Chapter 4 - The Locker at the Bus Terminal and the Recording That Named a Killer
I did not hand Luca the key.
I stepped back beside June's bed.
A nurse entered behind him.
I asked her to stay.
Luca looked at the nurse.
Then at me.
“You don't understand,” he said.
“Then explain it with witnesses.”
He left without another word.
Dante arrived twenty minutes later.
I told him exactly what happened.
He did not defend Luca.
That frightened me more.
We went to the terminal with Mara.
Two independent security officers accompanied us.
The locker was in a forgotten corridor.
I slid the key into the rusted lock.
Inside sat a tin lunchbox.
My mother used to pack oranges in one like it.
My hands shook as I opened it.
There were photographs.
A flash drive.
And a birthday card addressed to me.
Mara photographed everything before touching it.
We brought the drive to a forensic examiner.
A woman's voice filled the room.
My mother's voice.
“If this reaches Amelia, I'm sorry.”
I covered my mouth.
She described payments to a man named Victor Sloane.
He had run the Moretti charitable accounts.
Then she said Luca's name.
“Luca tried to warn me.”
I looked at Dante.
We had been wrong.
The recording crackled.
“One of them betrayed us,” she said.
“Victor is not working alone.”
A chair scraped in the recording.
A man's voice demanded the drive.
May you like
My mother whispered one final sentence.
“The man who ordered the fire wears Dante's father's ring.”
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