kitchen doors, and nineteen-year-old busboy Ben Sullivan followed them, his white shirt covered in dust from the broken plaster.
The kitchen smelled of garlic, steam, and abandoned food.
Ben was trembling so badly he could barely speak.
“My phone’s in the locker,” he whispered.
“Forget the phone,” Talia told him.
“Stay with us.”
They reached a narrow pantry behind the cold-storage room.
Matteo shut the door and checked the lock.
Only then did Talia notice blood darkening the sleeve of his suit.
“You’re hurt.”
“Not badly.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Do you always argue like this?”
“Only when people are being stupid.”
For the briefest moment, he gave a tired smile.
Then she mentioned her brother.
“Gabriel Moreno worked at one of your warehouses.
He died at Pier Nineteen.”
Matteo’s expression changed.
“Gabriel was your brother?”
“You knew him?”
“I knew his name.”
Talia moved closer.
“Then tell me what happened.”
Matteo reached inside his jacket and removed a thick brown envelope.
“I was supposed to meet an attorney here tonight,” he said.
“These were going to her.”
He opened the envelope across a shelf between jars of preserved tomatoes.
There were payroll records, shipping manifests, security orders, and photographs of delivery vehicles.
Talia recognized the warehouse in the first photograph.
Pier Nineteen.
“Dorian,” she said, reading a name beside several approved shipments.
Matteo nodded.
“My cousin controlled the shipping operation.
I recently found evidence that he was hiding stolen medical supplies inside legitimate cargo movements.”
“And Gabriel found out?”
“He appears to have noticed the discrepancies before anyone else.”
Talia picked up a security order.
The date was the night Gabriel died.
The document instructed guards to keep the warehouse’s eastern gate locked during an overnight inventory inspection.
It described the building as unoccupied.
Gabriel had been working inside.
At the bottom was a handwritten signature.
Matteo Varela.
Talia read it twice.
“You signed this?”
His silence answered before his words did.
“Yes.”
She stepped away as though he had struck her.
“My brother called me that night,” she whispered.
“He told me the exit was chained.”
Matteo closed his eyes briefly.
“Talia, I didn’t know he was inside.”
“But you signed it.”
“I did.”
“And afterward? You let them call it an accident?”
He had no immediate defense.
That silence was worse than another lie.
Footsteps approached the pantry.
A man stopped outside.
“Matteo,” a familiar voice called.
“Bring me the envelope.
Bring the girl too.”
Talia recognized the voice instantly.
Dorian Varela.
Four years earlier, the same man had stood beside her mother in a hospital hallway, promising the family that the company would investigate Gabriel’s death.
He had even paid for the funeral flowers.
PART THREE: THE MAN WHO CAME TO THE FUNERAL
Dorian knocked once against the pantry door.
“Don’t make this worse than it already is.”
Talia pressed her hand over her mouth.
She remembered Dorian’s expensive gray coat at the hospital, the sympathetic expression, the way he had taken her mother’s hands.
He had told them Gabriel was a good employee.
He had promised that nobody would forget him.
Now he stood outside with armed men.
Matteo spoke through the door.
“Leave the restaurant.
People have already called the police.”
“Then you understand the urgency,” Dorian answered.
Talia looked at Ben.
The young
