Chapter 4 - The Ledger of the Dead
""Why did you leave the notebook in the nightstand?"" I demanded, my voice raw as I pointed toward the leather book resting on the mantelpiece. ""The list of names. Thomas's name. You wanted me to find it.""
Marco picked up the notebook, running his fingers across the cracked leather binding with a strange, reverent familiarity.
""Because I do not execute people in the dark,"" he answered, leaning against the fireplace. ""Thirteen years ago, my father, Salvatore Carbone, was the head of the Five Families' maritime syndicate. He was not a saint. But he had a code. He did not traffic in people, and he did not betray his allies.""
He opened the book to the first page, his finger tracing the faded handwriting.
""Your father was his personal accountant and political liaison,"" Marco continued. ""When the federal authorities began building a RICO indictment against our family, your father went to Salvatore and offered an escape plan: nineteen million dollars transferred into offshore trusts, which Roland would manage, while orchestrating safe passage for my family to Sicily.""
I watched Marco’s face. The composure was still there, but beneath it, the fury burned white-hot.
""My father gave him the money,"" Marco said. ""And that very night, Roland Vance called the federal prosecutor. He gave them the coordinates of the boat carrying my father and two of my older brothers. The Coast Guard intercepted them in open water. But it wasn't the authorities who killed them.""
""What do you mean?"" I asked, my breath catching.
""The boat was rigged with explosives,"" Marco stated, each word dropping like a lead weight. ""Roland didn't want my family arrested. He wanted them dead so he could keep the nineteen million dollars and take over their territory. My father and my brothers were blown to pieces off the coast of Montauk. I was nineteen years old. I survived because my brother pushed me over the stern five seconds before the fuel line ignited.""
A cold sweat broke out across my back. I looked at the dark wood of the floor, remembering my childhood in the Hamptons. The summer house. The private yachts. The sudden surge in my father’s wealth that had elevated us into the upper echelons of New York society.
It had all been paid for with the charred flesh of this man’s family.
""And Thomas?"" I asked, my throat tight. ""Why was his name there?""
""Senator Rossi was your father’s political partner in the cover-up,"" Marco said, closing the book with a sharp snap. ""They buried the maritime investigation. And when Thomas proposed to you eleven months ago, it wasn't love, Isabel. It was a merger. Your father’s money laundered through the Rossi family’s political foundations.""
""Thomas loved me,"" I whispered, though the certainty had vanished from my soul.
""Did he?"" Marco walked over to the desk, pulled out a small manila folder, and dropped it before me.
Inside were surveillance photographs. Thomas Rossi sitting in an upscale Manhattan hotel lounge, laughing over champagne with a woman I recognized immediately—Elena Vance, my father’s glamorous young second wife. In one photo, Thomas’s hand was resting firmly on her thigh beneath the linen tablecloth.
""They were going to liquidate your trust three months after the wedding,"" Marco said quietly. ""Your father, your stepmother, and your fiancé. You were the signature on the joint accounts. You were the scapegoat they were preparing for the federal audit.""
I stared at the photographs until my vision blurred.
Every pillar of my world had been a scaffold built to hang me. The wedding. The French lace. The white roses. It wasn't a beginning; it was an execution that Marco Carbone had violently interrupted.
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I looked up at him. ""So what happens to me now, Marco? The forty-eight hours are up. My father is in Paris. Thomas is in the hospital. What is my value to you?""
Marco looked down at me, his eyes dark with an unreadable emotion. ""You are going to help me destroy them all.""
