Chapter 9 - Saint
Dante left the room without explanation.
I followed him.
“Who is Saint?”
He kept walking.
“Dante.”
He stopped.
For several seconds, he stared through the clinic window.
Then he spoke.
“My younger brother used to call one person Saint.”
“Who?”
“My sister.”
I blinked.
“You have a sister?”
“Lucia.”
“Where is she?”
“Dead.”
The word landed strangely.
“How?”
“Cancer.”
“When?”
“Twelve years ago.”
Marco joined us.
“Saint cannot be Lucia.”
Dante turned.
“Someone could be using her name.”
“Who knew it?”
“Family.”
That narrowed nothing.
Moretti family apparently meant blood relatives, captains, lawyers, old friends, and men who had been loyal longer than I had been alive.
The next morning, we opened my father’s laptop.
Most files were encrypted.
One folder was not.
It contained photographs of me as a child.
Birthday parties.
School plays.
A trip to Lake Michigan.
Then we found a video.
My father sat behind a desk.
He looked exhausted.
“If Emily is watching this, she is old enough to know.”
I began crying before he continued.
“Your mother did not die when you were a baby.”
My breath caught.
Everything I knew shifted again.
“She left because staying would have put you in danger.”
I grabbed the table.
“My mother is alive?”
Dante said nothing.
The video continued.
“She knows where the final ledger is.”
My father leaned closer to the camera.
“Emily, if anyone ever mentions Saint, do not trust the obvious answer.”
Dante and Marco exchanged looks.
Then my father said something neither of them expected.
“Saint is not a person.”
The recording ended.
We stared at the blank screen.
Marco spoke first.
“A place?”
“Maybe.”
I suddenly remembered something.
When I was little, my father sometimes took me to church.
Not because he was religious.
Because he said it was quiet.
“What church did Gabriel Moretti attend?”
Dante looked at me.
“He didn’t.”
“What about funerals?”
His expression changed.
“Saint Augustine.”
I stood.
My father had taken me there.
Every Sunday for six months before he died.
And underneath the altar of Saint Augustine Church was a row of private family crypts.
May you like
Including one bearing the Moretti name.
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