Chapter 6 - THE FREIGHTER PASS
The cold wind off the Charles River inlet whipped across the gravel boathouse path, carrying the distant wail of police sirens from the main road.
Richard didn't shout. He simply stepped forward and caught Patricia by the collar of her torn silk gown, pinning her against the weathered cedar siding of the boathouse.
"Pier Eleven," Richard said, his voice deadlier than the gun in his hand. "A Panamanian freighter leaving in forty-five minutes. Explain this to me right now, Patricia, before I put you in the river."
Ten-year-old Daniel pressed himself tightly against Catherine’s side on the wooden dock, while Marcus raised his pistol, despite the dark blood soaking through his white shirt at the ribs.
Patricia didn't cower. Looking at the sixty-eight-year-old mafia boss she had lived beside for three decades, a bitter, hysterical laugh escaped her throat.
"You think I’m the monster here, Richard?" Patricia spat, her eyes burning with wild desperation. "Look around you! Your mother burned down a house to protect your empire! Your brother hid your daughter in foster care! Your son started a gang war that got Catherine’s baby’s father killed! Every single person with the name Castellano has blood on their hands—and I wasn't going to let you turn Daniel into another corpse or another killer!"
"So you were going to kidnap my son?!" Catherine cried out, pulling Daniel behind her on the boat deck. "You were going to take him to Panama and I’d never see him again?!"
"I was trying to save his life!" Patricia sobbed, her composure shattering as she looked at Julian, then at Daniel. "When Salvatore Moretti found out three days ago that Daniel was his great-grandson, he didn't snatch Caroline to trade her for Daniel! Why would an eighty-year-old Don want to raise a ten-year-old boy who hates him? No—Salvatore wants blood for blood! Marcus killed his grandson Lucas ten years ago, so Salvatore swore he was going to make Marcus watch while he executed Lucas’s son on his tenth birthday!"
Marcus gasped, his hand dropping from his wounded side as the color drained completely from his face. "Salvatore doesn't want to claim Daniel... he wants to kill him to punish me?"
"Yes!" Patricia wept, gripping Richard’s wrists. "Salvatore thinks Daniel is Marcus’s biological son! The hospital administrator’s nephew didn't sell Salvatore the real birth records—he came to me for blackmail money! I paid him off, burned the papers, and booked two tickets on a freighter tonight to smuggle Daniel out of the country before Salvatore’s hitmen attacked the birthday dinner! I locked that dining room door tonight because my contact at the docks was supposed to pick Daniel and me up at the back terrace at 9:30—before Eleanor ruined everything with that damn lunchbox!"
Julian stared at the woman who had raised him, stunned. "Wait... if Salvatore doesn't know Daniel is Lucas's son... then why did you tell us in the dining room that Salvatore had Caroline at Dry Dock Four?"
Patricia froze. Slowly, her eyes shifted past Richard toward eighty-six-year-old Eleanor standing on the dock.
"Because Frank told me to say that," Patricia whispered, the truth dawning on her face in real time. "Wait... Frank told me an hour before dinner that Salvatore had kidnapped Caroline and trapped her at Dry Dock Four! He said if I kept you all in the dining room until 9:30, he would help me sneak Daniel onto the freighter!"
Hannah’s breath caught in her throat. She looked down at the rusted iron key Frank had pressed into her palm right before he stayed behind in the butler’s pantry.
"Wait a second," Hannah said, her fingers trembling as she turned the heavy iron key over in the moonlight. "We only heard three gunshots behind that secret door. We never saw Frank get hit. And Frank is the one who gave Salvatore’s men the alarm codes to attack the house tonight!"
Richard spun around toward the dark brick tunnel mouth behind them.
"Frank didn't sacrifice himself in that pantry," Richard breathed, his eyes widening in horror. "He stayed behind because the men breaking into my house tonight weren't sent to kill him. They were working with him!"
"Why would Uncle Frank help Salvatore Moretti attack us?!" Marcus yelled, leaning heavily against the boathouse railing.
"Because they aren't trying to kill Daniel," Eleanor whispered from the boat deck, her eighty-six-year-old voice shaking for the very first time all night. Her frail hands gripped the mahogany gunwale of the cruiser. "Oh, sweet Mother of God... Frank lied to Patricia too. Caroline isn't Salvatore’s hostage at Dry Dock Four."
Hannah stepped up onto the dock, grabbing her grandmother’s shoulders. "Grandma, what do you mean? My mother called me this morning! She told me to get Daniel out of the house before midnight! Why is she at Dry Dock Four?"
Eleanor looked at Richard, her ancient eyes filled with sheer terror.
"Because thirty-two years ago, when your father and I forced Caroline to disappear, we didn't just take you away from her, Hannah," Eleanor confessed, her voice breaking into a sob. "Before Vincenzo died, he made sure Caroline could never come back to blackmail the Castellano family. He gave her twenty-year-old records—records of a drug shipment that went wrong in 1994 that killed four federal agents—and he framed her for it so she’d be a fugitive for the rest of her life!"
Richard grabbed the boat railing, his knuckles white. "Dad framed Caroline for killing federal agents?! And what does that have to do with Dry Dock Four tonight?!"
"Because the statute of limitations on murder never expires, Richard!" Eleanor cried. "And six months ago, when Frank found out his heart was failing, he didn't reach out to Salvatore to betray us—he reached out to Caroline! He felt guilty for forty years of hiding Julian and Hannah from her! He brought Caroline back to Boston in secret!"
Julian stared at the rusted key in Hannah’s hand. "Then why did my mother call Hannah this morning warning her to get Daniel out of the house? And who attacked the mansion tonight if it wasn't Salvatore’s hitmen?"
Suddenly, ten-year-old Daniel reached into the pocket of his navy-blue birthday blazer and pulled out the second faded photograph that had fallen out of the dented lunchbox earlier—the one of Caroline holding baby Hannah outside the New Hampshire farmhouse thirty-one years ago.
"Grandpa," Daniel said in a small, clear voice, pointing at the background of the faded snapshot. "Look at the mailbox on that farmhouse."
Richard snatched the photograph and held it under the green navigation light of the cabin cruiser.
Painted in faded black letters on the rural mailbox behind Caroline wasn't a New Hampshire family name.
It said: MORETTI FARMS — LITTLETON, NH.
Richard’s heart stopped.
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For thirty-two years, Caroline hadn't been hiding in Vermont as a helpless fugitive. After Vincenzo Castellano stole her two children and burned her life to the ground, she had been taken in and protected by the only man in New England powerful enough to hide her from the Castellanos: Don Salvatore Moretti.
"Salvatore didn't kidnap Caroline," Richard whispered, looking up at the dark skyline of Boston Harbor where the cranes of Dry Dock Four towered against the clouds. "Caroline is the one who brought Salvatore’s men here tonight. And Frank just walked out the front door to meet her."
