Chapter 4
Sebastian Cole was eighty-one.
If alive.
Nobody in the room knew.
That fact embarrassed Dante.
A man who had spent half his life controlling information had allowed one of the most important men from his father’s generation to disappear into retirement without asking where.
Javier laughed bitterly.
“You didn’t even know.”
“No.”
“You inherited everything.”
“Not everything.”
“Apparently.”
Clara looked at both.
“Enough.”
She pointed toward the photograph.
“Why would Salvatore write this and still accuse Mateo?”
Dante studied it.
“Maybe later.”
“Later than what?”
“The accusation.”
Javier’s eyes narrowed.
Dante remembered his father becoming strange after Mateo vanished.
More private.
More suspicious.
Salvatore stopped drinking at council dinners.
Changed drivers twice.
Refused to sit near windows.
Dante assumed grief made him paranoid.
Maybe discovery did.
“Maybe he realized Mateo was framed after he disappeared,” Clara said.
Javier’s face darkened.
“And did nothing.”
“Maybe he couldn’t.”
Javier laughed.
“Salvatore Romano couldn’t?”
Dante looked at him.
“Power doesn’t mean you understand where danger is.”
That sentence felt personal.
Javier looked away.
They searched the room.
No written confession.
No neat answer.
Salvatore had not built it for strangers.
He had built it for himself.
The objects meant things only he understood.
Then Clara found a child’s wooden whistle beside a black bishop.
Dante froze.
“That was mine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He took it.
A crack along one side.
He had lost it at nine.
Salvatore told him he dropped it near the lake.
Why was it in a secret betrayal room?
Underneath was scratched:
DANTE — 1979.
The year did not fit.
Dante was born later.
He frowned.
Javier looked.
“That’s not your birth year.”
“No.”
Clara asked:
“What happened in 1979?”
Dante looked toward Javier.
Both knew one event.
Mateo joined Salvatore’s crew that year.
Javier stared at the whistle.
“Why your name?”
Dante did not know.
Then he saw something else.
The number had been altered.
Originally 1977.
Scratched over.
“Who changed it?”
No answer.
Dante placed the whistle beside the photograph.
The cellar was not just a record of betrayal.
Someone had tampered with it.
Possibly after Salvatore died.
Possibly recently.
That meant someone still had access.
Footsteps sounded above.
Dante looked toward the stairs.
A bodyguard appeared.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“Javier’s car.”
Javier frowned.
“What about it?”
“Someone left something inside.”
They returned to the lawn.
On Javier’s driver seat sat a black rook.
Beside it—
Mateo’s signet ring.
Javier stopped moving.
He had not seen it since childhood.
A silver R.
Small dent along the side where Mateo once slammed his hand into a boat engine.
Javier picked it up.
His fingers shook.
Clara touched his arm.
He did not notice.
Dante stared.
If Mateo’s ring survived, the disappearance had been managed.
Not random violence.
Javier turned the ring.
Inside was one word.
SON.
He stared.
“My father never engraved this.”
Dante looked closer.
Fresh work.
Recent.
Clara whispered:
“Someone wants you to think Mateo is alive.”
Javier’s face hardened.
“Or he is.”
Dante looked toward the road.
The black rook had meaning too.
Removal.
A threat.
“Who is being removed?” Clara asked.
Dante looked at Javier.
Then at the children’s windows.
“Not sure.”
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
No greeting.
A male voice.
Calm.
Unaltered this time.
“Dante.”
He knew it.
Not immediately.
Then his chest tightened.
“Sebastian.”
A soft laugh.
“You finally opened the cellar.”
Javier went still.
Dante put the call on speaker.
“Where are you?”
“Still leading with the wrong question.”
“What happened to Mateo?”
Silence.
Then:
“He survived Salvatore.”
Javier’s face changed.
“What does that mean?”
Sebastian heard him.
“Javier.”
He sounded almost warm.
“You have his anger.”
Javier stepped closer to the phone.
“Where is my father?”
Sebastian’s answer came quietly.
“Ask Dante why Salvatore named him heir before Mateo disappeared.”
Javier turned toward Dante.
Dante stared at the phone.
“I was not named heir before.”
Sebastian laughed softly.
“You were.”
The call ended.
Javier looked at Dante.
His voice was no longer angry.
Worse.
May you like
Suspicious.
“What did your father know about you before he decided my father had to disappear?”
