Chapter 4
Frank was seventy-two and still looked like he could break a man’s wrist without spilling coffee.
I had not seen him since my father’s funeral.
Gregory told me he retired.
Carmela told me he took a payout and disappeared.
Now he stood in a freezing Chicago alley with two black SUVs behind him and tears in his eyes.
“Get in,” he said.
“No,” I said. “Noah’s bear is inside.”
Matteo grabbed my arm.
“Valeria.”
“The note is inside it.”
Frank’s expression changed.
He looked at Noah.
“Blue bear? Torn ear?”
Noah nodded.
Frank closed his eyes for half a second.
“Your father was smarter than all of us.”
Gregory’s men burst through the kitchen door.
Paulie raised his gun.
Frank did not flinch.
“Take the boy,” he told Matteo. “I’ll get the bear.”
“You can’t go in there,” I said.
Frank looked at me the way he used to when I was a teenager sneaking out after curfew.
“Your father saved my life twice. Let me repay one of them.”
Before I could stop him, he slipped past Paulie and went back inside.
Gunshots cracked from somewhere in the house.
Noah buried his face against me.
I climbed into the SUV with him, my whole body shaking.
Daniel jumped in after us, tablet still clutched in one hand.
Blood dripped from his eyebrow.
“Drive,” he told the man behind the wheel.
“We wait for Frank,” I said.
Daniel looked toward the door.
“Valeria—”
“We wait.”
Thirty seconds felt like a lifetime.
Then Frank came out running.
In his hand was Noah’s bear.
Behind him was fire.
Not a wall of flames, not yet, but smoke rolling out of the kitchen door.
“Go!” Frank shouted.
He dove into the front passenger seat.
The SUV shot forward.
Gregory appeared in the alley behind us.
His shirt was torn.
His face was wild.
For one second, our eyes met through the back window.
He lifted his phone.
Frank cursed.
“Throw yours out.”
Daniel grabbed my purse and dumped it.
Three phones.
Mine.
Noah’s emergency tracker.
A small device I had never seen before.
Daniel held it up.
“GPS.”
I thought of Gregory smiling while asking where I had been.
I thought of him touching my purse at dinner.
I thought of every time I believed marriage meant trust.
Daniel lowered the window and threw everything into the Chicago River as we crossed the bridge.
Only then did Frank hand me the bear.
Noah reached for it, but I held it gently.
“Baby, you said there’s a note.”
He sniffed and pointed to the torn ear.
“Grandpa told me never to show Dad.”
I stared at my son.
“When did Grandpa tell you that?”
Noah rubbed his eyes.
“In the video.”
Every muscle in my body locked.
“What video?”
Frank answered.
“Your father recorded messages before he died.”
Daniel looked up sharply.
“You knew?”
Frank nodded.
“He suspected Gregory was moving against him. He didn’t know how far it had gone.”
I found the seam in the bear’s ear.
My stitches were clumsy.
Under them was a second seam, smaller and older.
Frank pulled a pocketknife and opened it carefully.
A flash drive fell into my palm.
I could barely hold it.
On the side, written in my father’s handwriting, were two words.
For Valeria.
I pressed it to my chest.
Then the SUV turned into the underground entrance of a private medical clinic.
“We need Noah checked,” Frank said. “And you need to hear what’s on that drive somewhere safe.”
A doctor met us at the elevator.
Noah clung to me while nurses examined his wrists, his feet, his ribs.
Every mark they found made me colder.
Not louder.
Colder.
When Noah finally slept, Daniel connected the flash drive to an offline laptop.
My father’s face appeared on the screen.
Older.
Tired.
Alive.
I covered my mouth.
“Val,” he said in the video, “if you’re watching this, Gregory finally showed you who he is.”
I started sobbing before he finished the sentence.
May you like
Then my father leaned closer to the camera.
“And if he touched Noah, listen carefully. Your husband is not the head of the Romano family. You are.”
