Chapter 4 - The Night of the Fire
I held my phone in front of Matteo's face.
"Explain."
He looked at the picture.
For the first time since meeting him, he didn't have a clever answer.
He didn't even look angry.
He looked tired.
"Clara."
"No."
I stepped away.
"I've been shot at, thrown over a shoulder, dragged into a car, and introduced to a photograph of my supposedly dead father."
My voice shook.
"So you are going to tell me exactly what happened on November seventeenth, two thousand."
Matteo looked at the floor.
Then he closed the study door.
"That was the night of the fire."
"I figured that out."
"I was sixteen."
I waited.
He walked to the window.
"My father had offices in the Hawthorne building. I used to go there after school."
"Why?"
"Because he wanted me to learn the business."
I swallowed.
"The criminal business?"
"Some of it."
He looked out at the harbor.
"Your mother worked on the third floor. I remember her because she never acted afraid of my father."
That sounded like Mom.
She'd once screamed at a landlord twice her size for ignoring a broken heater.
"She brought homemade sandwiches," Matteo continued.
"Of course she did."
"She used to tell me I needed real food."
A faint smile touched his mouth.
"She called me a walking coat hanger."
I almost smiled.
Almost.
"What happened that night?"
His expression darkened.
"My father called me to the building."
"Why?"
"He said there was an emergency. He wanted me to collect a set of records."
"What records?"
"I didn't know."
"Did you find them?"
"No."
He turned.
"When I got there, the building was already filling with smoke."
My hands went cold.
"I went inside anyway."
"Why?"
"Because I heard someone screaming."
I stared at him.
"Who?"
"A woman on the second floor."
"Did you save her?"
"I tried."
He rubbed his thumb against the side of his hand.
A small, unconscious movement.
"I got halfway up the stairs when something exploded."
I could almost hear it.
Glass.
Concrete.
Metal.
"Your mother found me unconscious near the exit."
My breath caught.
"She dragged me outside."
"Yes."
"And the people upstairs?"
Matteo shook his head.
"I don't know what happened to them."
"But seventeen died."
"Yes."
My throat tightened.
"Did you go back?"
He looked straight at me.
"I tried."
"What stopped you?"
"Your mother."
I blinked.
"She wouldn't let me."
"Why?"
"Because the roof was collapsing."
I pressed my fingers against my temples.
The message on my phone had accused him of leaving people to burn.
But the story he was telling was different.
"And my father?" I asked.
"He was there."
My head snapped up.
"Daniel?"
Matteo nodded.
"He helped get me to an ambulance."
I gripped the desk.
"Then he survived."
"That night, yes."
"What happened afterward?"
"He disappeared within forty-eight hours."
"With my mother?"
"No."
The single word hit hard.
"Your mother was taken to a hospital. She'd inhaled smoke. She was pregnant."
I looked at him.
"With me."
"Yes."
"Did she know?"
"She did."
My knees weakened.
I sat on the edge of the desk.
"Why didn't anyone tell her he survived?"
Matteo's face changed.
"Because she already knew."
I stared.
"What?"
"Your mother knew Daniel was alive after the fire."
"Then why did she tell me he was dead?"
"That's the question I've spent years trying to answer."
I looked down at the photograph again.
My parents.
Young.
Happy.
Standing in front of a building that no longer existed.
"Did your father threaten her?"
Matteo hesitated.
"He threatened everyone."
"That's not an answer."
"No."
I stood.
"You're protecting him."
"My father is dead."
"That doesn't mean you stopped protecting him."
His eyes flashed.
"Clara, my father died with three broken ribs and a bullet in his chest because somebody decided his empire wasn't big enough to steal."
I went still.
Matteo looked away.
"I was twenty-two."
There was a long silence.
"Did you kill the people responsible?"
His expression emptied.
"Some of them."
I felt a chill.
He didn't glorify it.
He didn't apologize.
It was simply a fact.
And I had to remember that no matter how many times he saved me, Matteo Conti was not a harmless man.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because lying to you would be easier."
I swallowed.
"And you don't want easy?"
"I want your mother alive."
That disarmed me.
"What do you want from her?"
"An answer."
"About the fire?"
"About the people who financed it."
He moved to the desk and unlocked another drawer.
Inside was a faded envelope.
He handed it to me.
On the front was my mother's handwriting.
I recognized the looping E immediately.
For Matteo, if the past ever comes back.
I stared.
"When did she give you this?"
"Four years ago."
"You saw her four years ago?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"At a church in Brookline."
My mouth fell open.
"My mother hasn't attended church in ten years."
"She went that day."
"Why?"
"She asked for a meeting."
I turned the envelope over.
"What's inside?"
"I never opened it."
I looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because she told me not to unless her life was in danger."
The room fell silent.
Then I tore the envelope open.
Inside was a single folded sheet.
A short message.
I recognized my mother's handwriting immediately.
Matteo, if someone comes for Clara, don't let her trust the police.
Don't let her trust the Conti family either.
And whatever happens, never tell her what Daniel hid inside the music box.
I stopped reading.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Because I still had the music box.
It was sitting on the dresser in my apartment.
And I had given my spare apartment key to exactly one person.
May you like
My manager at the Velvet Room.
The same man who had insisted I work the birthday double shift.
