Chapter 9 - The Choice Dante Made
The first thing Dante did after learning Victor had found the guesthouse was ask whether I wanted to leave.
I almost laughed. A week earlier, he might have ordered three cars, six guards, and a helicopter before telling me the destination. Now he stood beside the kitchen counter with both hands visible, waiting for my answer.
“Yes,” I said. “But I choose where.”
“Where would you feel safe?”
“Nina's sister owns a small place outside the city. She's offered it before. No one connected to your company knows the address.”
Dante nodded. “Then that's where you go. Gabriel will coordinate with Nina, not direct her.”
I studied him. “And you?”
“I have to make sure the investigators get Victor's records before he destroys them.”
“Not by sending your own men after him.”
He met my gaze. “Not by sending my own men after him.”
It took everything in me to accept the promise and leave. Orion did not want to separate from Dante. He paced between us as we packed, whining every time one of us moved toward a door. Finally Dante crouched and held the dog's enormous face in his hands.
“Go with her,” he said. “You know the job.”
Orion looked at him for a long moment, then turned toward me and pressed his head against my thigh.
I drove with Nina in her aging blue station wagon. The dog occupied almost the entire back seat. We traveled north on smaller roads, stopping twice because Orion needed water and once because I needed to breathe. At each stop, Nina reminded me that the investigators—not Dante's men—were responsible for catching Victor.
By evening we reached a modest house beside a lake. Nina's sister, Priya, greeted us with soup and clean sheets. She asked no questions about my past. She told me the bedroom door locked from the inside and that the dog was welcome on the furniture if I didn't mind black fur everywhere.
I almost cried from gratitude.
Before the police found Victor, I spent an entire afternoon at the lake working on a grant application for a veterinary technician program. I had been postponing it because I told myself I wasn't ready, that a person who had needed years to rebuild her basic memories couldn't possibly go back to school.
Nina's sister Priya looked over the form. “You have work experience, volunteer experience, and a reason to study. The worst they can say is no.”
“I hate when people say that. No can still hurt.”
“Of course it can. But it can't erase the application you were brave enough to send.”
I thought about that and clicked submit.
Orion lay at my feet, snoring loudly enough to make the table vibrate. I took a photograph of him with the application confirmation on my laptop and sent it to Dante. His reply came a moment later.
He says you should be admitted immediately. I agree with the dog.
I smiled, then typed: Neither of you sits on the admissions committee.
Not yet, Dante answered.
I laughed and told him not to buy a school. He sent back a promise that he wouldn't.
It was the kind of ordinary exchange I hadn't expected to have while my life was being investigated. It reminded me that the future existed even before the case ended, and that I was allowed to want something besides answers.
That night, Dante called. He sounded tired.
“Victor's vehicle was found near a ferry terminal,” he said. “The authorities are tracing his financial transfers. Bellini has been suspended and is under investigation.”
“Did you speak to Bellini?”
“Through counsel.”
“And Victor?”
“Not yet.”
I sat on the porch with Orion's head in my lap. The lake was dark, its surface broken only by moonlight.
“I keep thinking about Lucia,” I said. “She knew something was wrong and thought she could prove it. I don't want her death to become another reason people hurt each other.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then promise me something.”
He waited.
“If you find Victor before the police do, let him live long enough to answer for what he did. Not because he deserves mercy. Because the truth deserves a record.”
There was a long silence.
Then Dante said, “I promise.”
I believed him. Not because his voice was beautiful or because he'd kissed me, but because he had spent the last two weeks making choices that cost him control. He'd let the police take evidence from his own company. He'd given Nina access to documents his family considered private. He'd listened when I told him no.
I hoped those choices would hold when the anger became unbearable.
The next morning, Victor called my phone.
I stared at the unfamiliar number, then answered with Nina standing beside me and the call recorded after confirming the applicable legal requirements with counsel.
“Olivia,” a smooth male voice said. “You look well for a dead girl.”
I felt my stomach turn. “Victor.”
“I hear you've been telling stories.”
“Only the ones I can prove.”
He laughed. “You think the police can protect you from everything?”
“I think they've already found your brother.”
His voice hardened. “Nathan did nothing wrong.”
“Then he'll have a chance to explain.”
A pause followed. “You took something from Lucia that night. A page from the ledger. I need it.”
“I don't have a missing page.”
“Your aunt did.”
I thought of the red notebook, the torn final sheet, and the blue ribbon. Ellen had hidden the book carefully, but I had searched her suitcase for only a few minutes before finding it. What if there was another hiding place?
“What is on the page?” I asked.
“Something that could ruin men you think are helping you.”
“Dante?”
Victor laughed. “Ask him whose signature approved the first shipment.”
The line went dead.
I told Nina everything. She notified the investigators and gave them the recording. Then I called Dante and asked him directly.
“Did you approve a freight shipment to Lucia's clinic?”
He was silent for a second. “Yes. Seven years ago. The first batch of medical supplies. Lucia needed equipment, and Victor offered to handle the transport at cost.”
“Did you check the inventory?”
“No.”
Victor's words had been designed to make me doubt Dante. Yet his answer came without hesitation, and that mattered.
“Someone may have used your signature to authorize the illegal shipments,” I said.
“Then my responsibility is part of the record. I won't hide it.”
I looked at the lake. “I need to find the missing page.”
Dante asked me not to search alone. I agreed to have Nina present. We called the storage company holding Ellen's remaining belongings, arranged access with the estate representative, and returned to Queens under police coordination two days later.
Ellen had kept a wooden sewing cabinet in a small rented storage unit. I had not opened it since her funeral because it smelled of her lavender hand cream and made my chest ache. Nina helped me carry it into the light.
Inside were spools of thread, packets of needles, and a drawer full of old patterns. Behind the bottom panel was a folded blue cloth. I recognized the print: tiny black dogs chasing yellow stars. Ellen had sewn it for me when I was in the hospital.
Inside the cloth was a single page torn from a small red notebook.
I unfolded it. It listed three shipments and corresponding bank accounts. Beside them was a handwritten note from Lucia.
Dante authorized the first delivery believing it was medical equipment. Victor altered the manifest afterward. Bellini approved the false inspection. The records of the alteration are stored in the original kennel intake database. If anything happens, tell Dante I tried to protect him from the people he trusted.
I sat down on the storage unit floor.
The page did not accuse Dante. It explained how his name had been used without his knowledge—and where to find the proof.
“The intake database,” Nina repeated. “The one for the animals.”
I closed my eyes. I remembered Lucia being paranoid about losing records. She used to store everything twice, once in the office computer and once on an external drive shaped like a little blue dog bone.
“It's not at the clinic,” I said. “It was in the dog collar.”
Nina stared at me. “What?”
“Orion's old collar. Lucia stitched a pocket inside it for the spare keys. She could have hidden the drive there.”
We called Dante. He checked the storage room where he'd preserved Orion's belongings since the fire. The old collar was still there, wrapped in tissue paper inside a box.
By midnight, an independent digital examiner had opened its lining. Inside was a tiny blue USB drive.
The original database was intact.
It contained the edited shipping manifests, timestamped records of Victor changing cargo descriptions after Dante's approval, and messages between Victor and Bellini arranging the false inspection reports. It also held a video Lucia had recorded a day before she died, explaining that she feared the clinic would be attacked.
“I don't want revenge,” Lucia said in the video. “I want the people using sick animals to cover theft to stop. And I want Olivia safe. She's too young to be dragged into this.”
Dante watched the video with the investigators. He did not cry in front of them. Later, when I spoke to him alone, he could barely say her name.
“She was trying to save me,” he whispered.
“She was trying to save everybody.”
An hour after the forensic team delivered its findings, the police announced that Victor Salvatore had been located at a private airfield in Pennsylvania. He had been attempting to leave the country under a false name.
Dante could have sent people to intercept him. Instead, he gave investigators the flight details and waited.
Victor was arrested before boarding the plane.
May you like
That was the choice Dante made.
And it mattered more to me than any declaration of love.
