Chapter 6 - What My Father Never Told Me
My father kept everything.
Receipts from 1998.
Ticket stubs.
Bent screws he insisted might fit something someday.
Old invoices stacked in labeled folders.
After he died, I boxed most of it and rented the cheapest storage locker I could find in Brooklyn because throwing it away felt too much like losing him twice.
I had not opened the locker in three years.
Roman insisted on coming.
I argued for seven minutes.
Then I looked at the photograph someone had sent me and stopped.
So at noon, one black SUV pulled behind my rented hatchback into a storage facility beneath the BQE.
Roman hated the place immediately.
I could tell because he looked at the flickering hallway lights as if he intended to buy the building solely to replace them.
“This is where you keep family records?”
“This is where I keep things I cannot fit beside my toaster.”
“That does not answer the security concern.”
“It was not meant to.”
Dominic stayed near the entrance.
Roman followed me down the narrow corridor.
Unit 314 contained six boxes, an old drafting table, two lamps, and my father’s frame samples.
I unlocked the door.
Dust rose.
Roman did not enter immediately.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“Your father worked here?”
“No. These were from his shop after it closed.”
I stepped inside.
For a moment, grief arrived so cleanly it surprised me.
His handwriting on masking tape.
His old magnifying visor.
A chipped mug that said FRAME IT OR FORGET IT.
I touched the handle.
Roman remained quiet behind me.
That was becoming one of the things I trusted most about him.
He knew when not to speak.
I found the 2016 client files in a blue banker box.
Costa did not appear on the label.
Valenti did.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Inside were invoices for six frame reconstructions.
Photographs.
Wood samples.
A letter addressed to my father.
The sender line read SOFIA COSTA.
Roman took one breath.
Then another.
“Can I?”
He asked before touching it.
I handed him the letter.
He read silently.
His face did not change until the final paragraph.
Then his thumb stopped moving.
“What?”
He gave me the page.
Elias,
If you are correct about the channels behind the lower molding, do not remove anything until I arrive. The documents may be the proof I have been looking for. Do not call the gallery. Do not call Victor. Call me directly.
Sofia
I read it twice.
“Who is Victor?”
Roman’s voice was almost expressionless.
“Victor Bellandi.”
The gallery manager.
The man who had hired me for the opening.
The man who told me to wear something elegant because donors disliked seeing technicians in work clothes.
My skin went cold.
“He knew my father?”
“Yes.”
“How well?”
Roman looked toward Dominic.
Dominic answered.
“Bellandi worked for the Costa foundation then. Logistics and acquisitions.”
“And now he runs the gallery.”
“Yes.”
I sat on the edge of a box.
The room tilted slightly.
“My father never told me about any of this.”
“Maybe he was protecting you,” Roman said.
I laughed once.
“People love saying that after someone dies.”
Roman did not argue.
I went through the remaining papers.
One envelope had never been opened.
My name was written across the front.
GEMMA.
My throat closed.
“This was in his client file?”
I nodded.
My father had written it before the cancer became terminal.
I opened it carefully.
Gem,
If this ever reaches you, something I hoped would stay buried did not. I did work for people who frightened me, but one of them frightened me less than the men pretending to be respectable. Sofia Costa found a record hidden inside a Valenti frame. She believed it proved charitable art shipments were being used to move cash and weapons through museum channels. I copied one page before the fire. I did not give it to anyone because I was afraid. I am sorry.
My vision blurred.
Below that, he had written one more line.
The copy is where your mother always said I wasted money.
I stared at it.
Roman waited.
“Do you know what that means?”
I laughed through the sudden pressure in my chest.
“Yes.”
My mother hated one thing more than my father’s old tools.
His fountain pens.
He had collected expensive ones even when we were broke.
I turned toward the metal drawer unit in the corner.
Inside, wrapped in cloth, were twelve pens.
One was heavier than the others.
I unscrewed the barrel.
A tightly rolled strip of paper slid into my palm.
Dominic swore softly.
Roman did not move.
I unfolded it.
Columns of dates.
Shipment numbers.
Amounts.
Initials.
V.B.
M.D.
S.C.
And one name written in full.
LUCA MORETTI.
Roman’s face changed.
I knew that name too.
Everyone did.
Moretti Shipping was Costa’s largest competitor on the East Coast.
Their families had spent years pretending they were not at war.
“Is this enough?” I asked.
Roman stared at the page.
“To prove Sofia was right?”
“Yes.”
“To prove who killed her?”
“No.”
He looked at Victor Bellandi’s initials again.
“But it is enough to tell us where to look.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Metal scraping concrete.
Dominic turned instantly.
Roman moved between me and the door before I understood why.
The overhead light went out.
Darkness swallowed the storage corridor.
Then someone slammed the fire door at the far end.
Dominic drew his weapon.
Roman’s hand found my wrist.
“Stay behind me.”
My heart hammered.
For the first time since the gallery, I did not argue.
I folded my father’s letter back along its old crease and sat on the floor beside the open box. For years I had remembered him mostly through illness: pill bottles, appointments, the way his hands shook near the end. The documents gave me an earlier version of him back. Frightened, yes, but working. Thinking. Choosing imperfectly.
“I’m angry at him,” I said.
Roman crouched beside the box rather than answering from above me.
“For hiding it?”
“For leaving me to find it like this.”
“That is fair.”
“I also understand why he was scared.”
“That can be fair too.”
I looked at him. “You are surprisingly good at allowing two things to be true.”
May you like
“No. I spent ten years learning the expensive version.”
The hallway light flickered once before going dark. That was the last calm second we had in the storage facility.
