Chapter 10 - The Son
Vincent set the gun on the floor.
The laser dot stayed on the boy.
“That’s far enough,” Rocco said.
Vincent raised both hands.
The child could not have been older than two and a half. He wore dinosaur pajamas under a gray sweatshirt. One sneaker was missing.
“What’s your name?” Vincent asked gently.
The boy glanced at the ceiling speaker, then back at Vincent.
“Nico.”
Vincent almost broke.
Sofia had once told him, years before they were married, that if she ever had a son she liked the name Nicholas. Nico for short.
“Hi, Nico.”
“Mommy said you’re stubborn.”
A laugh escaped Vincent before he could stop it. It came out half sob.
“That sounds like her.”
Rocco’s voice sharpened. “The card.”
Vincent removed the pendant and placed it on the floor.
A side door opened.
Charles Bellamy stepped into the room.
His left trouser leg was soaked with blood, but the wound was superficial. The scream in the hall had been theater.
Vincent looked at him. “You really are a coward.”
Charles picked up the pendant.
“Cowards live longer.”
“Not always.”
Charles inserted the micro-SD card into a handheld reader.
His face changed.
“What is this?”
Rocco said, “What?”
“It’s incomplete.”
Vincent smiled.
Charles looked up. “Where is the ledger?”
“Maybe Sofia forgot to tell you.”
Charles struck Nico across the side of the head.
The boy fell from the chair.
Vincent lunged.
A shot exploded into the concrete beside his hand.
“Touch him again,” Vincent said, voice shaking with fury, “and I will spend the rest of my life making your death last.”
Charles crouched and grabbed Nico by the sweatshirt.
“Then answer.”
Nico started crying.
Vincent forced himself still.
“The master ledger isn’t digital.”
Charles stared.
Vincent had guessed.
But Charles’s reaction told him he was right.
Rocco swore over the speaker.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
The far door opened.
Sofia Moretti walked in with a gun pressed to the back of her head.
She was thinner. Her hair was shorter and streaked with gray at the temples. But she was alive.
Vincent forgot how to breathe.
Sofia looked at him.
For three years he had imagined a thousand things he would say if he saw her again.
She spoke first.
“You got old.”
Vincent laughed through tears.
May you like
Then Sofia looked at Charles.
“And you just made the worst mistake of your life.”
