Chapter 4 - THE NAME OF HER FATHER
Sadi slapped Victor before she realized what she was doing.
The sound echoed through the laundry room.
Victor did not move.
His cheek turned slightly with the force of it, but when he looked back at her, there was no anger in his eyes.
Only something harder to understand.
Pain.
“You knew my father?” Sadi demanded.
“Yes.”
“You knew he was dead?”
“Yes.”
“You knew I was working in your house?”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing?”
“I didn’t know whether you were part of what he did.”
“My father was a mechanic.”
“That’s what he told people.”
“He repaired trucks.”
“He also kept records.”
Sadi’s hands shook. “What records?”
Victor placed the ledger on the table. “Payments. Names. Deliveries. Judges. Police officers. Politicians. Everyone connected to the old Costello network.”
“Old?”
“My father ran the organization before I did.”
“And mine worked for him?”
“He kept the books.”
Sadi laughed once, bitterly. “You’re telling me my father was a criminal?”
“I’m telling you he was afraid.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
Victor’s expression tightened. “Yes. He was involved.”
Her entire childhood rearranged itself in seconds.
Her father’s long nights. The unexplained money. The men who came to their apartment when she was small. The way he had always told her never to open the locked metal case beneath his bed.
She had believed he was protecting them from debt collectors.
Maybe he had been protecting them from something worse.
“What did he steal?” she asked again.
Victor looked down at the ledger.
“Your father discovered that money was being diverted from the organization. Millions. The payments were disguised as medical expenses, security costs, charitable donations. But they were financing Dario Vale.”
“Why would he give Dario money?”
“He didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
Victor’s eyes met hers. “My uncle, Rafael.”
The name carried weight even before he explained it.
“Rafael Costello was my father’s older brother. He believed the family belonged to him. When my father chose me as his successor, Rafael began building his own network.”
“Is he alive?”
“Last I heard.”
“Where is he?”
“Somewhere close.”
The laundry room door opened.
Elias stood there. “We found a second camera.”
Victor turned. “Where?”
“Above the kitchen entrance. It was installed three months ago.”
Sadi’s breath caught. “Three months?”
Elias nodded. “There are four more.”
Victor looked at Sadi. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“You’re not being watched because of your debt. You’re being watched because of what your father hid.”
Sadi stared at the ledger.
“I don’t know anything.”
“Perhaps your father believed you did.”
“He never told me.”
“Maybe he left something behind.”
Sadi remembered the metal case.
It had been beneath her parents’ bed for years. After her father’s death, her mother had sold nearly everything to pay rent, but the case had vanished before Sadi could open it.
Her mother had died two years later.
Sadi had never asked where the case went.
A sound came from the corridor.
Victor raised his weapon.
The lights went out.
Someone screamed.
The laundry room filled with darkness.
Sadi heard footsteps running toward the back exit. Victor grabbed her waist and pulled her behind the industrial washer as two shots cracked through the room.
Metal shrieked.
Victor fired back.
A body struck the wall.
Elias rushed forward, but the intruder had already escaped through the service door.
Victor turned on a flashlight.
Sadi was pressed against the washer, Victor’s body shielding hers.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He looked at her hands. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s from the bleach.”
“You need a doctor.”
“I need answers.”
Victor stared at her for a long moment.
Then a phone rang.
Not hers.
Victor reached into his jacket and removed a secure phone.
The screen displayed an unknown number.
He answered.
A distorted voice spoke.
“Rafael says hello.”
Victor’s face went still.
The voice continued, “Tell the maid that her father left a message.”
Victor’s hand tightened around the phone.
“What message?” he asked.
“Ask her what he hid beneath the blue house.”
The call ended.
Sadi looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
Victor did not answer.
She stepped closer. “What is the blue house?”
He looked toward the rain-streaked window.
“Your childhood home.”
“We lived in a gray apartment.”
“No,” Victor said. “Your father owned a house outside the city. He sold it after his wife died.”
Sadi felt the room spin.
She remembered a blue house.
Not clearly.
A porch.
A cracked birdbath.
A red door.
A woman screaming while her father pushed Sadi into the back seat of a car.
She had been four years old.
The memory had been buried so deeply she had mistaken it for a nightmare.
Victor saw recognition in her face.
“What did you remember?”
Sadi whispered, “Someone was chasing us.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try.”
She closed her eyes.
A man stood in the yard.
Tall.
Gray hair.
A silver ring shaped like a broken crown.
Sadi opened her eyes.
“Rafael,” she said.
Victor’s expression turned lethal.
May you like
Outside, thunder rolled over the estate.
Then every security alarm in the house began screaming.
