Chapter 3 – THE PRICE OF A LIFE
Ask the maid how her father paid for her mother’s surgery.
I stared at the black ink until the letters blurred.
My mother had undergone an experimental heart surgery twenty years ago. It had cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. My father, a simple maintenance worker, always told me an anonymous charity had covered the bill. She had died three years later anyway, but that surgery had given us time.
I shoved the drawing into my apron pocket.
I finished packing Claire’s bags, my mind racing. I dragged the suitcases to the hallway, left them for the driver, and practically ran down the back stairs.
I didn’t ask for permission to leave. I grabbed my coat and drove my beat-up Honda straight to the Oakwood Assisted Living Center.
It was 11:30 PM. The night nurse tried to stop me, but I pushed past her.
My father was sitting in his armchair in the dark, staring out the window. His memory was failing, but tonight, his eyes looked clear.
“Dad,” I breathed, turning on the small bedside lamp.
He didn’t look surprised to see me. He looked down at his lap. His hands were trembling as they clutched a worn wooden rosary.
“You’re supposed to be serving dinner,” he mumbled.
I pulled the child’s drawing from my pocket and held it in front of him.
“Dad. Why did Claire Donovan—Rebecca Lane—have my drawing in her coat pocket?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. The rosary beads clicked together in the quiet room.
“I told him not to trust her,” my father whispered.
“Told who? Luca?”
“No. Arthur. Luca’s father.”
I knelt beside his chair. “Dad, look at me. What does my mother’s surgery have to do with the Venturis?”
He opened his eyes. They were filled with tears.
“I didn’t work for the city, Nat. I worked for Arthur Venturi. I maintained his private properties.”
My stomach dropped. “You never told me that.”
“Because of what I had to do to save your mother,” he said, his voice cracking. “Nineteen years ago, Arthur Venturi discovered Rebecca’s mother was stealing from the foundation. But she had leverage. She had documents that could put Arthur in federal prison for the rest of his life.”
He took a shaky breath.
“Arthur needed those documents destroyed before he exiled her. But he couldn’t send his usual men. He needed someone invisible.”
I stared at him. “A maintenance worker.”
My father nodded. “I broke into her mother’s house. I found the documents. But Rebecca—little teenage Rebecca—caught me. She begged me not to take them. She said it was their only protection.”
“But you took them anyway.”
“Arthur paid for your mother’s heart surgery the next morning,” he said, crying now. “He bought my soul to save her life.”
He reached under his seat cushion and pulled out a faded, yellow ticket stub. It was for a locker at the 30th Street Train Station.
“She’s coming back for this, Nat. Rebecca knows I kept the copies.”
Before I could reach for the ticket, the door to my father’s room clicked shut.
I turned around.
A man in a dark suit was standing inside the room. He wasn’t a nurse.
“Mr. Brooks,” the man said calmly. “Miss Lane sends her regards.”
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