Chapter 6 - ELEANOR REED
I called my father at two fourteen in the morning.
He answered on the fourth ring sounding half asleep and immediately afraid.
“Emma?”
“Dad, I need to ask you something.”
“Are you hurt?”
That question almost broke me.
I looked down at the bandage beneath my torn uniform.
“I'm alright.”
It was not exactly true, but it was close enough for the moment.
I stepped away from the storage unit so Luca and the others could not hear every word.
“What did Grandma Eleanor do for work?”
Silence.
My father stopped breathing.
That told me before he did.
“Why are you asking?”
“She worked for the Morettis.”
More silence.
“Dad.”
“Come home.”
“What?”
“Right now. Leave that house.”
A chill ran through me.
“You knew.”
“Emma, please.”
“Knew what?”
His voice cracked. “That family is why she died.”
I closed my eyes.
Behind me, Luca went very still.
He had heard.
I turned away farther.
“Dad, you told me it was a car accident.”
“It was.”
“But Marco says she disappeared the week Nico Moretti died.”
My father swore softly.
“Who is Marco?”
“Someone who knew her.”
Another long pause.
Then my father said, “Your grandmother called me the night before the accident. She was frightened. She said she had seen something at a warehouse and that men had followed her home.”
My hands became cold.
“What did she see?”
“She wouldn't tell me on the phone. She said she had written it down.”
“Where?”
“She never said.”
“What happened?”
“Two days later, her car went through a guardrail outside Gary.”
“Police said accident?”
“Yes.”
“Did you believe them?”
“No.”
His answer was immediate.
“Then why did you never tell me?”
“Because I had two little girls and no money and a dead mother who had warned me powerful men were watching.”
I leaned against a concrete wall.
I understood that kind of fear. I hated it anyway.
“Dad, why didn't you tell me she worked for the Morettis when I took this job?”
“I tried.”
“No, you told me rich houses were trouble. You didn't tell me this house.”
“Would you have listened?”
I thought about my overdue bills. My mother's funeral debt. The rent increase. The application I had accepted because it paid four dollars more per hour than the hotel.
Maybe not.
My father sighed.
“Emma, if the Moretti son is there, tell him Eleanor never blamed Antonio.”
I looked back at Luca.
He was watching me.
“Why?”
“Because Antonio came to our apartment after she died. He was crying.”
Luca's expression shifted.
My father continued. “He gave me ten thousand dollars. I threw it at him. Thought it was blood money.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was sorry he had been too late twice.”
Twice.
Nico.
Eleanor.
“Did he say who killed her?”
“No. He said if I knew, I'd be next.”
My knees felt weak.
Then my father remembered something.
“Wait.”
I heard movement through the phone. A drawer opening.
“What?”
“Your grandmother left one thing in my mailbox the day she disappeared.”
“What thing?”
“A recipe card.”
I almost laughed.
“A recipe card?”
“She was a cook, Emma. She wrote everything on recipe cards. This one had no recipe.”
“What's on it?”
“Three words.”
He read them.
“Under Saint Michael.”
Luca heard.
So did Marco.
Marco's face changed.
“The statue,” he said.
Luca turned. “What statue?”
“In the old chapel garden. Saint Michael.”
We left the storage facility with the ledger sealed inside a document bag and drove back to the estate before dawn.
Vanessa was still gone. Silvio was gone. Daniel stayed with Teresa under Gino's protection at a separate location.
The old chapel garden sat behind a stone wall on the east side of the property. I had passed it hundreds of times carrying linens to the guest cottages and never paid attention to the weathered statue near the hedge.
Saint Michael stood with a sword raised over a dragon.
Luca crouched at the base.
Fresh soil.
Not much. Just enough to tell us someone had disturbed it.
Gino swore. “We're late again.”
I looked closer.
The statue's stone plinth had four decorative rosettes.
One was slightly turned.
I reached toward it.
Luca caught my wrist gently.
“Your good hand is currently your only useful hand.”
“Then you turn it.”
He did.
A narrow drawer slid out of the base.
Empty.
But taped to the underside was a yellowed index card.
My grandmother's handwriting.
I knew it instantly from birthday cards my father had kept.
IF THEY TAKE THE BOOK, REMEMBER THE CHURCH CLOCK.
Marco frowned. “What church clock?”
I thought of family stories.
My grandmother had attended Saint Agnes on the West Side for forty years.
The church had closed eight years ago.
Its old clock tower still stood above the abandoned school building.
Luca looked at me. “Can we get in?”
“Probably illegally.”
Gino said, “So yes.”
At six in the morning, a locksmith opened the side door of Saint Agnes for us under the supervision of a parish administrator Luca had awakened with a generous donation and very few explanations.
The church smelled like old wood and dust.
The clock mechanism was reached by a narrow staircase behind the choir loft.
My bruised ribs protested every step.
Luca stayed behind me without comment.
At the top, the tower opened into a cramped room of gears and beams.
Four clock faces glowed gray with morning light.
“Under the clock,” Marco said.
We searched.
Nothing.
Then I remembered my grandmother's habits.
She labeled everything by direction in her kitchen because she claimed people who did not know east from west should not be trusted with ovens.
“Which clock faced her apartment?” I asked.
Marco looked confused.
I checked my phone compass.
West.
We went to the west clock face.
Under the wooden ledge was a metal bread tin.
Inside were three cassette tapes, a folded photograph, and a sealed envelope addressed to PATRICK.
My father.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Emma was not mentioned. I had been a child then.
The letter told my father she had seen Nico Moretti enter Silvio Bellini's sedan with Judge Carver. It said Antonio was not part of the trap. It said Silvio had learned she witnessed it.
Then one line made Luca close his eyes.
ANTONIO TRIED TO GET ME OUT. HE DOES NOT KNOW CARVER IS THE ONE FEEDING SILVIO POLICE INFORMATION.
Judge Carver had not merely cleaned the report afterward.
He had been part of the trap from the beginning.
Gino picked up one cassette.
A handwritten label read NICO - 10:42 PM.
The night he died.
We found an old cassette player in the parish office.
The tape hissed.
Then Nico Moretti's voice filled the room.
Younger than Luca's. Lighter.
“If you're hearing this, then I was right not to trust Carver.”
Luca sat down.
Nobody spoke.
Nico continued.
“Vanessa gave me the address because she believed she was helping. Do not punish her for that. Silvio has controlled her since her mother disappeared.”
Luca's eyes lifted.
The tape crackled.
“But if Vanessa ever comes back to this family pretending she doesn't know what her father did, then she has made her choice.”
My skin went cold.
Twelve years later, Vanessa had returned.
Not merely as a guest.
As Luca's fiancée.
And Nico had left one final warning.
\n\nBefore we left Saint Agnes, I carried Eleanor's letter downstairs and sat in the last pew. The church had been closed for years, but morning light still fell through the old stained glass and painted the dust in blue and red. I tried to imagine my grandmother climbing the clock tower alone, hiding tapes while believing men might already be following her.\n\nMy father had spent most of his life calling her death an accident out loud and murder inside his own head. I had spent most of mine thinking his warnings about powerful families were bitterness. Suddenly every argument we ever had about money, employers, and keeping my head down sounded different. Fear had raised both of us, just in different rooms.\n\nLuca sat two pews away. He gave me space until I asked, “Did your father ever talk about Nico after he died?”\n\n“Almost never.”\n\n“That must have made it worse.”\n\n“Yes.” He stared toward the dark altar. “Silence turns dead people into whatever you are most afraid they were.”\n\nI looked at him.\n\nHe continued, “For years I thought Nico had been reckless. Then I thought he was unlucky. Tonight I find out he was trying to do the right thing and everybody around him made the cost unbearable.”\n\n“Your father included.”\n\n“Yes.”\n\nThere was no defense in his voice. I respected that.\n\nMarco returned from the parish office carrying an old visitor log. Eleanor's name appeared there three times during the week before her death. On the final visit, someone had signed in beneath her: F. DELANEY.\n\nGino photographed the page.\n\nMy stomach turned.\n\n“He followed her here,” I said.\n\n“Maybe,” Gino answered. “Or he knew she would come.”\n\nEither possibility was bad.\n\nI called my father again and read him the line from Eleanor's letter saying Antonio tried to help her. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “I hated that man for half my life.”\n\n“You had reasons.”\n\n“Maybe. But not all of them were true.”\n\nThat sentence stayed with me. Truth did not always arrive clean enough to absolve anyone. Antonio had tried to save Eleanor and still chosen silence. My father had lied to protect me and still allowed me to walk into the same house without knowing why it frightened him. People could love you and fail you in the same breath.\n\nWhen I hung up, Luca asked, “What did he say?”\n\n“He said the truth is worse than blame because blame is simpler.”\n\nLuca nodded once. “Your father and Nico would have liked each other.”
“Luca, if she tries to marry you, ask yourself what Silvio needs from a Moretti that he cannot steal from the outside.”
May you like
On the drive back from Saint Agnes, I listened to Nico's tape twice more. The second time I heard details hidden beneath the words: traffic in the background, a train horn, the nervous click of what might have been his turn signal. He had recorded the message in a car. He had known he was heading somewhere dangerous and still gone. I wondered whether courage always looked noble from the outside and terrified from the inside.
Luca did not ask to hear the tape again. He sat beside the window and watched the city pass. When we reached the estate, he finally said, 'My brother thought he was protecting me.' I answered, 'Maybe he was. But protection can become another kind of prison when nobody gives you the key.' He looked at me for a long time. Later I realized that sentence applied to both of us more than I had intended.
