Chapter 4 - LAUREN’S TRUTH
For the first time since finding the listening device, Vincent understood exactly where the camera was.
Not the recorder.
The camera.
Lauren could not have known Tessa was holding the passport unless someone had seen it.
Vincent scanned the bedroom without moving his head.
Mirror.
Smoke detector.
Light fixtures.
Television.
The flowers.
His eyes stopped.
White roses.
Freshly replaced that morning.
Vincent almost laughed.
He had hated the flowers for months.
Now he knew why.
“Tessa.”
he called.
The bathroom door opened.
Lauren spoke through the bedroom door.
“Tell her to step away from the vase.”
Tessa froze.
Vincent looked directly at the bouquet.
Between two roses sat a tiny black lens.
“Open the door.”
Lauren said.
“Why?”
Vincent asked.
“Because if I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have survived six months.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Vince.”
“I found your receipt.”
Silence.
“And the photograph.”
More silence.
“And the note saying you didn’t hire the shooter.”
Tessa watched the door.
Lauren finally spoke.
“Then we’re out of time.”
Vincent’s voice hardened.
“Who did?”
“Open the door.”
“Answer me.”
“I can’t explain this through a door.”
“Try.”
A long pause followed.
Then Lauren whispered.
“Your father.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
Dominic’s restaurant.
The ring.
The man with Salvatore’s face.
Tessa looked stunned.
Vincent remained calm.
“My father died eight years ago.”
“I know what you saw.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
Lauren rested against the other side of the door.
Vincent could hear fabric move.
“What do you want?”
he asked.
“To keep you alive.”
“That job opening was available six months ago.”
Lauren’s voice cracked.
“You think I don’t know that?”
Vincent felt something in her tone he had not heard in months.
Fear.
Real fear.
“Tessa.”
Vincent said quietly.
“Move away from the door.”
Lauren heard him.
“She isn’t the threat.”
“How generous.”
“Vincent, please.”
The word stopped him.
Lauren almost never said please.
Not when they met.
Not when they fought.
Not when she wanted something.
She negotiated.
She teased.
She demanded.
She did not plead.
Vincent looked at Tessa.
Then he unlocked the door.
Lauren entered immediately and closed it.
Her hair had been pulled into a loose knot.
The red lipstick was gone.
She no longer looked like a woman going to a bridal fitting.
She looked like someone who had been running.
“Where’s Marco?”
she asked.
“With Dominic.”
Lauren’s face changed.
“What happened?”
“Someone shot at him.”
She went pale.
“Oh God.”
“You knew.”
“No.”
“He saw a man who looked like my father.”
Lauren stared at Vincent.
That was answer enough.
Vincent raised the pistol.
Tessa stiffened.
Lauren did not move.
“Tell me everything.”
Lauren looked toward the flowers.
“First remove the transmitter.”
Tessa lifted the bouquet.
Lauren pointed beneath the ceramic base.
“Second compartment.”
Tessa turned it over.
A magnetic disk detached.
Another device.
Marco had missed it because nobody had yet searched the room.
Lauren took the disk.
Then walked into the bathroom.
Vincent followed with his eyes.
She dropped it into the toilet.
Flushed.
When she returned, Vincent still held the pistol.
Lauren sat in a chair across from him.
“My name is Lauren Bennett.”
she began.
Vincent tossed the Canadian passport onto the table.
“Try again.”
Her face tightened.
“Laura Hayes was real.”
“Was?”
“My birth name.”
Tessa sat on the edge of the dresser.
Vincent said nothing.
Lauren continued.
“Thomas Hayes was my father.”
Vincent had suspected it.
Hearing it still landed heavily.
“My father worked for Salvatore Corvino for seventeen years.”
“He stole from him.”
“No.”
Lauren shook her head.
“That’s what your father told everyone.”
“He disappeared with a ledger.”
“He ran with evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
Lauren looked toward the bedroom door.
“Your father wasn’t just building freight companies.”
Vincent’s voice cooled.
“Careful.”
“You asked for the truth.”
“I asked who shot me.”
“And the answer begins with your father.”
Vincent rolled closer.
“Then get there.”
Lauren took a breath.
“Salvatore and Gabriel Rizzo were laundering money through redevelopment projects.”
“That isn’t news.”
“It wasn’t only their money.”
Vincent waited.
“Politicians.”
“Union pension funds.”
“Foreign investors.”
“Construction kickbacks.”
“Police payoffs.”
“Judges.”
Tessa’s expression tightened.
Lauren continued.
“My father kept the shadow ledger.”
Vincent had heard rumors of such a ledger since childhood.
No one outside Salvatore’s inner circle knew whether it really existed.
“What happened?”
Vincent asked.
“Your father decided Gabriel knew too much.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“You’re saying my father killed him.”
“I’m saying your father planned to.”
“But Gabriel lived.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“My father warned him.”
Vincent looked toward the prepaid phone.
“So Hayes and Gabriel disappeared together.”
“Not exactly.”
Lauren explained that six years before Salvatore’s death, Thomas Hayes discovered that millions were being diverted through an offshore network controlled by someone else.
Someone neither Salvatore nor Gabriel appeared to fully control.
Hayes copied records.
Gabriel found out.
Rather than kill Hayes, Gabriel confronted Salvatore.
The partnership collapsed.
Days later Gabriel staged his death.
Hayes disappeared.
“And you?”
Vincent asked.
“I was nineteen.”
“You changed your name.”
“Yes.”
“Why come near me?”
Lauren’s eyes filled with something between shame and defiance.
“Originally?”
“Yes.”
“To find the ledger.”
Vincent stared at her.
Tessa looked down.
Lauren swallowed.
“My father vanished when I was twenty.”
“Vanished or died?”
“I don’t know.”
“The passport is seven years old.”
“He arranged it before disappearing.”
Vincent’s grip on the pistol loosened.
“You met me deliberately.”
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie now.”
“I’m not.”
Lauren leaned forward.
“I knew who you were the first night we met.”
“You told me you didn’t.”
“I lied.”
“You knew the restaurant.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Marco.”
“Yes.”
“You knew my father.”
“By reputation.”
Vincent felt each answer cutting something away.
Memories.
Meaning.
Trust.
“You got engaged to me for a ledger.”
“At first I stayed close because of the ledger.”
“At first?”
Lauren’s eyes met his.
“I fell in love with you.”
Vincent laughed once.
Cold.
“You’ll forgive me if that sentence isn’t persuasive today.”
“I know.”
“The fifty thousand.”
Lauren’s expression changed.
“I paid an intermediary.”
“For what?”
“A name.”
“Whose?”
“The person who wanted you removed.”
Vincent leaned forward.
“And?”
“I never got the name.”
“You expect me to believe you paid fifty thousand dollars three days before I was shot and learned nothing?”
“I learned something.”
“What?”
“The order came from inside the Corvino family.”
Vincent’s eyes hardened.
“Dominic.”
“No.”
“Who else?”
Lauren stared at him.
“Your father.”
Vincent’s patience broke.
“My father is dead.”
“Salvatore died.”
Lauren said.
“But the organization he built didn’t.”
“That’s not what you meant.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
Tessa watched Lauren carefully.
“You think Salvatore is alive.”
Lauren looked at her.
“I know someone using his identity is.”
Vincent remembered Dominic’s description.
The face.
The ring.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how can you say my father ordered the shooting?”
“Because the code authorizing it came from Salvatore’s old private network.”
Vincent said nothing.
Lauren continued.
“Your father created an emergency structure years ago.”
“Black Crown.”
Her eyes widened.
Vincent knew it.
Only vaguely.
Black Crown was a phrase he had heard once as a teenager after overhearing Salvatore and Marco argue.
When Vincent later asked what it meant, his father slapped him hard enough to split his lip.
Never ask again.
Vincent never had.
“You know about it.”
Lauren whispered.
“I know the name.”
“Then you know why this is bigger than Dominic.”
“No.”
Vincent said.
“I know my father wanted me not to know.”
Lauren stood.
“Black Crown is a contingency network.”
“For what?”
“For surviving arrests, assassinations, political changes, internal coups.”
Vincent stared.
“Who controls it?”
“That is the problem.”
Lauren looked directly at him.
“When Salvatore died, somebody else activated it.”
“Who?”
“I have spent seven years trying to find out.”
Vincent gestured toward the hidden recorder.
“And spying on me was part of that?”
Lauren flinched.
“I planted the camera.”
Tessa turned sharply.
Lauren held up a hand.
“Not the recorder.”
Vincent’s anger rose again.
“Why a camera?”
“Because somebody has been entering this room while you sleep.”
Silence.
Vincent’s skin prickled.
“What?”
“I noticed things moving.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know whom to trust.”
“You could trust the man in the bed.”
Lauren’s eyes filled.
“I wanted to.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I thought you might be involved.”
Vincent stared at her.
“In my own shooting?”
“I thought Black Crown might have been transferred to you after Salvatore died.”
He laughed bitterly.
“So you thought I ordered a bullet into my own spine?”
“No.”
“I thought you might know something you weren’t telling me.”
Tessa spoke quietly.
“That explains why you kept asking whether he had left the room.”
Lauren nodded.
“I got an alert when the camera detected movement near my drawer.”
Vincent pointed toward the receipt.
“Who put that under the mattress?”
“Not me.”
“The photo?”
“No.”
“The recorder?”
“No.”
“Then somebody knows more than both of us.”
Lauren nodded.
“And they were in this bedroom recently.”
Vincent turned toward the mattress.
A room filled with security.
Staff.
Family.
Yet someone had hidden a message inches beneath his body.
“How recently?”
Lauren said.
“The camera footage deletes every twenty-four hours.”
“Check it.”
“I did.”
“When?”
“On the drive back.”
“And?”
Lauren pulled out her phone.
“I found this.”
She placed it in Vincent’s hand.
The video was time stamped 2:13 a.m.
The bedroom was dark.
Vincent could be seen sleeping.
Then the door opened.
A figure entered.
No rush.
No mask.
The person moved like someone who belonged there.
Vincent leaned closer.
The figure approached the bed.
Bent down.
Lifted the mattress.
Tessa whispered.
“Pause.”
Lauren did.
The face turned toward the camera.
Vincent felt the blood drain from his own face.
May you like
It was Marco.
---
