Chapter 9 – The Empty Vault

The house felt lighter the next day. Lily and Mia were upstairs, finally resting in a safe bed. Rosa was in the sunroom, watching the morning light filter through the glass.

I was packing up the last of Marco’s things in his study. Vincent wanted every trace of him gone, and I volunteered to do it. It felt like closure.

I pulled a stack of files from his desk drawer. Underneath them was a false bottom.

I frowned, wedging a letter opener under the thin wood and popping it up. Inside was a single, rusted key and a ledger—not the family ledger Vincent had, but a smaller, personal one of Marco’s.

I flipped it open. It wasn’t a list of debts to Chicago.

It was a list of properties. Real estate. Offshore accounts. Millions of dollars.

Marco hadn’t been broke. He hadn’t been drowning in debt. The money Rosa had been giving him to pay off Chicago? He had been hoarding it.

I ran to the library to find Vincent.

He took the small ledger, his eyes scanning the pages. His jaw locked. “He lied. The hit on the docks… the Chicago men.”

“What if they weren’t Chicago men?” I asked, a cold dread washing over me. “What if Marco hired them to stage the attack? To make you think he was a victim so you’d let him go?”

Vincent looked at the rusted key. “I know this key. It belongs to the old safety deposit boxes down at the First National Bank. The ones my father used to use before he died.”

Vincent drove us to the bank in silence. He used his family name to get us down into the vault.

He found box 814. He inserted the rusted key. It turned smoothly.

Vincent pulled the long metal box out and set it on the viewing table. He opened the lid.

It was completely empty. Except for a single piece of paper.

Vincent read it, his face turning to stone. He handed it to me.

It was a birth certificate.

The name on it was Vincent Moretti. But the mother listed wasn’t Rosa.