Chapter 4 - The Door She Did Not Open
Matteo moved toward the door.
Reese caught his sleeve.
“No.”
He stopped immediately.
She had expected resistance. A command to stay back. Another man deciding he knew what was best.
Instead, Matteo looked at her and waited.
Reese took out her phone, started recording, and approached the door.
“You need to leave, Julian.”
A pause.
Then his voice softened.
“Baby, I’m worried about you.”
“Leave.”
“You’re mixed up with a dangerous man.”
Behind her, Matteo said nothing.
Julian tried the handle.
Reese felt the movement in her teeth.
“I know you’re in there.”
“I’ve asked you to leave. I’m calling building security.”
“Don’t embarrass yourself.”
She called.
He was gone before the guard reached her floor.
Reese saved the recording and sent it to Lena. Her hands were steady until the message delivered.
Then they began to shake.
Matteo pulled out a chair.
“Sit.”
She looked at him.
“Please,” he added.
That small correction almost made her cry.
He poured water while she called Tessa, then waited in the kitchen as her friend’s angry voice filled the room.
“Stay with me tonight,” Tessa said. “And tell your intimidating dinner companion that if he makes decisions for you, I own a shovel.”
Reese laughed unexpectedly.
Matteo raised an eyebrow.
“You heard that?”
“Every word.”
“Good.”
Later, he carried her suitcase downstairs while she locked the apartment herself.
At the curb, he handed her a folder.
“The apartment option. No rush.”
“You travel with housing contracts?”
“Lena asked for one.”
Of course she had.
Reese slipped it into her bag.
“Tell me about your uncle.”
Matteo’s expression changed.
A black car moved slowly past them. His attention followed it until it turned the corner.
“My father died when I was nineteen. Victor took over the businesses until I was old enough to understand them.”
“And when you understood?”
“I learned there were parts he never intended to give back.”
“What parts?”
“Collections. Illegal gambling. Payments to people who made permits and inspections disappear.”
“Did you participate?”
The question hung in the cold air.
“Yes.”
She stepped back.
Matteo did not reach for her.
“For years,” he said. “I told myself I was containing it. Keeping worse men from taking over.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It was.”
She folded her arms against the wind.
“Are you still doing it?”
“I stopped authorizing those operations eighteen months ago. I started separating the legitimate companies. Victor has made that expensive.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“Through an attorney. Not far enough.”
Reese looked away.
She had wanted a simple answer.
A misunderstood man. A false reputation. Something that would let her keep the warmth she felt around him without examining its cost.
He gave her none of those things.
“Why tell me now?”
“Because you asked. Because you deserve to know before you get closer.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t.”
“I know.”
A taxi stopped behind them.
Matteo opened the rear door, then stepped aside.
Reese paused.
“If you help expose this, will you protect yourself at everyone else’s expense?”
“No.”
“Don’t answer quickly.”
He looked directly at her.
“I’ve spent too long doing exactly that.”
She got into the taxi.
At Tessa’s apartment, she lay awake beneath a quilt decorated with cheerful yellow lemons, thinking about a man who had admitted something ugly without asking her to make it beautiful.
The next morning, Lena called.
“There’s a problem with the hospital packet.”
“Only one?”
“The transfer they claim you authorized happened while you were operating.”
Reese sat up.
“Which surgery?”
“March nineteenth. Six hours. Operating room cameras, badge records, anesthesia logs. You couldn’t have signed at the branch listed.”
Hope arrived so sharply it hurt.
“Then we can prove it.”
“We can challenge it. There’s more.”
Lena sent a photograph.
Reese recognized the woman standing beside Julian outside the bank.
Celia Voss.
Mercy General’s development director.
The woman who had personally collected Reese’s donor forms.
The woman who had comforted her after Julian left.
Reese enlarged the image.
On Celia’s wrist was a narrow gold bracelet with three tiny sapphires.
Reese’s bracelet.
Her grandmother’s.
Julian had claimed he lost it during their move.
Her phone chimed again.
This message came from Celia.
I’m sorry about the investigation. If you need a friend, call me.
Reese stared at the words until they blurred.
Then she forwarded the message to Lena.
May you like
For the first time, she stopped wondering how to make Julian understand what he had done.
She began thinking about how to prove it.
