Chapter 5 The Wrong Grave

He leads me into a room with a fireplace that hasn't seen a flame in years and a desk so spotless it looks like nobody's ever worked here. There’s a woman already by the window… sharp features, arms folded, still in that way that isn’t patience but judgment. She gives me this look, like I’m a package that turned up with no return address.

“This is Elena,” Dante says. That’s it. No backstory, not even a hint about her role. I’m supposed to accept that explanations in this place are hard to come by.

“You said we have things to discuss,” I tell him. “So, let’s discuss.”

Dante sits and gestures for me to do the same. I stay standing. He doesn’t push it.

“Your father died Tuesday night,” he says. “You talked to the police. They called it closed. You know that’s a lie, or you wouldn’t be in this house.”

“I don’t know anything. That’s the problem,” I say.

“Then let me tell you what I know, and you decide what you believe.” He folds his hands, and suddenly he looks more like a man who’s delivered bad news before than just a guy in a nameless house. “Your father wasn’t just an accountant. Not lately. He worked… quietly, carefully… for people who value quiet. Some of that work crossed my family.”

“And your family is?”

“The Marchettis.” He says it level, watching my face. This time, I don’t pretend not to know the name. The way he says it, the way Elena’s jaw tightens a notch, tells me enough. “I’m not going to spell out everything tonight. Some things aren’t mine to explain. But here’s enough… your father knew things. That made him valuable to some, dangerous to others. I think his death was no accident. Someone staged it to look that way, and they did it well enough the police won’t ever look twice.”

“So who am I supposed to trust?”

“Me.” His answer is simple. “I’ll get you to things the police won’t touch… records, people, places you’d never see alone. In return, you work with us. Go where I say, answer to Elena when I’m not here, and accept that for a while, you’ll be watched. You’re not just the grieving daughter now; you’re a person of interest.”

“You want to use me as bait.”

“I want you close enough that if someone tries something, we’re already there.” He waits a moment. “It’s not quite the same thing, but I get why you think it is.”

I glance at Elena. She hasn’t said a word, but she’s studying me, not so much cold as calculating…already weighing how much trouble I’m about to cause.

“Why?” I ask Dante. “Why get involved for someone you hardly know?”

There’s something behind his eyes. Not hesitation, exactly… more like there’s a door he won’t open just yet. “Because I don’t think you’re as much a stranger to this as you think. Whether you see it or not.”

I think of the photograph. How she has his eyes. But I don’t say it. Some instinct, the same one that made me take the photo instead of leaving it in the wall, tells me not to press for more right now.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll do it.”

I have nothing else. No police leads. No family left to shield me. Just an empty apartment and a coffee cup sitting in a dead man’s sink. Dante Marchetti is giving me the only door that isn’t already locked, and I’m not in a position to worry how safe it is.

They set me up in a small office down the hall… Elena, businesslike, sets a banker’s box on the desk, then turns to leave. “Old case files. Your dad worked for us for nearly fifteen years. If there’s a pattern, it’s probably buried in these, and apparently you’re the only one who can read financial paper like it’s supposed to be read.”

She’s gone before I can ask what that’s supposed to mean. I don’t follow. I’ve learned enough tonight.

The files are just as she said… years of ledgers, statements, notes in the margins that are definitely my dad’s, the seven with the line through it, the too-heavy pen pressure. It’s strange, seeing his writing on these pages; painful and comforting at the same time, like hearing his voice in a language that nobody else can recognize.

I work through them methodically, like I’m back at the job, tracing provenance… chronological, cross-referenced, looking for seams that don’t line up. Most of it isn’t clear yet. Numbers without context, names I don’t know. Two hours later, eyes stinging, coffee cold, I hit a folder in the bottom of the box that doesn’t belong.

This one’s older. Yellowed paper, nothing like the recent files. It’s a death file. Not financials… a real police file: coroner’s report, photographs I won’t let myself look at. The name’s unfamiliar, nothing from the ledgers.

But the notes inside, neat and obsessive, logging dates and details in my father’s hand… those are unmistakable.

So whatever happened to the person in this file, my father saw it. He wrote it down.

I flip to the last page… case signed off, filed years before I ever knew any of this world existed. And at the bottom, I see the name typed… one my dad would have stared at a hundred times, adding his careful, private notes.

Marchetti.

Not Dante. Not Aldo.

Salvatore.