Chapter 7 - Her Father’s Last Secret
Sophie forgot the pain in her eye.
She forgot the basement.
She forgot Luca standing beside her.
“Mom, lock the doors.”
“They’re already locked.” Margaret Grant’s voice trembled through the phone. “There are two cars. Maybe three. I can’t see the driveway from the kitchen anymore.”
“Do not go near the windows.”
“Who are they?”
Sophie looked at Luca.
He had already heard enough.
Marco was dialing.
Luca held out his hand for the phone.
Sophie shook her head.
“Mom, I need you to listen to me.”
“Sophie, what is happening?”
“I’ll explain. I promise. Right now I need you to go to the downstairs bathroom.”
“The bathroom?”
“It has no exterior windows.”
A sound came through the call.
Margaret inhaled sharply.
“What?” Sophie asked.
“Someone tried the front door.”
Luca’s face hardened.
Marco spoke into his own phone. “Worcester County. Grant residence. Send our Boston people now. Call local police from a clean number.”
Sophie closed her eyes.
Her mother lived nearly a thousand miles away.
Chicago to Massachusetts.
Too far for Luca’s men to reach immediately.
Too far for Sophie to do anything but listen.
“Mom, go to the bathroom.”
“I’m going.”
“Take your phone.”
“I have it.”
“Lock the door.”
Another sound.
Glass.
Somewhere in the house.
Margaret gasped.
Sophie’s blood turned cold.
“Mom?”
“I heard something in the back.”
“Run.”
Footsteps pounded through the phone.
A door slammed.
A lock clicked.
Margaret began to cry.
Sophie pressed the phone tighter to her ear.
“I’m here.”
“Sophie, why is this happening?”
The answer was too large.
Because Dad did not fall asleep.
Because a Moretti ordered his death.
Because another Moretti covered it.
Because a woman Sophie trusted had built her into a trap without asking.
Because twenty-two years later, men were still afraid of something Elijah Grant carried home.
“I don’t know everything yet.”
Luca looked at her.
He did not correct the lie.
A crash sounded downstairs in Margaret’s house.
Then voices.
Men.
Sophie could not hear the words.
Her mother whispered, “They’re inside.”
Marco’s phone rang.
He answered immediately.
“Two minutes?” he said. “Make it one.”
Sophie wanted to scream.
One minute was enormous when strangers were inside your mother’s house.
She forced her voice steady.
“Mom, is there anything heavy in the bathroom?”
“What?”
“Anything you can put against the door.”
“The laundry hamper.”
“Use it.”
“It’s plastic.”
“Put towels inside. Anything. Just make noise if they push the door.”
Margaret moved.
Sophie heard the scrape.
Then another voice came through the phone.
Closer.
“Mrs. Grant?”
Margaret stopped breathing.
The man was in the hallway.
“We’re not here to hurt you.”
Sophie mouthed, Don’t answer.
Margaret stayed silent.
The doorknob moved.
Once.
Twice.
Then the man said, “We just need the book Elijah left.”
Sophie’s mother made a sound that was half sob, half gasp.
That was enough.
The doorknob stopped.
“Thank you,” the man said softly.
The first kick hit the door.
Margaret screamed.
Sophie stood so fast the room spun.
“Mom!”
Second kick.
Wood cracked.
Then shouting erupted on the other side.
Different voices.
“POLICE!”
A gunshot cracked.
Margaret screamed again.
The phone hit tile.
“Sophie?” Luca grabbed her shoulders. “Stay with me.”
She could hear her mother crying but not speaking.
Then someone picked up the phone.
A male voice said, “Who is this?”
Sophie’s heart stopped.
“This is her daughter.”
“This is Officer Daniel Ruiz, Worcester Police. Your mother is safe.”
Sophie’s knees weakened.
Luca caught her.
The officer continued. “One suspect in custody. One fled through the rear. We need EMS here. She’s shaken but not injured.”
Sophie pressed her hand over her mouth.
“Can I talk to her?”
A few seconds later, Margaret’s voice returned.
“I’m okay.”
Sophie cried then.
Not gracefully.
Not quietly.
She cried with relief and fear and twenty-two years of grief suddenly given a new shape.
“I’m coming to you.”
“No.”
Sophie blinked.
“Mom?”
“You stay where you are.”
“How do you know where I am?”
A pause.
Then Margaret said, “Because if this is about your father, I know who you’re with.”
Sophie stared at Elena.
Her mother knew.
“How much?” Sophie whispered.
“Enough.”
“Mom—”
“I should have told you years ago.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Sophie’s anger returned like a wave.
“You too?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
Sophie laughed through tears.
“That sentence should be illegal.”
Margaret made a broken sound that might have been a laugh.
“Your father brought home a ledger two nights before he died.”
“Where is it?”
“I moved it after we sold the old house.”
“Where?”
“In the one place nobody from his work would ever look.”
“Mom.”
“Your grandmother’s church.”
Sophie stared at the wall.
St. Matthew’s Episcopal in Worcester.
Her grandmother had played organ there for forty years.
“What did you do with it?”
“Your father wrapped it in plastic and hid it inside the old pipe organ bench. I moved it to the church archive after he died.”
Luca mouthed, Tell her not to retrieve it.
Sophie nodded.
“Do not go there.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Tell police.”
“No.”
Sophie frowned. “Why?”
“Because your father told me there were names in law enforcement too.”
Marco heard that.
His expression changed.
Margaret continued.
“He said if anything happened, I should trust nobody who already knew the Moretti name.”
Sophie looked at Luca.
“That’s everyone around me.”
“I know.”
The call ended only after Sophie made the officer promise to station someone outside Margaret’s home and Margaret promised not to leave.
When Sophie lowered the phone, the basement felt different.
Luca released her shoulders.
He had been holding her without either of them noticing.
She stepped back.
“I need to go to Worcester.”
“No.”
Her anger flared.
“Do not start that again.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
“Then what?”
“I’m saying we don’t fly into a city where Salvatore has already placed men and walk into the exact church they expect.”
Sophie hated that he was right.
“So what do we do?”
“We make them believe the ledger is coming here.”
Elena looked at him.
“How?”
Luca’s gaze moved to Salvatore’s redirected server.
“We let him steal something.”
Niko understood first.
“A fake ledger.”
“Not just fake. Useful.”
Marco smiled slowly.
“You want to seed it.”
“With enough true information that he believes it.”
Elena’s face hardened. “And one false piece.”
Luca looked at her.
“Exactly.”
Sophie frowned. “What false piece?”
“The location of the Marquette master key.”
Niko laughed quietly.
“There is no master key.”
“Salvatore doesn’t know that.”
Sophie looked from one Moretti to another.
She realized then that family warfare had its own language.
They were all fluent.
Including Elena.
Especially Elena.
Within two hours, Niko created a convincing scan of an old black ledger using information from Victor’s files. He inserted a handwritten note claiming the Marquette master key was stored in a private deposit box at Lakeshore Trust Bank under Elena’s maiden name.
The bank existed.
The box existed.
Luca had it opened and filled with a tracker, a camera, and one sheet of paper.
The paper contained a single sentence.
YOU WERE ALWAYS THE EASIEST BROTHER TO PREDICT.
Elena wrote it herself.
Niko planted the forged ledger scan in the redirected cloud vault where Salvatore’s people would eventually find it.
Then everyone waited.
Three hours passed.
Sophie sat in Elena’s kitchen with a cold cup of coffee.
Her body had begun to ache everywhere now that adrenaline was fading.
Luca entered quietly.
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I wasn’t hit in the head.”
“You look like someone hit you in the personality.”
He stared at her.
Sophie regretted it instantly.
Then one corner of his mouth lifted.
“Elena likes you because you’re rude.”
“She says honest.”
“She says that when she likes the rude person.”
Silence settled.
Sophie looked at the table.
“My father met yours.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“You believe that?”
He understood what she meant.
Do you believe yourself innocent because nobody told you?
Luca pulled out the chair across from her.
“I don’t know what I believe tonight.”
That answer felt more honest than denial.
Sophie looked at him.
“Your father covered up my father’s murder.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re still going to protect his name.”
Luca’s eyes darkened.
“No.”
She waited.
“He was my father. I loved him. Those facts don’t make what he did smaller.”
Sophie’s throat tightened.
Luca continued.
“If the evidence proves he buried Elijah Grant’s murder, I won’t bury it again.”
“You’d expose Victor Moretti?”
“If that is the price of telling the truth.”
She searched his face for performance.
She found none.
Before she could answer, Marco entered.
“We got movement.”
Luca stood.
“Bank?”
“Tracker activated six minutes ago.”
“Who opened the box?”
Marco held up a tablet.
A security image appeared.
The man entering Lakeshore Trust was not Salvatore.
It was Peter Shaw.
Elena’s missing driver.
Sophie leaned closer.
“He’s alive.”
“Yes.”
“And working for Salvatore.”
Marco shook his head.
“That’s the problem.”
He zoomed in.
Peter was not alone.
A woman walked beside him wearing sunglasses and a gray coat.
Sophie recognized her immediately.
So did Luca.
Vanessa’s wedding planner.
Daphne Cole.
The woman who was supposedly in Paris.
But that was not what made Luca swear.
Daphne removed her sunglasses as she entered the private box room.
Elena stared at the image.
“No.”
Sophie looked at her. “What?”
Elena’s voice became barely audible.
“That isn’t Daphne Cole.”
Luca’s face went still.
“Then who is she?”
May you like
Elena looked at her son.
“Your sister.”
