6. The Video

SOFIA

I woke up to the sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside drawer, and I slowly rolled over and dragged it towards me. I reluctantly swiped on the call without even checking who it was, then pressed the phone to my ear.

“Hello?” I said groggily, rubbing my eyes.

“Good afternoon, Miss Moretti,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Is this a bad time?”

“Yes it is,” I said. “It’s way too early for this.”

“Um, actually, it’s a quarter to one,” he said, causing my eyes to fly open. I glanced at the clock, and saw that it was indeed 12:45. I immediately glanced around the room, looking for something I wasn’t entirely sure of. Something about the room looked different, but my memory was too foggy to remember anything.

“Miss Moretti?” the man said. “It’s Franco Martell. We spoke at your dad’s funeral, remember?”

“Oh right,” I sighed. “The attorney, right?”

“Exactly,” he said. “I was wondering if you could come down to my office on 5th Avenue. It’s sort of an emergency.”

That immediately caused my ears to prick up, as every vestige of sleep vanished from my body. I was suddenly alert, and I sat up straight.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Someone broke into my office yesterday,” he said. “From the looks of it, they were after something. Every file in here was ransacked, and my safe was open. I haven’t even spoken to the authorities yet.”

“So why are you calling me?” I asked. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Well, Miss Moretti,” he said calmly, “even though everywhere was ransacked, the culprit didn’t take anything. From all indications, they were looking for something. And the only thing that wasn’t in the office was what your father gave to me to pass on to you. I have no doubt that’s what they were looking for.”

A chill crept down my spine as he said that, and I suddenly felt like Marco was standing right in front of me again. I knew he was behind this, which meant there was probably something he didn’t want me to see. Was there some sort of incriminating evidence that Dad wanted to pass onto me? Some evidence that would get Marco arrested? My mind was spinning all over the place, and I didn’t know what to think.

“Miss Moretti?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said. “Um, please give me a few minutes. I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

“Great,” he said. “If it’s not too much of an inconvenience, could you please disguise your appearance? I know it sounds ridiculous, but you can never be too safe.”

There was an eerie tone to his words, but I agreed to wear a disguise and hung up. I flew out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom, while feeling like there was something I couldn’t remember.

What did I forget?

I felt like there was someone I needed to talk to, but I couldn’t remember who. Was it Val? Or somebody else? All I could remember was that my lips were tingling, and a strange scent I’d never experienced before.

Whatever it was, it could wait. I had more important things to worry about right now. Whatever Franco Martell wanted to give me had to be something important. The fact that Dad entrusted it to him meant it was something very important. And in light of recent events, the only logical explanation was that it had something to do with his shady past and his working with the mafia.

I still couldn’t believe it. Every fibre of my being wanted it all to be a lie. But it was true. My dad was a criminal, and who knew the extent of his own crimes? Had he killed people too? Abducted innocent children and destroyed their lives? Did he torture people for a living? A million other thoughts were racing through my head, but I cast them all aside and focused on the task at hand.

After a hot shower, I quickly slipped on a pair of faded and slightly loose-fitting jeans, a plain white blouse with a relaxed fit, and a lightweight, neutral-colored cardigan. My shoes were a pair of scuffed-up sneakers, the kind that looked like they'd been worn for a while. A simple leather belt cinched at my waist, and I let my hair fall over my face so I could hide behind it. I added a pair of shades, and a face-mask which covered up the rest of my face.

Finally, I ready to leave. I grabbed my phone and purse, and rushed out of the room. I was about to head out when I suddenly saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks.

Someone had snuck into the apartment and made me breakfast. There was a stack of pancakes on the table, covered up with the jar of syrup sitting beside them. Some eggs and bacon were covered up on a plate beside the pancakes, and there was a little note on top of them. I felt a chill run down my spine as I started to wonder who could have done this.

I made my way over to the table and opened the note, and it was just three short sentences:

I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m sorry. It was nice meeting you.

Adrian.

The memories came rushing back as soon as I saw the name. I remembered now. The bridge, and the stranger who had rescued me. I remembered kissing him, and the way he wrapped his arms around me so protectively. I remembered his scent, and how he had comforted me before putting me to bed.

Instinctively, I whirled around and searched for him. But he was nowhere to be found. There wasn’t any other note, and he hadn’t even left a card or anything. I had absolutely no way of contacting him, and I had no idea where he could have gone to.

Maybe he had stepped out for a bit because I was asleep for so long. Surely he would have other things to do than sit around the house and wait for me to wake up. That had to be it.

I grabbed a pen and paper, and quickly wrote down my phone number, telling him I was heading out and I would be back later. I thanked him for the breakfast, then I grabbed a bacon strip before I stashed the note beside the plates and headed out. I would eat when I got back.

And hopefully, Adrian would have returned when I came back. We still had a lot to talk about, after all.

——————————————

“Thank you for finally seeing me, Miss Moretti,” Franco Martell said as he shook my hand. “I’m so sorry for springing all this on you.”

“It’s fine,” I said as I walked into his office. “It sounded really serious over the phone.”

“I think I’m being paranoid, but you can never be too sure,” he said, walking around the table. He was wearing an oversized black suit just like last time, but he looked older and grayer than he had during the funeral. I wondered if it was because he was so afraid that he seemed to have aged so much.

“Well, there’s no use beating around the bush,” he said, placing his briefcase on the table. “I know we should do this the right way, but I think there are more pressing matters at hand. Firstly, your father’s will states that he left everything to you, including the Moretti chain of restaurants, your apartment in SoHo, the beach house in Malibu, as well as his six cars and all his assets. At the time of his passing, he had about six hundred and fifty three thousand dollars in his bank account, while will all be transferred to you.”

I felt empty as he said that, because I didn’t want to think about how he had gotten all that. Instead, I nodded stiffly.

“Well, that’s not really why you’re here,” he said. “We’ll handle the paperwork before you leave. But the important thing is what he personally entrusted to me, saying I should only hand it over to you under certain circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” I asked.

“If he was killed,” he said blankly.

I could have sworn the room got colder as he said that, and I pulled my sweater tighter around me.

“Sofia,” he said quietly, “I believe I know what really happened to your father, and I understand why you can’t talk about it. I see it in your eyes, the same way your father looked when he came to me all those years ago. I will not discuss anything with you for now, until you get the full picture.”

As he said this, he pulled out a small box and slid it across the table to me. It looked like an old music box, and I had a faint memory of seeing it somewhere. It seemed like something my mother used to have, but I couldn’t be sure.

Franco handed me a few papers and asked me to sign, and only after I did that did he hand me the key to the music box.

“Open it,” he said.

I did as he said, and I opened the box to find an old flash drive inside. I picked it up, wondering why he would pass a flash drive to me. From the shocked look on Franco’s face, I could tell that he wasn’t expecting this as well.

“Can I borrow your computer?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said, turning his laptop to me. “I’ll excuse you for a bit.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I want you here.”

His gaze shifted uncomfortably, then he asked, “Do you have a dollar?”

“Yes?” I said confusedly, pulling out a dollar from my purse and handing it over to him.

“There,” he said as he took it. “Now anything we discuss is protected under attorney-client privilege.”

He pulled up a chair and sat beside me as I plugged in the flash drive, and I was surprised when I saw that there was only one file on it, which was a video. My palms began to sweat, and I couldn’t breathe properly for a minute. But I braced myself as I clicked on it, biting my lip as it loaded. And when my dad’s face suddenly appeared in front of me, my heart plummeted to my stomach.

“Hello, m’hija,” he said, and it was like a gut punch straight to the stomach. After not hearing his voice in so many weeks, the tears rushed to my eyes as he smiled faintly at the camera. He looked exactly how I remembered, and the timestamp on the video showed that it was recorded only two months ago, which meant it was a few weeks before he was killed.

“I’m not going to take too much of your time,” he said. “I’m guessing you have so many things to do. Maybe you and Valentina need to go to the mall or something. I guess I just want to tell you that I love you more than you’ll ever know. You’re my single greatest accomplishment, and I’m so proud to have you as a daughter.”

He stared down at his hands, and I realized that he was crying. I wanted to reach out and touch the screen, but I was frozen in shock as he continued to speak.

“I’m a terrible man, m’hija,” he said quietly. “I’m not the man you think I am. I’m a liar, a criminal and a deceiver. And something tells me my past is catching up to me. Sooner or later, he’s going to find me. And when he does, I can only hope that you will be as far away from here as possible. I have taken precautions to make sure you will be safe even after I’m gone, and I hope they will pan out. Well, I guess it’s time to stop beating around the bush.”

He cleared his throat, sat up straighter and said, “My name is Lorenzo Moretti, and I am a criminal. For about seven years of my life, I have served under the Giordano cartel, mostly as their financial advisor. I have helped Marco Giordano to bury more bodies than you can even imagine. With my help, Marco Giordano has managed to evade the authorities for years now, and I have helped him to clean over fifty million dollars which he got from his drug business.”

As he said this, a picture of Marco flashed up on the screen, getting out of a black limo in the same black suit I remembered him in. He was smiling to himself, and my blood curdled at the sight of him. My fingers began to tremble, and I had to wring them into a tight knot to stop myself from doing something stupid.

“In my time with the Giordano cartel, I have committed many atrocities,” Dad continued. “Chief among them was assisting the Giordano cartel during their war with the DeLuca cartel, which resulted in the death of Carlos DeLuca, and the rise of his son, Adrian DeLuca, to power.

I could have screamed in that moment. I flew out of my seat as the image flashed up on the screen, of a handsome man standing outside a building and making a phone call. It hit me like a truck, and I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I recognized the hair, the sharp jawline, and those piercing eyes that I’d looked into just last night.

That was the same man who’d made me pancakes this morning.