Now the screen lit the table between us.
Sal stared at it.
Vince whispered, “Don’t.”
That one word told me more than another page could have.
I answered and placed the call on speaker.
For two seconds, there was only static.
Then a man breathed on the other end.
My father’s voice had aged.
It was rougher and quieter than the voice I remembered reading grocery lists at the kitchen table.
But it was his.
“Anna?”
My knees nearly failed me.
I gripped the back of an empty chair.
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ten years of anger rose so quickly I could taste it.
“You let me bury you.”
“I let Vince believe the grave had worked,” my father said.
“I thought that was the only way to keep him from using you to reach me.”
“You could have found another way.”
“I tried.
Every inquiry led back to someone watching you.
Every message risked telling him I was alive.
Sal carried information in one direction.
Never back.”
Sal closed his eyes.
My father continued.
“I stayed away because I wanted you breathing more than I wanted your forgiveness.”
The room did not disappear.
Vince remained pinned beside the table.
Dante still held the funeral authorization.
The stranger was still buried under my father’s name.
But for one dangerous second, I was a daughter hearing a dead man speak.
Dante moved closer to the phone.
“Jack, did Vince create the false ledger?”
“Yes.”
“Did he arrange the body?”
“Yes.”
Vince shouted over him.
“He’s lying because Sal helped him steal from us.”
My father’s voice hardened.
“I found the transfers you hid.
You framed me before I could show them to Dante’s father.
Then you used the same outside address to sell meeting information for ten years.”
Dante glanced at the forwarding report.
Vince shook his head violently.
“No.
The old address was closed.”
The words escaped before he understood them.
The room froze.
I looked at him.
“I never said it was the old address.”
Vince’s face changed.
Dante stepped nearer.
“How did you know there was an old one?”
Vince opened his mouth, but panic had outrun his control.
