Chapter 6 - The Photograph
The photograph arrived on a Thursday morning.
Penny found it taped to the door of the staff apartment when she returned from dropping Jamie at the new childcare center on the Lake Haven grounds.
It showed Owen.
He was standing outside a warehouse, talking to a man Penny did not recognize.
On the back, someone had written:
ASK ALESSANDRO WHY YOUR HUSBAND DIED.
Her hands began to shake.
That night, she confronted Sandro in his office.
He was meeting with Dominic and two security men when she entered without knocking.
Sandro looked up immediately.
“Penny.”
She threw the photograph onto his desk.
“Tell me the truth.”
Dominic’s expression went hard.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“On my door.”
Sandro picked up the photograph. His face went still.
“Who is that man?” Penny demanded.
He looked at Dominic.
“Marco Bellandi.”
Penny’s stomach dropped.
“The man you said was dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“Why was Owen meeting him?”
Sandro did not answer.
Penny’s voice cracked. “Why?”
Dominic spoke first. “Your husband may have discovered financial fraud connected to the construction project.”
Penny stared.
“Owen was an ironworker.”
“He was also smart,” Sandro said quietly. “He noticed materials were being replaced with cheaper, unsafe versions. He tried to report it.”
“And Bellandi killed him?”
“We cannot prove that yet.”
Penny laughed once, bitterly. “You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“You knew enough to investigate.”
“Yes.”
“And you let me keep wondering for two years whether Owen’s death was just bad luck?”
Sandro flinched as if she had struck him.
“I only learned about the connection recently.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”
Penny turned toward the door.
“Penny.”
She stopped but did not face him.
“I will make this right.”
Her shoulders shook.
“You can’t make it right,” she whispered. “You can only stop lying to me.”
She left.
That evening, she packed a bag.
Not because she had somewhere safe to go.
But because staying near Sandro suddenly felt impossible.
She had just buckled Jamie into his car seat when headlights cut through the snowy darkness.
A black SUV stopped at the end of the driveway.
Two men stepped out.
Penny recognized neither of them.
But one wore a familiar black coat with a torn sleeve.
Eli’s coat.
Her blood turned cold.
A message appeared on her phone from an unknown number.
Drive alone to the old Pier 17 warehouse. Bring the Ventresca files you don’t have. Or the boy dies.
Penny stared at the screen.
Then another message arrived.
A photograph of Eli tied to a chair.
Penny had spent her last eighty dollars to keep a boy alive.
May you like
Now someone was using him to destroy her.
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