Chapter 17 - RUSSO BLOOD
Elena Russo read Celeste's note without sitting down.
That worried me more than if she'd screamed.
We were in the private back room at Open Door the next morning. Lily had spent the night in temporary care arranged through the proper authorities after her aunt Marta was located in Milwaukee and began driving to Chicago before dawn. Detective Medina had made it very clear that being wealthy, frightened, or emotionally invested did not make any of us Lily's legal guardians.
Elena approved of that so strongly she nearly frightened the family-services worker.
“Good,” she'd said. “Rich people already believe money is permission. Do not encourage us.”
Now she stood at the long worktable with the photograph of Matteo and Celeste beneath one hand.
Gabriel sat across from her.
I stood near the coffee machine because I wanted something useful to do with my hands.
Noah had school. Benji was opening the front room. Rosa had announced that family mysteries were not a valid reason to delay chopping onions and had gone to the kitchen muttering in Spanish.
Elena finally spoke.
“I knew Matteo was seeing someone.”
Gabriel's eyes narrowed. “You knew?”
“I knew there was a woman. He wouldn't tell me her name.”
“For how long?”
“A year, perhaps more.”
“And you never asked?”
Elena gave him a look. “I asked so often he threatened to move to Canada.”
That almost broke the tension.
Almost.
Gabriel tapped the photograph. “Celeste worked for Russo Maritime.”
“In internal accounting,” Elena said. “Briefly.”
“You remember her.”
“I remember everybody who argued with your father over expense reports.”
“Did you know she was with Matteo?”
Elena looked down.
“No.”
Gabriel pushed back from the table. “Then what happened at Dock 14?”
Her face changed.
There it was.
The same kind of pause I'd learned to recognize when people were deciding whether telling the truth would cost more than silence.
“Elena,” I said quietly.
She looked at me.
“You don't owe me the answer. But if it concerns a missing woman and a nine-year-old girl, this isn't only family history anymore.”
Elena closed her eyes.
“Matteo died near Dock 14,” she said.
Gabriel's chair went still beneath his hand.
“The police report said his boat struck a submerged piling near the north breakwater.”
“It did.”
“Then why didn't you ever call it Dock 14?”
“Because that was where he'd been before he went onto the water.”
A long silence.
Gabriel stared at her. “Doing what?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to believe I spent ten years wishing I'd forced him to tell me.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
I'd seen Elena injured, furious, drugged, blackmailed, embarrassed, and triumphant. I had never seen her look old.
For a moment, she did.
She sat.
“Matteo came to the house the evening he died,” she continued. “He argued with your father in the library. I heard Anthony tell him to stop digging through shipping records that didn't concern him. Matteo said if the manifests were false, they concerned everyone whose name was on the company.”
Gabriel swore softly.
“Why didn't you tell the police?”
“I told them there had been an argument. Anthony told them the same. Matteo was angry when he left. His blood-alcohol level was zero. The boat inspection found damage consistent with the crash. There was no evidence of foul play.”
“And Stefan?” I asked.
Elena's eyes moved to me.
“Why do you ask about Stefan?”
“Because Celeste wrote, Do not let Stefan take her.”
Elena's fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
Stefan Russo was Gabriel's cousin. I'd met him exactly twice, both times at foundation restructuring meetings. He was forty-one, polished, handsome in the expensive, forgettable way of a man who had spent his adulthood learning how to look harmless in photographs. After Victor Voss was removed from the Hearth Fund, Stefan had temporarily overseen several Russo Maritime compliance projects while independent auditors rebuilt the controls.
He had also delivered flowers to Elena's hospital room.
White lilies.
I suddenly hated remembering that.
Before we could continue, Medina arrived.
She brought news.
Celeste's car had been found in a parking garage near the old river terminal. The driver's door was unlocked. Her purse was under the passenger seat. Her phone was gone.
“No blood,” Medina said before Gabriel could ask. “No obvious signs of violence. We're processing it. I need all of you not to turn this into a private search operation.”
She looked directly at Gabriel.
“I mean you.”
“I understood the sentence.”
“Good. Rich men occasionally hear grammar as a suggestion.”
I liked her more every time we met.
By noon, the story leaked.
Someone photographed Gabriel leaving Open Door after speaking with investigators. Another camera caught Lily being picked up by her aunt Marta. Within hours, a gossip account posted side-by-side images of Lily and Gabriel beneath the headline SECRET RUSSO DAUGHTER?
I wanted to throw my phone into soup.
Gabriel's communications team drafted a statement denying paternity. He refused to release it.
“Why?” I asked when we stepped into the alley behind the kitchen for air.
“Because the only person we'd be protecting is me.”
“You know you're not her father?”
His eyes met mine immediately. “Yes.”
I held his gaze.
“Completely?”
“Completely.”
It wasn't jealousy that made me ask. It was the note. It was the photograph. It was the fact that we'd agreed not to protect each other by choosing which truths the other could handle.
Gabriel understood that.
“Celeste and I never had a romantic relationship,” he said. “She worked for the company. Matteo introduced us. I knew they were close, but I thought it was professional. After he died, Celeste resigned and disappeared from our circles. I haven't spoken to her in almost a decade.”
I nodded.
“Okay.”
“That's all?”
“What do you want me to do? Throw a latte?”
“I'm still adjusting to healthy conflict.”
“So am I.”
He leaned against the brick wall. “If Lily is Matteo's…”
He couldn't finish.
“You'd be her uncle,” I said.
“My mother would be her grandmother.”
“And none of that becomes real to the child until the adults handle it carefully.”
He looked at me. “You really have become terrifyingly sensible.”
“Rosa says it's the soup.”
That afternoon, Elena asked whether there was a lawful, child-centered way to confirm the family connection. Medina told her any testing should happen with Lily's legal guardian and appropriate professionals, not through a billionaire's private laboratory. Marta agreed to discuss it after speaking with counsel and the family-services worker.
Nobody got an instant answer.
Real life remained rude that way.
Just before closing, Lily came back with Marta to collect the backpack she'd left behind. Marta was a tired-looking woman in her thirties who hugged her niece every time the child crossed more than six feet of space.
Lily asked to speak with me.
We sat at the counter while Marta remained nearby.
“Mom gave me a password,” Lily whispered.
“What kind of password?”
“She said if Mr. Russo didn't understand the key, I should say this.”
She looked toward Gabriel, who had just entered through the kitchen door.
Then she repeated the words carefully.
“Blue lantern. Number fourteen.”
Gabriel stopped walking.
Marco, beside him, went pale.
I looked from one man to the other.
“What?” I asked.
Marco answered first.
“Dock 14 used to have private storage lockers.”
May you like
Gabriel took the brass key from his pocket.
“And the building's old security sign,” he said slowly, “was a blue lantern.”
