Lucia's Name in the Dark
Chapter 03 - Lucia's Name in the Dark
Rocco Falcone had always looked like a man who belonged beside firelight.
He was sixty-three, silver-haired, elegantly dressed, and still handsome in the cold way old knives are handsome. His smile arrived slowly and never warmed the eyes. He wore grief the way other men wore cologne, noticeable only when it suited the room.
Lorenzo turned with Vivian’s ring still in his hand.
“You were listening.”
“This house echoes.”
“You were listening.”
Rocco adjusted one cuff.
“I was concerned after last night. Vivian is more emotional than she appears.”
“Do not say her name like that.”
Rocco’s brows lifted.
“Like what?”
“As if you own the meaning of it.”
For the first time, Lorenzo saw irritation cross his uncle’s face before the old man corrected it.
“Your wife was seen with Adrian Marchetti. I brought you evidence.”
“You brought photographs.”
“Photographs are evidence.”
“Photographs are angles.”
Rocco smiled faintly. “She has already softened you again.”
Again.
The word found its mark. Lorenzo had heard it after Lucia’s funeral, after every request for mercy, after every choice to spare a man who might become useful instead of killing him to make a point. Softness, in Rocco’s mouth, was always a disease.
Lorenzo placed the note on the table.
“What happened to Lucia?”
Rocco did not glance down.
“Your sister died because she believed terrible men could be changed by kindness.”
“That is the speech. I asked for the truth.”
“The truth is rarely as useful as the speech.”
Lorenzo felt something inside him go quiet.
Rocco had taught him that trick, too. When anger becomes too large, put it somewhere cold. Use it later.
“You will answer me.”
“I will remind you who kept this family standing while you were burying your father, then your sister, then your conscience.”
The front doors closed behind a servant. The ring of that sound traveled through the foyer.
Rocco leaned closer.
“Do you know what Vivian has been doing for months? She has been visiting clinics, safe houses, charity offices that move women who have seen too much. She has been speaking with your enemies. She has been collecting names.”
“Yes.”
The lie came easily because Lorenzo had been trained by the man in front of him.
Rocco blinked.
Lorenzo slipped the ring into his pocket.
“You knew?” Rocco asked.
“I know my wife leaves fewer trails when she is shopping for shoes than when she wants someone to follow her.”
That was not entirely true, but it should have been.
Rocco studied him.
“You are playing a dangerous game.”
“No,” Lorenzo said. “I am realizing I was already in one.”
Rocco’s expression hardened.
Then Enzo appeared at the far end of the hallway.
“Sir,” he said. “Mr. Marchetti has called the west line.”
The west line had not rung in nine years.
It was an old unlisted number wired into Lorenzo’s father’s study, kept active only because his father had believed dead routes sometimes carried living warnings.
Rocco turned sharply.
“Do not answer that.”
Lorenzo looked at him.
The silence between them became an answer.
He walked to the study.
The room smelled of leather, cedar, and old decisions. His father’s desk sat beneath the window, broad and dark. Lorenzo closed the door behind him and lifted the receiver.
“Falcone.”
A man exhaled on the other end.
“Your wife is five minutes from the bridge. Rocco’s men are three minutes behind her.”
Adrian Marchetti’s voice was lower than Lorenzo remembered, roughened by years and perhaps by conscience.
“Why are you calling me?” Lorenzo asked.
“Because Vivian told me that if I wanted to prove I wasn’t the coward your family said I was, I should start by saving her from yours.”
Lorenzo’s grip tightened.
“What do you know about Lucia?”
“Enough to know she didn’t die where they told you she died.”
The room shifted around him.
“Say that again.”
“Your sister was alive after the crash.”
Lorenzo stopped breathing.
Adrian continued.
“She made one call before they found her.”
“To whom?”
A pause.
“To Vivian.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
Vivian would have been twenty-four then. A girl from another family. The daughter of a fragile alliance. Someone he had noticed once at a funeral and dismissed as too quiet to survive their world.
Why would Lucia call her?
“What did Lucia say?” he asked.
“She said Rocco had sold the south docks and blamed it on the Marchettis. She had proof. She said if anything happened, Vivian had to hide it until the right Falcone was ready to see.”
“The right Falcone.”
“You.”
Lorenzo opened his eyes.
Outside the study window, dawn showed itself as a gray wound behind the rain.
Adrian’s voice sharpened.
“Your wife is being boxed in at the bridge. If you still care whether she lives long enough to ruin your uncle, move now.”
The line went dead.
Lorenzo opened the study door.
Rocco stood outside it.
For once, he did not look elegant.
He looked afraid.
Lorenzo passed him without a word.
Enzo was already waiting with a coat and a gun he did not ask whether Lorenzo wanted.
At the bottom of the staircase, Lorenzo stopped and looked back at his uncle.
“You said Vivian chose where to bury me.”
Rocco’s mouth tightened.
Lorenzo’s voice dropped.
May you like
“You should have wondered whether she was choosing where to dig you up.”
Then he walked into the rain to find his wife.
