Chapter 9 – The Black Journal
I stared at the black leather journal in Matteo’s hand.
The gold lettering on the cover was faded, almost entirely worn away by time, but I could just make out the initials: C.R.
Carlo Russo. Our father.
“Another child?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
Matteo nodded slowly, tracing the spine of the book with his thumb.
“Carmine didn’t just steal the Moretti watch and blackmail Victoria,” Matteo said, walking toward the grand oak desk in his study. “He’s been raiding my father’s hidden safes. This journal was supposed to be buried with him.”
I followed Matteo into the study. The room smelled of old paper and expensive cologne.
He opened the book and laid it flat on the desk.
The pages were yellowed, covered in tight, frantic handwriting.
“Read the date,” Matteo instructed, pointing to the top of the page.
October 12th, 1999.
My breath caught. “That’s two days before my mother’s car crash.”
Matteo nodded. “Read the entry.”
I leaned over the desk. The ink was faded, but I could make out the words.
I cannot trust the council anymore. The Morettis have infiltrated my inner circle. Isabella and her mother are no longer safe. I have arranged for them to leave Chicago tonight. But I cannot send the boy with them. It is too dangerous. I must hide him in plain sight.
I looked up at Matteo, my mind reeling.
“The boy,” I whispered. “I had a brother? A full brother?”
Matteo looked out the window at the sprawling grounds of the estate.
“My father had me with his first wife,” Matteo explained quietly. “Then he fell in love with your mother. If you have a full brother, it means you have a twin, Grace. Or… Isabella.”
A twin.
I placed my hand on my chest, feeling the newly polished silver rosary beneath my shirt. A phantom ache suddenly bloomed in my ribs—a strange, unexplainable emptiness I had carried my entire life in the orphanage without knowing why.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Matteo flipped the page.
“That’s the problem,” Matteo said. “The rest of the pages are torn out. Carmine must have ripped them before he brought the journal here.”
“So Carmine knows who he is.”
“Or he’s trying to find him,” Matteo corrected. “If my father hid a boy in plain sight, he wouldn’t have given him the Russo name. He would have placed him with a loyal family. Someone who didn’t know his true identity.”
I thought about the last twenty-four hours. The betrayal, the blackmail, the lies.
“We have to question Carmine,” I said, my voice hardening. “Before the federal authorities lock him away permanently. He knows where the missing pages are.”
Matteo smiled faintly. “You adapt quickly to this life, little sister.”
“I’ve been surviving my whole life,” I replied.
Matteo pressed a button on his desk intercom. “Get the car ready. We are going to the holding facility.”
Within twenty minutes, we were sitting in the back of a bulletproof black SUV, speeding toward the downtown federal precinct.
Matteo had powerful contacts. A few phone calls and a substantial donation to a police charity had secured us five minutes alone in the interrogation room with Carmine.
The facility was cold and sterile, a stark contrast to the luxurious mansion.
A guard opened the heavy steel door.
Carmine was sitting at the metal table, his arm in a thick white sling where Matteo’s knife had pierced his shoulder. He looked exhausted, his expensive suit wrinkled and stained with dried blood.
He smirked when we walked in.
“Come to gloat, Matteo?” Carmine rasped.
Matteo pulled out a chair and sat across from him. I stood by the door.
“Where are the missing pages, Carmine?” Matteo asked plainly.
Carmine’s smirk widened. “Ah. So you read the journal.”
“Give me the pages, and I’ll ensure you serve your time in a minimum-security facility instead of solitary confinement,” Matteo offered.
Carmine leaned forward, his eyes dark with malice.
“You think I kept them?” Carmine laughed a dry, rattling sound. “I burned them, Matteo. I burned them the moment I read them.”
My heart sank.
“Why?” I demanded.
Carmine looked at me.
“Because of what was written on them, Isabella,” he said. “Your father didn’t just hide the boy. He left him something. A trust fund. A bank account holding the original Russo fortune—money untouchable by the syndicate or the Feds.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened. “The Genesis Account. I thought that was a myth.”
“It’s real,” Carmine whispered. “And only the boy can access it. But your father was clever. He didn’t write the boy’s name on the missing pages.”
“Then what did he write?” I asked.
Carmine smiled, revealing bloodstained teeth.
“He wrote a description of a single object,” Carmine said. “An heirloom he left with the boy’s adoptive family to prove his identity. I’ve been searching for it for twenty-five years.”
Carmine leaned back, laughing softly.
“And the funniest part is, I saw it today. Right in your very dining room.”
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