Chapter 2 - THE VOICE BEHIND THE OAK
The voice behind the massive oak doors didn't sound like a ghost. It was rough, hoarse, and carried the unmistakable cadence of the Moretti men.
Fifty wealthy guests froze in place. Waiters stood like statues with silver trays balanced on their palms. Cassandra dropped her champagne flute, the crystal shattering into a thousand pieces against the marble floor.
"No," Cassandra whispered, backing away until her spine hit the banquet table. "No, that's impossible. We buried him. Roman, we stood at his grave!"
Roman didn't answer her. His chest rose and fell in ragged, heavy breaths. He handed the blue-ink letter to me, his fingers icy against mine, and walked toward the locked entrance.
"Roman, don't!" Marcus lunged forward, his face slick with sweat. "It's a trap! Whoever is out there isn't Vincent!"
Roman didn't even turn his head. He raised a single hand, and two of his private security guards—men who had stood silently near the pillars all evening—stepped forward and blocked Marcus's path.
With a heavy metallic clank, Roman slid the iron bolt back and pulled the right door open.
A man stood in the hallway light.
He was thin—painfully thin—wearing a faded gray wool coat that hung loosely off his frame. A jagged white scar ran from his left temple down to his jawline. He was leaning heavily on a wooden cane, his dark eyes sunken and exhausted.
"Hello, little brother," the man rasped.
Roman made a sound that tore right through my chest. This feared, untouchable man who ruled half of Philadelphia stumbled forward and caught his brother in his arms, burying his face into the scarred man's neck.
"Vincent," Roman choked out, his voice breaking completely. "God in heaven, Vinny. We buried you."
Behind me, little Leo let go of my skirt. The six-year-old took two hesitant steps forward, clutching the three-legged wooden horse against his wool vest.
"Daddy?"
The word was barely a breath.
Vincent looked over Roman's shoulder. When his eyes landed on the boy, tears spilled down his scarred cheeks. He sank to his knees on the marble floor, dropping his cane, and opened his arms.
Leo didn't walk. He ran. He threw himself against his father's chest, wrapping his small arms around Vincent's neck so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"I didn't talk, Daddy," Leo sobbed into the gray wool coat. "You told me to be quiet until you came back. I waited."
I pressed a hand over my mouth, my own tears blurring the room. For three years, everyone thought the trauma of the cliff had stolen Leo's voice. He hadn't been mute from shock. He had been keeping a promise to his father.
Vincent kissed Leo's dark curls over and over. "Good boy, Leo. My brave, good boy."
Then Vincent looked up, his eyes locking onto Marcus and Cassandra. The warmth vanished from his face, replaced by a cold, terrifying fury that made him look every bit like Roman.
"You pushed me off the rocks," Vincent said, rising slowly with Leo held securely against his hip. "And when I survived the water and crawled onto the lower beach, your men were waiting with a black sedan."
Marcus's face twitched. "You were dead! The coroner identified the body!"
"You paid the county medical examiner two hundred thousand dollars to tag a John Doe from the morgue with my dental records," Vincent said evenly. "Because you didn't need me dead, Marcus. You needed me alive enough to give you the passcodes to the Swiss agricultural trusts. Only I didn't break, did I?"
Roman turned slowly toward his fiancée and her brother. The look in his eyes made my blood run cold. "Where did you keep him?"
Cassandra was shaking violently. "Roman, I didn't know! I swear on my mother's life, I thought he fell! Marcus handled the vineyard acquisition—"
"Shut up, Cassie!" Marcus roared, his panic boiling over.
"Don't lie to him," Vincent interrupted, reaching into the pocket of his faded gray coat. He pulled out a delicate silver locket on a broken chain and tossed it onto the floor at Roman's feet. "She came to that private clinic in upstate New York every six months, Roman. To check if the sedatives had finally made me compliant. She dropped that in my room three days ago before I bribed an orderly to let me out."
Roman picked up the silver locket. I didn't need to be close to recognize it. It was the antique heirloom Roman had given Cassandra on their first anniversary.
Roman looked at the locket, then at the blue-ink letter still resting in my hand.
" wait," I said, looking down at the paper Leo had pulled from the broken horse. My brow furrowed. "Mr. Moretti... if Vincent was locked in New York for three years, how did this letter get inside Leo's wooden horse?"
The room went dead silent again.
Vincent looked at the paper in my hand. He frowned. "What letter?"
Roman held it up. "The one written in blue ink. Dated three weeks after the cliff. Warning me about Cassandra."
Vincent stared at the page. Slowly, he shook his head.
"Roman... I carved that hollow space into the horse to hide my mother's wedding ring for Leo when he grew up," Vincent said, his voice dropping low. "I never wrote a letter. My hands were broken in the fall. I couldn't hold a pen for a year."
Roman froze. He looked down at the signature on the bottom of the page, then back up at his brother.
"If you didn't write this," Roman whispered, "and you didn't take our mother's ring out of that horse... who has been inside my house hiding notes in my nephew's toys?"
Leo pulled his face back from his father's neck. He pointed a tiny finger past the terrified guests, straight toward the butler's pantry near the kitchen doors.
May you like
"The nice lady," Leo said softly. "The one who brings me cinnamon rolls at night."
Everyone turned toward the pantry door. It was slightly ajar. And lying on the floor just inside the threshold was a white silk scarf stained with fresh blood.
