Chapter 8 - James Comes Back
Sophia put the call on speaker.
Dante did not smile.
James swore.
“I told you not to let him listen.”
“You lost the right to tell me what to do when you disappeared with my money.”
“I didn’t take it for me.”
“Great. That should look beautiful on a greeting card.”
“Sophia, listen to me.”
“No. You listen. You lied about why you met me. You used my name. You let me raise our daughter alone while you collected money from men who may have killed my father.”
James was quiet.
Then he said, “Lily is my daughter.”
The words hit harder than Sophia expected.
“I know.”
“I never lied about loving her.”
“You lied about everything around her.”
“I’m trying to fix it.”
“By leaving a tracker in a teddy bear?”
“That wasn’t for Caruso.”
“Who was it for?”
“For me. I needed to know where you’d go if someone threatened you.”
“That is not better.”
“I know.”
Dante leaned toward the phone.
“Where are you?”
James laughed without humor. “Still charming, Vieri.”
“Where?”
“At a place you won’t storm if you want Matteo Bellini alive.”
Marco went pale.
Dante’s eyes sharpened.
“You have him?”
“No. Caruso does. I know where.”
Sophia looked at Dante.
James continued.
“Caruso plans to move him tonight. He also knows about Union Station.”
Sophia’s hand closed around the brass key in her pocket.
“How?”
“Because I told him years ago about 0417. I thought it was the bank box. I didn’t know there was another key.”
“Why were you paid to marry me?”
Silence.
“Answer me.”
“To find your father’s evidence.”
Sophia closed her eyes.
“Was any of it real?”
Dante looked away.
James’s voice changed.
“Yes.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I was supposed to date you for six months. Find out what you knew. Search your family storage. Leave.”
“But you stayed.”
“I stayed because I fell in love with you.”
Sophia laughed, but tears came anyway.
“You fell in love with me while reporting on me.”
“Yes.”
“You had a baby with me while reporting on me.”
“I stopped reporting before Lily was born.”
“The payments continued.”
“I took them because Caruso would’ve known if I quit. I put the money aside.”
“Where?”
“The escrow account. Your twenty-seven thousand is there too.”
Sophia stared at Dante.
Priya was already checking.
James spoke faster.
“I moved your savings because Caruso ordered me to drain you financially. He wanted you desperate enough to sell anything your father left behind. I couldn’t stop him from watching you, but I could keep the money somewhere he couldn’t touch.”
“Then why leave?”
“Because he told me the next step was Lily.”
The room went still.
Sophia’s voice dropped.
“What about Lily?”
“He wanted me to create a custody crisis. Make you look unstable. Get access to your apartment without you there.”
Sophia felt sick.
“So you abandoned us?”
“I thought if I disappeared, the plan collapsed.”
“You could have warned me.”
“I was a coward.”
That answer sounded more truthful than the others.
Dante said, “Where is Matteo?”
James gave an address at an abandoned printing plant.
“Caruso’s men will move him at eleven. If you go before ten-thirty, you can get him out.”
“Why help us?”
“Because Caruso is done protecting me. He’ll kill me as soon as he gets the locker.”
Sophia almost said good.
She stopped herself.
Not because James deserved mercy.
Because she did not want rage making decisions for her.
“Where are you?” she asked.
James hesitated.
“Union Station.”
Dante stood.
James continued. “Sophia, bring the key. I can get you to the old lockers before Caruso’s people arrive.”
“No.”
“If we don’t get the evidence first—”
“No. I’m not walking into a station with you alone.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Correct.”
A painful silence.
“I deserved that.”
“Yes.”
Dante coordinated two teams. Luca would lead the rescue of Matteo. Dante would go with Sophia to Union Station, along with Priya and two security officers kept out of the operational chain Marco had compromised.
At the printing plant, Luca found Matteo alive, bruised but conscious, locked in an office behind a false wall.
Marco cried when the video call connected.
Sophia turned away to give father and son privacy.
Then she and Dante entered Union Station.
James waited beneath the great clock.
He looked older.
Thinner.
Terrified.
Sophia had imagined this reunion every night for months.
She had pictured slapping him.
Screaming.
Demanding answers.
Instead she stood six feet away and said, “You look awful.”
James laughed once.
“You look good.”
“Don’t.”
“Right.”
His eyes moved toward Dante.
Dante’s expression was cold enough to frost glass.
James raised his hands. “I’m unarmed.”
“Stay that way,” Dante said.
They followed a maintenance corridor to a sealed wall section where renovation plans showed an old bank of lockers.
A contractor removed a temporary panel.
Locker 417 stood behind it.
Sophia inserted the brass key.
It turned.
Inside sat a single weatherproof case.
She opened it.
Ledgers.
Photographs.
Copies of contracts.
A cassette.
And a letter addressed to Sophia.
Before she could touch it, James whispered, “We need to go.”
Dante turned.
Three men had entered the corridor behind them.
At the center stood Vincent Caruso.
He was older than Dante, silver at the temples, elegant enough to look harmless.
He smiled at Sophia.
“Your father,” he said, “made this much more difficult than it needed to be.”
Sophia closed the case.
Caruso’s smile widened.
“And apparently, so did you.”
Sophia looked at James. “Did you lead him here?”
James’s face went white. “No.”
Caruso chuckled. “Still asking the wrong question.”
“What’s the right one?” Sophia asked.
“How did I know the locker would open tonight?”
Dante’s eyes shifted toward the contractor who had removed the wall panel. The man backed away, terrified.
Caruso shook his head. “Not him.”
Sophia understood with a sinking feeling. The bank request. The house. The tracker. There had been so many channels that finding one leak had made them feel safer than they were.
Caruso tapped his temple. “People always look for one traitor. Good organizations fail because everyone wants betrayal to have one face.”
Sophia filed the sentence away. Caruso was bragging, and bragging men often revealed structure.
“Then you have more than one source,” she said.
His eyes narrowed.
May you like
That was answer enough.
Sophia tightened her grip on the case. Even if they escaped the corridor, the story was not ending there. It was only becoming visible.
