Chapter 6 - MY FATHER'S CONFESSION
We drove through Chicago like the city itself was hunting us.
Sister Catherine survived the first ten minutes.
She died before the ambulance reached the hospital.
Gabriel said nothing when Marco told us.
Neither did Beatrice.
I watched the city lights pass the window and realized another person had died because my family had kept secrets too long.
When we reached the safe apartment, I inserted the flash drive into an isolated laptop.
There were seven files.
Six audio recordings.
One video.
The first recording began with my mother's voice.
I had not heard it in seven years.
Hearing her again broke something inside me.
“My name is Elena Vale. It is March seventeenth. If Roman hears this someday, then I failed to protect him from the truth.”
I stopped the recording.
Gabriel stared at me.
“Keep going.”
I pressed play.
“Carlo knows Gabriel survived the warehouse. He believes hiding the truth protects both boys. I no longer agree.”
Her voice trembled.
“Salvatore has too much control. Lorenzo has attached himself to Roman. Carlo says Lorenzo is loyal. I believe Carlo sees what he wants to see.”
Another recording.
“May ninth. Gabriel has disappeared from Minnesota. I have hired people privately to search.”
Another.
“October second. Carlo discovered Northstar.”
I leaned closer.
“Salvatore has been using our companies to move people across state lines under false employment contracts. Carlo confronted him. Salvatore threatened to give federal investigators records that could imprison half the family.”
Gabriel cursed softly.
My mother continued.
“Carlo wants time. I am afraid time is what Salvatore needs.”
The fourth recording was different.
My father's voice.
Older.
Tired.
“Elena says I should speak plainly.”
A long silence.
“I failed my sons.”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
“I built a house where loyalty was purchased with fear. Then I acted surprised when fear produced monsters.”
My throat tightened.
“Gabriel wanted to leave. I called him weak. Roman wanted my approval. I rewarded him for becoming harder.”
Beatrice looked at me.
I kept staring at the screen.
“Salvatore suggested Gabriel meet the accountant at Warehouse Fourteen. I agreed because I believed Gabriel needed to learn how money moved through the organization.”
His breathing shook.
“I did not know it was an execution.”
Gabriel covered his face.
“When Elena told me Gabriel survived, I wanted to bring him home. Salvatore showed me recordings, ledgers, photographs. He promised to destroy all of us if I acted.”
My father's voice broke.
“I chose the organization.”
I whispered the words with him.
Because I had always known, in some part of myself, that Carlo Vale would choose power over anything.
Even blood.
“I told Elena we would protect Gabriel from a distance.”
A pause.
“Then we lost him.”
The recording ended.
Gabriel stood and walked toward the window.
I let him.
The fifth file was dated six months before my mother's cancer diagnosis.
She sounded frightened.
“Lorenzo knows I have been searching.”
I looked toward Marco.
He understood immediately.
“Boss…”
“Play it.”
“Yesterday, my brake line was cut.”
My blood went cold.
My mother had once been in a car accident.
She survived.
Everyone blamed weather.
“Carlo refuses to believe Lorenzo would harm me without Salvatore's permission. He thinks Salvatore is dying.”
Gabriel whispered, “He wasn't.”
“No.”
The final audio file was recorded two days before my mother entered the hospital for what we believed were cancer complications.
“If anything happens to me, Roman must know the truth.”
She took a breath.
“Lorenzo is no longer working for Salvatore.”
I frowned.
Gabriel turned.
“What?”
“He has surpassed him.”
My mother's voice continued.
“Salvatore created the second organization, but Lorenzo controls it now. Carlo still believes Salvatore is the threat. He is wrong.”
Then she said something I would never forget.
“Lorenzo does not want the Vale empire.”
“He wants Roman.”
My entire body went still.
Gabriel looked at me.
“What does that mean?”
The recording answered.
“Roman trusts him. Loves him like a brother. Lorenzo has shaped his decisions for years. He has isolated him from anyone who questions him.”
Memories started changing.
Men Lorenzo had called traitors.
Advisers pushed away.
A girlfriend who disappeared after Lorenzo claimed she sold information.
Business partners who died.
Even my own father and I had grown increasingly distant in his final years.
Who had always stood between us?
Lorenzo.
“Roman thinks he is leading,” my mother said.
“But Lorenzo has spent years teaching him where to look.”
The file ended.
Beatrice spoke first.
“There was a video.”
I opened it.
My mother sat in the same private study where I had caught Beatrice taking food.
She was thinner.
Pale.
Beside her sat my father.
Carlo Vale looked twenty years older than I remembered.
“This is for Roman,” he said.
“If we are dead before he sees it, he must assume Lorenzo had something to do with it.”
My heart stopped.
My father died five years ago of a stroke.
My mother died two years before him from cancer.
Or so I believed.
Carlo held up a folder.
“Northstar records. Names, accounts, locations. Enough to destroy Salvatore and Lorenzo.”
He looked directly into the camera.
“I hid the original ledger somewhere Salvatore will never search.”
Gabriel leaned forward.
“Where?”
Carlo smiled faintly.
“Inside the thing Salvatore hates most.”
The recording ended.
Gabriel stared at me.
“What did Salvatore hate?”
I knew immediately.
“Churches.”
Beatrice inhaled.
“St. Agnes.”
I turned toward her.
“Your husband found Gabriel there?”
“No. I brought Gabriel there seven months ago because it was abandoned.”
“Why that church?”
“It was close to the shelter.”
Maybe coincidence.
Maybe not.
My father had known St. Agnes mattered to us.
Our mother loved it.
Salvatore despised religion.
We left for the church before dawn.
The building was still sealed after the attack.
Police tape moved in the wind.
We entered through the basement tunnel.
Gabriel remembered an old saying our father used when hiding gifts from us as children.
Look where the sinner never kneels.
We searched beneath the altar.
Nothing.
Then Beatrice stared toward the confession booths.
“The sinner never kneels.”
She opened one.
A loose floor panel.
Beneath it was a steel box.
Inside:
A ledger.
Three passports.
Photographs.
Bank records.
And a list titled NORTHSTAR PERSONNEL.
Gabriel turned pages.
Judges.
Officers.
Union officials.
Vale soldiers.
Then one name stopped him.
Marco DeSantis.
Silence filled the church.
Marco stood behind us.
His face changed.
My gun was in my hand instantly.
Gabriel drew Marco's weapon.
Beatrice backed away.
Marco raised both hands.
“Boss.”
“Explain.”
He stared at the ledger.
“I can't.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I never worked for Northstar.”
“Your name is here.”
“I don't know why.”
Gabriel pressed the barrel against his back.
“People have lied to us enough.”
Marco looked at me.
“I've been with you fifteen years.”
“So has Lorenzo.”
That silenced him.
I flipped to the date beside Marco's name.
Seven years ago.
The year my mother died.
Payment: $250,000.
I looked at him.
“Where did you get a quarter million dollars?”
His eyes filled with something I had never seen before.
Shame.
“My sister.”
“What?”
“She needed surgery.”
“You told me she died.”
“She did.”
His voice cracked.
“Lorenzo offered the money.”
“For what?”
Marco swallowed.
“To drive a car.”
My heart slowed.
“What car?”
He looked at the floor.
“Your mother's.”
Gabriel grabbed him by the collar.
“You cut the brakes?”
“No!”
“What did you do?”
“I drove her to the hospital six months later.”
I froze.
“What?”
Marco began crying.
“I didn't know what they gave her.”
The church went silent.
“What did who give her?”
“Dr. Crane.”
The name from Patrick's notebook.
The doctor who signed Gabriel's death certificate.
Marco stared at me.
“Your mother didn't die from cancer, boss.”
My gun lowered slightly.
“What are you saying?”
“She found out Lorenzo was running Northstar.”
He wiped his face.
“She told Crane she was going to the police.”
Beatrice whispered, “Oh my God.”
Marco looked straight at me.
“Dr. Crane poisoned her slowly and falsified the diagnosis.”
For several seconds, I heard nothing.
Not the wind.
Not Gabriel's breathing.
Nothing.
My mother had not died from disease.
She had been murdered while I sat beside her bed.
And the man responsible had stood beside me at her funeral.
I turned toward the church entrance.
Gabriel grabbed my arm.
“Roman.”
“Let go.”
“You kill Lorenzo now, we lose everything.”
“He killed her.”
“We prove it.”
“I don't need proof.”
“Then you're doing exactly what he trained you to do.”
That stopped me.
Gabriel stepped closer.
“He wants you angry.”
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A video arrived.
Beatrice gasped.
Her apartment.
Her small bedroom.
Someone had entered.
The camera moved toward a framed photograph of Patrick on her dresser.
A hand lifted it.
Lorenzo's voice spoke from behind the camera.
“Hello, Beatrice.”
Her face went white.
The video continued.
“I know you've been helping my cousin.”
Gabriel clenched his fists.
“And I know Roman is with you.”
Lorenzo laughed softly.
“So here's what happens next.”
The camera turned.
A chair sat in the center of the room.
An elderly man was tied to it.
Gray beard.
Burn scar on his wrist.
Salvatore Vale.
My supposedly dead uncle.
His face was bruised.
His mouth bloody.
Lorenzo stepped into view behind his own father.
He smiled.
“Come home, Roman.”
May you like
Then he placed a gun against Salvatore's head.
“Dad and I have a lot to explain.”
