Chapter 2 - THE FUNERAL WITH NO BODY
Lorenzo Falcone laughed when I apologized.
That annoyed me more than if he had hit me.
We moved him from the basement interrogation room into the library.
Dominic had been sent to inspect a warehouse across town under the pretense that I wanted him away from the estate.
Carlo believed I was still investigating Lorenzo.
For the moment, nobody knew anything had changed.
Lorenzo sat with an ice pack against his jaw.
“You almost killed me.”
“I did not.”
“You were considering it.”
Fair.
“I was wrong.”
He stared.
“Was that an apology?”
“Don't enjoy it.”
He smiled painfully.
“Elena showed you.”
“Yes.”
“Leo?”
“Yes.”
“Birthmark?”
I went still.
“You knew.”
“I saw a photo.”
“Mateo never let me meet the kid.”
“He said I had a dishonest face.”
“Your face is improving.”
“Pain makes me handsome.”
I ignored him.
“Where is my son?”
Lorenzo’s humor vanished.
“I don't know.”
“What happened four days ago?”
Mateo had arranged to meet Lorenzo at an abandoned train depot outside Kenosha.
He believed he had finally obtained proof linking Carlo to missing money from Moretti North Harbor Logistics.
Forty-seven million dollars over six years.
Not stolen outright.
Moved through shell vendors.
Then invested into companies Carlo secretly controlled.
Mateo discovered the irregularities shortly before the crash.
That was motive.
But money alone did not prove Carlo ordered murder.
Mateo wanted the original payment authorization.
“Did he get it?”
Lorenzo nodded.
“From Bellini.”
I stared.
“The doctor?”
“Bellini had been keeping more than medical records.”
Apparently Cesare Bellini had collected evidence for years.
Why?
Guilt.
Fear.
Maybe both.
“He helped fake Mateo’s death.”
“Yes.”
“I want to hear that from him.”
“You might want to sit down first.”
I already was.
Lorenzo continued.
After the crash, paramedics took Mateo to Saint Catherine’s under a temporary trauma ID.
He was alive.
Barely.
Bellini arrived before I did.
Carlo arrived shortly after.
While I was being flown back from New York, someone entered Mateo’s ICU room using a stolen staff badge.
A nurse caught him near the medication pump.
The man fled.
Bellini checked security.
The badge had been issued to a contractor connected to one of Carlo’s companies.
Not proof.
Enough fear.
Bellini made a decision.
He falsified the communication sent to my family office.
Moved Mateo under emergency protective status through a private physician network.
Then told Carlo and me Mateo had died.
“How did he fake the body?”
“He didn't need one.”
Closed casket.
Burn injuries.
Hospital paperwork.
Funeral-home cooperation under medical-sealing rules.
The funeral director never saw Mateo.
A sealed transport container arrived with signed documents from Bellini.
The coffin was never opened.
I had buried a coffin because a doctor I trusted told me my son was inside.
The humiliation of it was almost physical.
“I should have checked.”
Lorenzo shook his head.
“You were grieving.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is part of one.”
I hated him slightly less.
Then I asked:
“Why not tell me later?”
“Bellini tried.”
“When?”
“Two months after the funeral.”
“What happened?”
“You had Carlo in your office.”
I remembered.
Carlo practically lived beside me then.
Managing everything while I fell apart.
Bellini saw how close we were.
Stayed silent.
Cowardice.
Maybe survival.
Then Mateo developed complications.
Memory loss.
Speech issues.
Long rehabilitation.
Bellini convinced himself secrecy was still necessary.
By the time Mateo remembered Carlo’s face near the garage, he no longer trusted the world waiting for him.
“He watched you.”
“What?”
Lorenzo looked uncomfortable.
“News.”
“Security feeds Elena sometimes described.”
“Stories.”
“Your retaliation after the funeral.”
I looked down.
Three rival crews had paid after I believed one of them arranged Mateo’s crash.
One turned out to have nothing to do with it.
I knew that now.
Too late.
Lorenzo continued:
“Mateo said grief turned you into a weapon Carlo could point.”
I closed my eyes.
My son had been alive, watching me become exactly what his killer needed.
“Where is Bellini?”
“No idea.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
Text:
If you want Bellini alive, stop asking about the funeral.
I showed Lorenzo.
His expression changed.
“Carlo?”
“Too obvious.”
Then another message.
A photograph.
Cesare Bellini tied to a chair in what looked like an old medical storage room.
Alive.
Holding a newspaper dated that morning.
Proof of life.
Then:
THE BABY IS NEXT IF ELENA TALKS.
Something inside me turned cold.
Lorenzo saw my face.
“Alessio.”
I stood.
“No.”
He stood too.
“That's the face Mateo was afraid of.”
I looked at him.
He did not back down.
“You kill the first man you suspect and whoever really has Bellini disappears.”
I hated that he was right.
Again.
We moved Elena and Leo.
Not without asking.
I explained the threat.
Elena chose one of my sister Lucia’s homes outside the city.
Independent security.
No Carlo-controlled personnel.
She refused to leave without speaking to me privately.
In my office, she held Leo while I stood by the window.
“Mateo told me something about you.”
“What?”
“He said when he was six, you broke a man’s nose because the man yelled at him.”
That sounded plausible.
“He remembered it as love.”
Elena continued.
“Then he said when he was twenty-six, he realized you had never learned another way to show it.”
Pain.
Clean.
“He loved you.”
“I know.”
“No.”
She stepped closer.
“You know he was your son.”
“That isn't the same thing.”
I turned.
She looked angry now.
Good.
Less afraid.
“He wanted to come home.”
My throat tightened.
“He packed a bag twice.”
“Why didn't he?”
“He kept saying one sentence.”
“What?”
I need to know Dad will listen before he shoots.
I sat down.
There was no defense left.
Leo reached toward the broken bourbon stain still on the rug from yesterday.
I picked up his toy before he could crawl toward glass residue I had missed.
Grandfather reflex.
Strange.
Then Elena said:
“If we find Mateo…”
“When.”
She stopped.
I corrected myself.
“When we find him.”
“Don't punish him for staying away.”
“I won't.”
“You'll want to.”
Probably.
“I won't.”
“And Bellini?”
That was harder.
The man had stolen three years.
Also saved Mateo’s life.
Two truths.
“I don't know.”
Honest.
Elena nodded.
Better.
After she left, I summoned no captains.
No soldiers.
I called an attorney.
Then a detective I had once hated because he refused my money.
Detective Aaron Cole.
He answered:
“Moretti.”
“I need help.”
Long silence.
“That sentence alone may justify retirement.”
“Can you find a kidnapping victim?”
“Yes.”
“Without telling half Chicago?”
“Usually.”
I sent Bellini’s photograph.
Then I told him something I had never told police in my life.
“Whatever this uncovers…”
I looked at the empty doorway Leo had crawled through.
“…follow it.”
“Even if it lands on you?”
I thought about Mateo.
“Yes.”
The investigation started with the photograph.
A medical storage room.
Old oxygen-cylinder rack.
Green tile.
Lorenzo recognized it.
An abandoned Moretti Foundation rehabilitation clinic on the south side.
The same clinic where Mateo had spent his first six months after the crash.
By midnight, police surrounded it.
Bellini was inside.
Alive.
No kidnappers.
They had left hours earlier.
But taped beneath his chair was a note.
Not for me.
May you like
For Mateo.
YOUR FATHER KNOWS NOW. LET’S SEE WHICH ONE OF YOU DIES FIRST.
