Patrick Bennett's Memory
Chapter 08 - Patrick Bennett's Memory
They found Patrick Bennett's apartment empty.
The television was still on, murmuring weather warnings to no one. A mug of tea sat on the side table, cold but full. His cane lay on the floor near the doorway, a terrible small detail that made Chloe press both hands to her mouth.
Victor picked up the cane.
He did not tell her it would be all right.
She was grateful for that. Men who said that too quickly had usually done nothing yet.
Gabriel moved through the apartment with two men, checking windows, locks, marks in dust. Chloe stood in the living room that smelled of menthol balm and old books, feeling twelve years old again.
Her father's chair faced the window. Beside it sat a stack of medical bills held together with a rubber band. On the wall hung a photograph of Chloe at seventeen in a graduation cap, her father beaming beside her, strong then, one arm around her shoulders.
Victor saw the photo.
Something in his face softened and closed again.
“Chloe.”
She turned.
He held an envelope from the kitchen drawer. It had her name on it in her father's uneven post-stroke handwriting.
Her fingers shook when she opened it.
Inside was a key and a note.
If I can't tell it right, go where your mother hid the Christmas tins.
Chloe read the line three times.
“My mother used to keep cookie tins in the pantry,” she whispered. “After she died, Dad couldn't throw them away.”
The pantry was barely big enough for one person. Victor waited outside while she knelt on the cracked linoleum and pulled aside bags of rice, canned soup, a broken hand mixer. At the very back, behind a loose baseboard, she found a red tin printed with faded holly.
Inside lay photographs, a cassette tape, and a sealed envelope addressed to Victor Russo.
Chloe carried the tin to the table.
Victor did not touch the envelope immediately. He looked at her first.
“This belongs to you too.”
“No,” Chloe said. “It belongs to whatever truth got my father taken.”
He opened it.
The first page was Lucia Russo's handwriting. The second was legal. The third had signatures. Chloe understood very little of the language, but she understood Victor's face as he read.
“What is it?”
“My mother created a trust,” he said. “Clean money. Hotels. Property. Accounts my father couldn't touch. It was meant for me and for my sister, if she lived.”
“She did.”
“Yes.”
Victor read on.
His jaw tightened.
“What?” Chloe asked.
“The trust passes under only one condition. I must marry by free choice, witnessed by someone Lucia named in private.”
“Who?”
Victor turned the paper toward her.
Patrick Bennett.
Chloe sat down hard.
“That is why Leo wants him,” Victor said. “That is why he wants the marriage. If Patrick signs a false witness statement saying I chose Celeste freely before we knew who she was, Leo can claim control through her.”
“He can't,” Chloe said. “Celeste would refuse.”
“Not if he threatens someone she loves.”
Chloe thought of the bruise around Celeste's wrist.
Then Gabriel entered the kitchen. “Boss.”
Victor looked up.
Gabriel's expression told them enough before he spoke.
“Leo's men were seen taking Mr. Bennett to the old Donati social club in Red Hook.”
Chloe stood. “Then we go there.”
Victor's eyes moved to her fever-pale face. “No.”
“He is my father.”
“And you are the leverage.”
She stepped close enough to lower her voice. “You don't get to make me another woman protected in a room while men negotiate my life.”
Victor stared at her.
For a second, the room held everything they were not saying.
Then he handed her the tin.
“You stay behind me,” he said.
Chloe took it.
“No promises.”
For the first time since the apartment door opened to emptiness, Victor almost smiled.
Then Gabriel's phone buzzed.
He answered, listened, and went very still.
“They moved him,” he said.
Victor's face darkened. “Where?”
May you like
Gabriel looked at Chloe.
“Back to your penthouse.”
