The Debt Rafe Never Chose
Chapter 07 - The Debt Rafe Never Chose
Rafe answered on the sixth call.
His voice was breathless.
“She’s with me.”
Elias nearly drove through a red light.
“You said Dominic took her.”
“He signed the discharge papers. I intercepted them in the garage.”
“Where are you?”
“St. Agnes.”
Marin recognized the name.
An abandoned Catholic school on the edge of Pawtucket, closed after a roof collapse and never sold.
“Why there?”
“Because nobody connected to your father ever used it.”
Elias looked at the ledger in Marin’s lap.
“You were connected to my father.”
Silence.
Then Rafe said, “Yes.”
The word contained no defense.
They found him in the old school chapel.
Adelaide lay on a folding cot beneath a statue of the Virgin. A portable oxygen concentrator hummed beside her.
Rafe stood twenty feet away with his gun on the floor.
Elias entered first.
Marin followed with the medical bag.
No one spoke while she checked Adelaide.
Pulse elevated.
Oxygen acceptable.
No aspiration.
The old woman opened her eyes.
“I hate field trips.”
Marin laughed despite herself.
Elias did not.
He was looking at Rafe.
“My father wrote your name in his ledger.”
“I know.”
“You knew?”
“I saw the book once when I was sixteen.”
Rafe’s face had lost its usual hard stillness.
“My old man gambled. Carlo owned his debt. When my father couldn’t pay, Carlo put me to work.”
“At sixteen.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of work?”
“Driving. Watching doors. Carrying messages. Things nobody notices a kid doing.”
Elias looked toward his mother.
“You knew?”
Adelaide closed her eyes.
“Not then.”
Rafe continued.
“When you were twenty-two, somebody tried to take you outside Club Aurora. Carlo sent me after you. I stopped it.”
Elias remembered.
Two men.
An alley.
Rafe appearing from nowhere.
The night their friendship began.
“That wasn’t loyalty,” Elias said.
“No.”
Rafe’s eyes met his.
“It became loyalty later.”
The sentence landed harder than Elias expected.
Marin watched both men.
For fifteen years, Elias had apparently believed trust was proven by history.
Now history itself had become evidence against everyone.
“Did you kill Thomas Hollis?” Marin asked.
Rafe’s face changed.
“No.”
“Did you know about him?”
“Yes.”
She stood.
“How much?”
“I drove Vince to a parking garage the night before your father died.”
Marin’s breath stopped.
“Did you know what he was going to do?”
“No.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I was seventeen.”
“Seventeen is old enough to know men don’t meet in parking garages at midnight to discuss church.”
Rafe accepted the blow.
“I knew it was bad.”
Her voice sharpened.
“And you drove him anyway.”
“Yes.”
Elias stepped closer to Marin.
She moved away.
Not now.
Not comfort from him.
Rafe’s voice dropped.
“I have hated myself for that ride longer than you have known my name.”
“That doesn’t resurrect anyone.”
“No.”
“Stop agreeing with me.”
For the first time, Rafe looked angry.
“Would you rather I lie?”
Marin stared at him.
“No.”
“Then I drove the car.”
The chapel went quiet.
Adelaide opened her eyes.
“Rafe.”
He looked at her.
“Tell them the rest.”
His jaw tightened.
“I found out six months later that Vince paid a detective to alter the robbery report.”
Marin felt sick.
“And?”
“I kept the receipt.”
Elias turned.
“What?”
Rafe reached into his coat and removed a sealed plastic sleeve.
Inside was a carbon-copy payment voucher, old and yellowed.
VIN MORETTI CONSULTING.
Twenty thousand dollars.
The date was two days after Thomas Hollis died.
“Why keep it?” Marin asked.
“Insurance at first.”
“And later?”
“Cowardice.”
At least he did not make it noble.
Elias took the receipt.
“Why did Dominic take her from the hospital?”
“He didn’t.”
Rafe looked toward Adelaide.
“He arrived with discharge papers, yes. But the signature wasn’t his.”
Marin frowned.
“What?”
“Somebody used his name. By the time he reached the garage, hospital transport had already been called.”
“Then where is Dominic?”
“No idea.”
Elias’s phone rang.
Dominic.
He answered.
His brother’s voice was raw.
“You have Ma?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God.”
“Where are you?”
“At my house.”
“Stay there.”
“Elias, listen to me. Vince came here.”
Everyone in the chapel went still.
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
“What did he want?”
“The blue box.”
Elias looked at Marin.
“He knows?”
“He knew Ma had records. I didn’t know what records until today.”
“Why did you lie about Meridian?”
“Because I used it.”
“For what?”
A long silence.
Then Dominic said, “To move cash for Dad.”
Adelaide shut her eyes.
Elias’s face hardened.
“How long?”
“Three years.”
“You said medical freight.”
“I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because you spent your whole life trying not to become him, and I spent mine trying to make sure he never saw me as weak.”
Dominic’s voice broke on the final word.
“After he died, I kept some of it running. I told myself it was only money. No guns. No people. Just money.”
“Money buys all the other things.”
“I know that now.”
A sound came over the line.
A door.
Then Dominic whispered, “He’s back.”
“Who?”
No answer.
“Dominic.”
A muffled crash.
The line went dead.
Elias was already moving.
Rafe picked up his gun.
Marin caught his arm.
“You stay with Adelaide.”
He stared at her.
“You don’t trust me.”
“No.”
She released him.
“But she does.”
Rafe looked toward the cot.
Adelaide nodded once.
That was enough.
Elias and Marin left for Dominic’s house.
Halfway there, Marin realized she had done exactly what she had promised herself never to do again.
She had entered a dangerous situation because somebody else might need her.
Elias glanced over.
“You can stay in the car.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t an order.”
“Good.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then:
“Why did you leave Meridian?”
Marin looked out at the dark road.
“Because the last person I tried to save died holding my hand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m still deciding whether I’m sorry I stayed.”
Elias looked at her.
The traffic light changed.
Neither moved until the car behind them honked.
When they reached Dominic’s house, the front door stood open.
Inside, there was blood on the marble floor.
Not much.
Enough.
They found Dominic in the kitchen, alive, tied to a chair.
Vince Moretti was gone.
On the counter lay a single white rose.
And beside it, a photograph of Marin’s father.
Someone had drawn a black line across Thomas Hollis’s eyes.
May you like
On the back were four words.
THE DAUGHTER KNOWS TOO MUCH.
