Chapter 4 - My Father’s Second FuneralDominic took me to my apartment under guard.

I hated that I needed it.

Two black SUVs followed us across Queens. Men stood at the entrance of my building before I even stepped out. My neighbors peeked through curtains, probably wondering why Amelia from 3B had suddenly become the kind of woman escorted by men in dark suits.

My apartment door was open.

Not unlocked.

Open.

The cheap chain hung broken. The little ceramic bowl where I kept spare change had been smashed. Books were pulled from shelves. Couch cushions sliced open. My mother’s old rosary lay scattered bead by bead across the floor.

Someone had searched every inch.

Dominic entered before me.

“Stay behind me.”

I ignored him and stepped over a broken picture frame.

It was a photo of my father and me in Greece when I was sixteen. He was laughing. I was pretending to be annoyed. Behind us, the sea looked impossibly blue.

The glass had cracked across his face.

I picked it up.

For three years, I had survived by believing his death was random. Cruel, yes, but random. A truck. Rain. Bad timing.

Now every memory was rearranging itself.

His sudden fear. His late-night calls. The notebooks he burned in the sink. The way he made me practice old ciphers until sunrise. The morning he told me to forget everything.

He had known.

Maybe he had always known.

Dominic’s men searched quickly.

“Clear,” one called.

“Not clear,” I said.

Dominic turned.

I went to the kitchen and opened the cabinet under the sink. The bottom panel looked ordinary unless you knew my father. He believed important things should hide where no one with pride would look.

I pressed two fingers against a warped piece of wood and pushed.

The panel loosened.

Inside was a metal tin.

My hands shook as I pulled it out.

Dominic stepped closer but did not touch it.

The tin held three things.

A cassette tape.

A folded map of Manhattan.

And a birthday card addressed to me in my father’s handwriting.

I had turned twenty-one six months after he died.

I opened the card.

My father’s words blurred as tears filled my eyes.

My little star,

If you are reading this, then I failed to keep the storm away. I am sorry. You were never supposed to inherit my ghosts. But you must understand this: the code is not the treasure. The code is the door. The door opens only when the Sparrow sings.

I read it twice.

“The Sparrow,” Dominic said quietly.

I looked up. “You know what that means?”

His face had gone still again. “No.”

But he was lying.

I knew languages.

I knew codes.

I also knew when a man was choosing silence.

Before I could challenge him, his phone rang.

He listened, then closed his eyes for one brief second.

“What?” I asked.

He ended the call.

“Your father’s grave was opened.”

My stomach turned.

“They checked the coffin?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Dominic looked at me.

“It was empty.”

The room folded inward.

I gripped the counter.

“No.”

“Amelia—”

“No.” My voice broke. “I buried him. I stood there. I watched them lower him.”

Dominic did not soften the truth.

“Someone buried an empty coffin.”

The cassette tape sat between us like a living thing.

I grabbed it and searched my apartment until I found my father’s old portable player in a box of junk. Somehow, it still worked. The tape hissed. Then my father’s voice filled the ruined kitchen.

“Amelia, if you found this, you are in danger. Do not trust the police. Do not trust any man who says he loved me like a brother. And if Dominic Russo is with you…”

Dominic went motionless.

The tape crackled.

“…ask him why he let the Sparrow die.”

I slowly turned toward Dominic.

His face had changed completely.

Not fear.

Guilt.

The tape kept playing.

“The Meridian file contains names powerful enough to bury cities. I hid the final key where only my daughter would understand to look. Amelia, forgive me. Your mother knows more than she can safely remember.”

Then the recording cut into static.

I stared at Dominic.

“Who was the Sparrow?”

For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then he whispered, “My sister.”

The apartment seemed to go colder.

“What happened to her?”

Dominic looked at the broken photo in my hands.

“Your father tried to save her.”

“And you?”

His jaw tightened.

“I thought he betrayed her.”

The cassette player clicked off.

Outside, sirens wailed somewhere far away.

Dominic’s phone buzzed again.

A new message.

This time, it was a video.

My mother opened her eyes slowly in the wheelchair. Someone held a phone near her face.

A woman’s voice spoke offscreen.

“Tell Amelia what her father really was.”

My mother blinked, confused and trembling.

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