🐰 The Stuffed Rabbit and the Mafia Boss’s Secret Ledger

Chapter 05 - The Brother Who Was Buried Twice

Sebastian’s younger brother had been dead for nine years.

At least, that was what the gravestone in the family mausoleum said.

Matteo Vale, beloved son, loyal brother, gone too soon.

Sebastian had chosen the inscription himself while his mother sobbed into a black handkerchief and his uncle Carlo complained that the marble supplier was overcharging them. Matteo had died in a warehouse fire near Pueblo, trapped under a collapsed catwalk during a raid that never appeared in any newspaper.

Sebastian had seen the body.

Or he had seen what the fire allowed them to bury.

Now Daniel Carter’s note lay on his desk with two words that made the room tilt.

Not Pierce.

And beneath them:

Matteo.

Hannah read the name over his shoulder and frowned.

“Who is Matteo?”

Sebastian folded the paper. “My brother.”

“Your living brother?”

“No.”

She understood quickly. He saw it in her eyes. Widowhood taught people that the dead were not always finished with the living.

Jasper stood near the door, his hand resting near his jacket. “Boss.”

“I know.”

“With respect, Daniel Carter might have been wrong.”

“He was an accountant,” Sebastian said. “They are wrong less often than men with guns prefer.”

Hannah’s face tightened. “Daniel was afraid before he died. Not nervous. Afraid. He checked the locks three times every night. He stopped using his regular route to work. He told me if anyone named Vale offered help, I should refuse it.”

Sebastian looked at her.

“He said Vale?”

She nodded.

“Not Pierce?”

“No.”

The hidden key sat between them like a small brass insect.

“What does it open?” she asked.

Sebastian already suspected.

There had been one place Daniel Carter could have hidden something where no one at North Ridge would search. One place connected to old ledgers, old sins, old names.

“The Union Station lockers,” he said.

Jasper’s eyebrows lifted. “The old east hall lockers were removed years ago.”

“Not all of them.”

Hannah looked between them. “You know that how?”

“Because my father stored emergency cash there for twenty years and called it retirement planning.”

Nori woke again around three in the morning, demanded apple juice, and stared at Sebastian while drinking it from a glass Mrs. Alvarez insisted was “too expensive for little hands.”

Sebastian said nothing when juice dripped onto his Persian rug.

Mrs. Alvarez noticed. Her face registered a miracle but chose not to name it.

Hannah wrapped Nori in a blanket. “We are leaving at daylight.”

“No.”

Her gaze sharpened.

“You like that word too much, Mr. Vale.”

“People trying to frame you and use your child know where you live.”

“My home is not your concern.”

“It became my concern when someone placed my ledger in your daughter’s arms.”

“I did not ask to be part of your world.”

“No one ever does.”

That softened her anger in the smallest possible way. Perhaps because it sounded less like power and more like confession.

At dawn, Sebastian ordered two cars.

Hannah refused to ride in his.

Nori did not.

The child stood beside the black SUV in her pink coat, clutching the rabbit against her chin, and asked Sebastian whether his car had crackers.

Jasper looked away.

Sebastian said, “It can.”

Hannah gave him a look sharp enough to cut bread.

“Do not bribe my daughter.”

“I was answering a logistical question.”

Nori blinked up at him. “What’s logis-tickle?”

For one ridiculous second, Sebastian forgot that his dead brother might not be dead and that an accountant’s widow had just turned his empire inside out.

Then his phone rang.

The number was blocked.

He answered.

At first, there was only static.

Then a voice he had not heard in nine years said, “Don’t bring the widow to the station, Seb.”

Sebastian’s hand went cold around the phone.