlighted by my father.
A payment of seventy-five thousand dollars.
Date: four days before his death.
Recipient: M. Lang Medical Consulting.
I stopped breathing.
“Medical?”
Marcus searched.
His fingers moved quickly.
A result appeared.
Dr. Matthew Lang.
Former county medical examiner.
The doctor who signed my father’s death certificate.
My chair scraped backward.
“No.”
Roman moved toward me.
I stood.
“No.”
“Nora—”
“He had a heart attack.”
Roman didn’t speak.
“He had a heart attack.”
My voice broke.
“He was healthy, but people have heart attacks. It happens.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“What?”
“Tell me this doesn’t mean anything.”
Roman looked at the transfer.
Then at me.
“I can’t.”
I turned away.
My father’s last morning returned with painful clarity.
Coffee.
Burnt toast.
He had kissed the top of my head and told me to finish my college application.
I complained because he had used the last orange.
He laughed.
Those were our last words about something that stupid.
By afternoon, he was dead.
My mother never recovered.
Three years later, cancer took her.
One act.
One hidden secret.
Maybe it had destroyed my entire family.
“I want Victor arrested.”
Roman’s voice was careful.
“So do I.”
“Then do it.”
“We don’t have enough.”
“I have my father’s evidence.”
“We have suspicious transfers and old records. Victor has lawyers. Connections. If we move too early, he destroys whatever still exists.”
I spun toward him.
“So we wait?”
“We make sure when we move, he never gets back up.”
The coldness in his voice frightened me.
“Legally,” Marcus added.
Roman looked irritated.
“Yes. Legally.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Every person in the room froze.
Marcus reached for it.
I picked it up first.
“Nora,” Roman warned.
I answered.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then a voice.
Distorted electronically.
“You found the watch.”
My blood turned cold.
Roman moved closer.
Marcus began recording.
“Who is this?”
“You should have left the past buried.”
“Did you kill my father?”
A quiet laugh.
Then:
“Michael Blake died because he didn’t understand his place.”
Something inside me went perfectly still.
Roman’s expression changed when he heard it through the speaker.
I asked, “And Leo?”
The voice paused.
“The boy was unfortunate.”
Roman’s hands curled into fists.
“You tried to kill a child.”
“No.”
The caller almost sounded offended.
“The dart was never meant for the child.”
My eyes snapped to Roman.
“What?”
The voice continued.
“It was meant for you, Nora.”
The line disconnected.
Nobody moved.
Marcus immediately began tracing the call.
Roman stared at me.
I whispered, “Why?”
Then I remembered the ballroom.
Leo had been standing directly in front of me.
The attacker had aimed through him.
Not at him.
At me.
The glass.
The dart.
My father’s watch.
Gerald had been paid to put me in that exact location.
Leo hadn’t been the target.
He had simply been acceptable collateral damage.
Roman understood at the same moment.
His face went white.
“My son nearly died because someone was trying to stop you from finding what your father hid.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“What?”
“They didn’t know I would find it.”
Roman frowned.
I looked at the watch.
“They thought I already had.”
Marcus stopped typing.
That changed everything.
Somebody believed I knew my father’s secret.
Which meant they had been watching me long before the gala.
Marcus opened another search window.
“I’m checking your apartment cameras.”
“My building barely has plumbing.”
“Street cameras.”
Ten minutes later, he found footage.
A gray sedan outside my apartment.
Monday.
Wednesday.
Friday.
The week before the gala.
Then another image.
A man entering Bellamy House two days before the event.
His face visible.
Silver hair.
Expensive coat.
Falcon cuff links.
Roman stared at the screen.
His uncle.
Victor Moretti.
And he wasn’t alone.
Walking beside him was a woman I recognized instantly.
She had worked the gala.
She had handed me my uniform.
She had been the one who insisted I wear short sleeves despite the cold.
Bellamy House’s event director.
Cynthia Hale.
Roman whispered something under his breath.
I pointed at her.
“She knew about the watch.”
Marcus nodded.
“She could have told Victor you were wearing it.”
My stomach tightened.
“Where is she now?”
Marcus typed.
Then stopped.
“What?”
He turned the screen.
A flight itinerary.
Cynthia Hale had booked a ticket to Zurich.
Departure time:
6:40 p.m.
Three hours from now.
Roman grabbed his jacket.
Marcus stood.
“I’ll alert police.”
I reached for my coat.
Roman looked at me.
“No.”
“She knows what happened to my father.”
“Nora.”
“I’m coming.”
“She tried to have you killed.”
“Then she already knows where I live.”
“You don’t live there anymore.”
“That isn’t the point.”
He stepped closer.
“You have stitches holding your side closed.”
“And sixteen years of questions holding the rest of me together.”
That silenced him.
For several seconds, we stared at each other.
Then Roman exhaled.
“Stay beside me.”
I grabbed my coat.
“That line again?”
“It’s becoming necessary.”
We headed for the door.
Neither of us knew that Cynthia Hale had never intended to board that flight.
The ticket was bait.
And while Roman’s security team raced toward O’Hare, someone was already driving through the service entrance of his estate.
Someone who knew the camera codes.
May you like
Someone carrying a falcon-shaped key.
And upstairs, Leo Moretti was playing alone.
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