Chapter 4 - THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE
I stared at the tiny cylinder of film resting in the palm of my hand. The lavender scent of Elena’s sweater seemed to fill the room, wrapping around us like a ghost demanding justice.
“Has anyone else seen this, Lily?” I asked, keeping my voice as calm as possible.
“No. Mommy said it was our secret.” Lily looked at me with immense trust. “Are you going to give it to Daddy?”
“I am,” I promised. “But I have to find a way to look at it first. To make sure we know what it says.”
I tucked the rosary deep into my pocket. The stakes had just multiplied. Elena hadn’t died in an accident. She had been murdered, and she had known it was coming. The “bad man” Lily referred to had to be Carmine. But how could a housemaid get a piece of microfilm developed without raising suspicion in a mafia household?
Later that afternoon, I left Lily in the garden with the old groundskeeper, a man who had been with the family for forty years and hated Carmine as much as I did. I told the security detail I was going to the market to buy fresh ingredients for dinner.
I took a taxi to the opposite side of the city, to an old photography shop in a quiet neighborhood. The owner, an elderly man named Mr. Chen, owed my mother a favor from years ago.
He took the film into his darkroom. I sat on a stool near the register, my leg bouncing anxiously. Thirty minutes later, he emerged, wiping his hands on a towel. He handed me a large manila envelope.
“I don’t know what you’re involved in, Hannah,” Mr. Chen said, his eyes filled with concern. “But you need to be very careful with this.”
I thanked him, paid in cash, and walked to a nearby diner. I sat in a booth facing the door, ordered a black coffee, and opened the envelope.
There were five photographs inside.
They weren't pictures of people. They were pictures of ledgers. Financial records. But as I squinted at the columns of numbers, a chilling realization washed over me. These weren't Carmine’s ledgers. The accounts listed were under Luca’s name, but the transfers were massive—millions of dollars siphoned out of the family’s legitimate businesses and funneled into offshore accounts.
The handwriting on the margins was unmistakable. It was Elena’s.
She had written: He is draining the family. He plans to frame Luca. The shipment on the 12th is a trap.
My mind raced. Elena hadn’t been investigating Carmine. She had been investigating Luca’s second-in-command, a man named Marco. Marco was the one who had introduced Vanessa to Luca. Marco was the one who controlled the family’s finances.
Carmine wasn't the mastermind. He was a distraction.
I shoved the photos back into the envelope. I had to get to Luca. But as I stood up to leave the diner, my phone buzzed. It was a text message from an unknown number.
If you want the little girl to see her ninth birthday, you will bring the envelope to the old shipyard on Pier 4. Come alone.
Panic gripped my throat. I dialed the house phone instantly.
The groundskeeper answered. “Hello?”
“Arthur, is Lily with you?” I demanded.
There was a long pause on the line. “Hannah? I thought she was with you. A man in a suit came out ten minutes ago and said her father sent a car to take her for ice cream.”
May you like
My phone slipped from my sweaty palm and clattered onto the diner table. The man with the scar on his neck. Vanessa had warned me.
Lily was gone.
