Chapter 4 - The Teddy Bear at Apartment 3B
The house stood on South Morgan beneath a row of bare trees, narrower than Sophia remembered and somehow more dangerous for looking ordinary.
She had not been there in fourteen years.
The porch light was broken. One upstairs curtain moved though there was no wind. A realtor’s lockbox hung from the railing, but Luca confirmed the code had been changed three times in the past month.
Dante parked across the street.
“You stay here,” he said.
Sophia turned slowly in the passenger seat.
“What did we discuss about orders?”
“This is not an office discussion.”
“It’s my father’s house.”
“It is currently owned by a company created with your stolen identity, and the man who lied to you for four years just planted a tracker near your baby.”
“All excellent reasons for me to know what’s inside.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
Luca, from the front seat, stared very carefully through the windshield.
Sophia folded her arms. “If you go in without me and find something about my father, you’ll have to decide what I’m allowed to know. We both know how well that went yesterday.”
Dante held her gaze.
Then he exhaled once.
“You stay behind Luca.”
“That I can do.”
The back door had been forced recently. Inside, the house smelled like dust, cold plaster, and the lemon cleaner Sophia’s mother used when she was anxious.
Memory arrived in pieces.
A pencil mark on the kitchen doorway where her father measured her height.
A burn in the counter from the Thanksgiving her mother forgot a hot pan.
A tiny dent in the wall from the time Sophia threw a shoe at a spider and missed.
She touched none of it.
Upstairs had been stripped. Downstairs was almost empty except for an old dining table pushed into the basement.
Luca checked the furnace room.
Dante examined the windows.
Sophia stood at the bottom of the stairs and stared at a square of cleaner concrete near the far wall.
“What?” Dante asked.
“There used to be shelves there.”
“So?”
“My dad built them himself. Floor to ceiling. He kept paint cans, tools, tax records. My mother hated them because they were crooked.”
They crossed the basement.
Fresh screws marked the concrete where the shelving had been removed.
Behind it, the wall had been patched.
Luca tapped the drywall.
Hollow.
Dante looked at Sophia before touching it.
She nodded.
Luca cut a careful rectangle.
Inside the cavity sat an old metal cashbox.
Sophia stopped breathing.
Her father’s initials were scratched into the lid.
D.M.
Dante did not reach for it.
“It’s yours.”
Sophia knelt and lifted the box onto the floor.
The lock had already been broken.
Inside were six manila folders, a cassette tape, a photograph of David Mitchell standing beside a much younger Dante, and a red notebook.
Sophia stared at the photograph.
“You knew my father.”
Dante’s face changed.
“I met him once.”
“You said his name appeared in records.”
“It did.”
“You did not say you met him.”
“I was nineteen.”
“That still counts as meeting.”
Dante looked at the photograph.
“My father brought him to our house. David told him Caruso was billing the city through companies tied to police officers and judges. My father refused to help him.”
Sophia’s anger arrived slowly.
“Why?”
“Because my father believed surviving mattered more than doing the right thing.”
“And you?”
“I spent most of my life proving I could survive better than he did.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No,” Dante said. “It wasn’t.”
Before he could answer, a floorboard creaked upstairs.
Luca raised a hand.
Everyone froze.
Another sound.
A shoe scraping hardwood.
Someone was inside.
Luca moved first.
Dante stepped between Sophia and the stairs.
“Stay here.”
This time she did not argue.
A man ran across the first floor.
The back door slammed.
Luca chased him outside.
Dante started after him, then stopped when Sophia grabbed his sleeve.
“The box.”
A thin line of smoke curled from beneath the red notebook.
Someone had dropped a small incendiary packet inside.
Dante grabbed the metal box, carried it to the concrete sink, and dumped the contents under running water. Smoke hissed. Paper curled black at the edges.
Sophia snatched the photograph away before the water reached it.
The notebook survived, soaked but readable.
The cassette label did not.
Luca returned alone, breathing hard.
“He had a car waiting.”
“Did you see him?” Dante asked.
“Enough. Not James.”
Sophia opened the red notebook carefully.
Her father’s handwriting filled the first pages.
Names. Dates. Contract numbers.
Then one sentence circled twice.
IF THEY FIND THIS, THE SECOND SET IS WITH ELEANOR.
Sophia frowned.
“Who is Eleanor?”
Dante’s expression went still.
“What?” she asked.
“I know that name.”
“From where?”
He looked toward Luca.
Luca answered instead.
“Eleanor Vale ran the accounts for Caruso’s old construction companies.”
“Ran?” Sophia asked.
“She disappeared thirteen years ago.”
Sophia looked back at the notebook.
Thirteen years.
The same year her father died.
She turned another page.
Taped to it was a photograph of a woman in a red coat standing outside City Hall.
On the back, her father had written one line.
ELEANOR KNOWS WHY THEY KILLED ME.
Sophia stayed kneeling on the basement floor, unable to close the notebook. Upstairs, Luca spoke into his phone, sending people to search nearby alleys and traffic cameras. None of it reached her clearly.
Dante crouched several feet away. “Sophia.”
She looked at him. “My mother told me his car skidded in the rain.”
“I know.”
“I built my whole memory of that night around weather.”
Dante said nothing.
She pressed her thumb against the photograph of Eleanor. “If this is true, someone let me spend seventeen years believing my father made one bad turn.”
“Then we find out who.”
“We?”
“Yes.”
Sophia studied him. “Because of Caruso?”
“Because your father asked my family for help once and did not get it.”
The answer did not erase anything, but it was the first time Dante had offered responsibility without trying to control the outcome.
Sophia closed the notebook. “Then this time, nobody decides what I’m allowed to know.”
May you like
“No one,” Dante said.
She stood. “Good. Start with Eleanor.”
