The Key Beneath the Floorboards

Chapter 04 - The Key Beneath the Floorboards

Vittoria Moretti sent everyone out of the study except Adrian and me.

No one argued. Not the guards. Not the cousin summoned and then dismissed before crossing the threshold. Not even Adrian, though his silence sharpened the room.

The old woman stood by the fireplace, both hands around the carved silver head of her cane.

“You brought trouble into this house,” she said to me.

I felt too exhausted to be polite.

“I was hired to arrange centerpieces.”

“And yet you woke in my grandson’s bed with the Velluto key hidden in your bag.”

“Velluto?”

Adrian looked at his grandmother.

“The warehouse,” he said.

Vittoria closed her eyes.

“A bank box first. Later, a warehouse. Men like your father never used one hiding place when six would do.”

“My father died before he could explain anything,” Adrian said.

“Your father died because he explained too much to the wrong person.”

The sentence dropped between them with old weight.

I felt suddenly like a child sitting at the adult table, hearing fragments of a story that had ruined lives long before I arrived.

Adrian stepped toward her.

“Tell me.”

Vittoria looked at me.

“No.”

“If her father had the key, she is already inside it.”

My father.

Again, that ordinary man in my memory was being pulled into rooms full of blood and secrets, and I did not know how to protect him from the accusation of being someone I never knew.

Vittoria lowered herself into a chair.

“Twenty years ago, your father, Salvatore, was preparing to hand evidence to the federal prosecutor.”

Adrian did not move.

“Evidence against our own family?”

“Against a man using our family.”

“Who?”

“Rafael D’Amico.”

The name meant nothing to me. It meant everything to Adrian.

His hand flexed once at his side.

“He died in the fire.”

“So we believed.”

Vittoria turned her cane slowly beneath her palms.

“Rafael had been stealing from the docks, selling routes, feeding names to anyone who paid. Your father found proof. Ledgers. Tapes. Photographs. But Rafael learned of it. The warehouse burned before Salvatore could move everything.”

“And Michael Brooks?” I asked before I could lose courage.

Vittoria’s eyes softened, not much, but enough.

“Your father repaired trucks for the docks. He was invisible to men who thought only powerful people mattered. Salvatore trusted him because Michael saw everything and repeated nothing.”

My throat tightened.

“He helped your father?”

“He hid something for him. A key. Perhaps more.”

Adrian looked at the brass key on the desk.

“Then why was Elena targeted now?”

“Because Rafael is not dead,” Vittoria said.

Silence seemed to open beneath us.

I thought of the photograph left on my mother’s porch. The daughter found the wolf.

“Why would he wait twenty years?” I asked.

“Because men who crawl out of fire do not return until they know where the ashes hide their treasure.”

I stood, unable to remain still.

“My father left us with debt. A garage full of unpaid invoices. An old truck that barely starts. There was no treasure.”

“Not money,” Adrian said quietly. “Evidence.”

Vittoria nodded.

“The kind that can put old men in prison and young men in graves.”

My phone vibrated.

The sound made all three of us look at once.

Unknown number.

Adrian held out his hand. I almost refused, then remembered the photograph of my mother.

I answered on speaker.

A man breathed once on the line.

“Elena Brooks.”

His voice was low, cultured, almost kind.

Adrian moved closer to me, so near I could feel heat from his body.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“A friend of your father’s.”

“My father is dead.”

“Yes,” the man said. “That was inconvenient.”

Adrian’s face emptied of expression.

My fingers went numb around the phone.

“What do you want?”

“The key. The ribbon. And the book your mother keeps beneath the floorboards of the garage.”

I looked up sharply.

“My mother doesn’t—”

“Ask her about the summer she lied to you. Ask her why your father’s truck still smells like smoke.”

My heart lurched.

Adrian took the phone from me.

“Rafael.”

A small pause.

Then laughter.

“Salvatore’s boy. Still wearing wolves on your skin?”

Adrian’s eyes went black.

“Come for me.”

“I already did. You were sleeping beside the bait.”

The call ended.

For a moment, none of us spoke.

Then Adrian turned toward the door.

“Get the cars.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To your mother’s garage.”

Vittoria rose slowly behind us.

“No, Adrian.”

He stopped.

“If the book is there, he knows because someone close told him.”

Adrian looked at her.

Vittoria’s voice lowered.

“And tonight, your cousin put the key in Elena’s bag.”

Outside the study, a crash echoed from somewhere near the foyer.

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A guard shouted.

Then someone screamed Nico Moretti’s name.