Chapter 3 - THE MAN WHO WAS DEAD BEFORE MATTEO
Rocco Vieri died when Dante was twenty-four.
At least that was what Enzo Romano said.
No funeral was held.
No grave marked his name.
Rocco had handled problems that were not supposed to exist, so his disappearance required no public explanation.
Dante had asked once.
His father answered:
“Some men are more useful dead than missing.”
Dante never asked again.
Now a man matching Rocco’s appearance had stood inside Dante’s family barbecue and directed his son toward a buried ring.
Anthony Greco, Dante’s head of security, arrived before sunset.
At sixty, Anthony had spent thirty years near the Romano family without ever becoming part of it.
Dante trusted that.
Blood made men sentimental.
Employment kept expectations clearer.
Anthony examined the ring.
“Matteo.”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“I watched him wear it for twenty years.”
Anthony turned it over.
The underside was scratched.
Not random damage.
Letters.
J.R.
Javier Romano.
Javier saw them.
“My initials.”
Dante looked at him.
The engraving appeared recent compared with the fire damage.
Someone added it after the ring burned.
“Your father didn’t put this here twenty-seven years ago,” Dante said.
Javier’s face hardened.
“How do you know?”
“The cut is clean.”
Anthony nodded.
“He’s right.”
Javier stared.
“So somebody dug up my father’s ring, carved my initials into it, buried it again, then sent Leo to find it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dante looked at him.
“To make you do exactly what you did.”
Javier’s jaw tightened.
Humiliation moved across his face.
He had thought he was acting from rage.
Someone may have predicted every step.
Clara spoke quietly.
“Why Leo?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Dante disliked the question.
Not because he had no answer.
Because he had too many.
To provoke Javier.
To involve Dante’s children.
To make the family witness an attack.
To turn old blood into new injury.
“He was never supposed to be hurt,” Clara said.
Dante looked at her.
“That sentence does not comfort me.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
She looked at Javier.
“My husband did that.”
Javier’s face tightened.
Clara did not soften.
“You can hate whoever manipulated you. You still put your knee on a child.”
Javier turned away.
Dante watched them.
Their marriage had its own cracks.
He had ignored them because they were not his business.
Today his children fell through one.
Anthony placed the ring beneath a magnifying lamp.
“There’s something inside the crest.”
He used a thin blade to lift the blackened emblem.
A narrow piece of metal slid free.
Not paper.
A tiny strip engraved with numbers.
Anthony frowned.
“Coordinates?”
Dante studied them.
Not coordinates.
A date.
09-14-99.
Javier stared.
“That’s impossible.”
Clara looked at him.
“What?”
Javier’s voice changed.
“My father died in 1999.”
Dante nodded.
“September fourteenth?”
“No.”
Javier looked toward him.
“The warehouse burned September eleventh.”
Three days earlier.
The date on the strip was three days after Matteo supposedly died.
Teresa had told Javier Matteo came home two nights later.
This was the following day.
September fourteenth.
A date only someone who knew Matteo survived would consider meaningful.
Anthony turned the strip.
A second engraving:
ST. AGNES.
Dante knew the name.
An abandoned Catholic school near the industrial riverfront.
Closed before Leo was born.
Javier looked at him.
“You know it.”
“Yes.”
“What happened there?”
“Nothing.”
Javier laughed.
“In this family, that usually means everything.”
Dante ignored him.
St. Agnes had been neutral ground during the internal Romano conflict.
No weapons.
No crews.
Family only.
Enzo used the basement for private meetings.
Matteo attended.
Rocco attended.
Dante attended once.
The last meeting occurred one week before the warehouse fire.
Dante had been ordered outside before the final decision.
He remembered Matteo coming upstairs afterward.
White-faced.
Furious.
“What was decided?” Javier asked.
Dante looked at him.
“I never knew.”
“That’s a lie.”
“No.”
“My father walked out of that building and died a week later.”
“Three days later, according to your mother.”
Javier’s eyes narrowed.
Dante continued.
“You want the truth? Stop protecting the version that feeds your hatred.”
The words landed.
Javier looked away.
Leo entered before anyone heard the door.
Dante’s expression changed immediately.
“I told you to stay upstairs.”
Leo stood his ground.
That came from Dante.
Unfortunately.
“I remembered the man.”
Anthony and Javier went silent.
Dante crouched.
“What about him?”
“He knew my name.”
“That could mean he knew the family.”
Leo shook his head.
“He called me Lorenzo.”
Dante froze.
Leo’s full name was Leonardo.
No Lorenzo anywhere.
“Why?”
“I told him my name was Leo.”
“What did he say?”
Leo frowned, repeating carefully:
“‘No. They named you Leonardo. You were supposed to be Lorenzo.’”
Javier looked at Dante.
Dante felt cold move through him.
Lorenzo had been the name Enzo Romano wanted for Dante’s first son.
Dante had refused.
Only three people had known.
Dante.
His late wife Sofia.
And Enzo.
His father had been dead twelve years.
Dante touched Leo’s shoulder.
“What else did he say?”
Leo looked toward the burned ring.
“He said when you see that, ask Dad what happened to Uncle Gabriel.”
Dante stopped breathing.
Javier frowned.
“Who the hell is Gabriel?”
Dante stood slowly.
He had not heard the name in thirty-eight years.
Gabriel Romano had been Enzo’s firstborn son.
Dante’s older brother.
The brother the family erased before Javier was even born.
May you like
And unlike Matteo—
Dante knew exactly where Gabriel was buried.
