Chapter 8 - Cousins
Nico Moretti had been seventeen when Adrien taught him how to drive.
He had also been seventeen when Adrien took a gun out of his hand behind a nightclub and told him that fear did not become courage just because you held metal while feeling it.
Nico was thirty now. He ran three restaurants, a towing company, and whatever errands Vittorio did not want attached to his own name.
Adrien had loved him like a younger brother while repeatedly pretending not to notice the man he was becoming.
That realization made the next part worse.
He met Nico in the back room of one of the restaurants that afternoon.
No entourage. No Marco. No gun on the table.
Nico arrived wearing jeans and a navy sweater, hair still wet from the rain.
"Uncle says you're accusing me."
"I'm asking you."
"Same thing in this family."
Adrien almost smiled at the bitter accuracy.
He pointed to the chair across from him.
Nico sat.
"Did you pay Daniel Mercer to call the hospital?"
Nico's eyes dropped.
Adrien knew immediately.
"Why?"
"I didn't know there was a baby until this morning."
"That doesn't answer me."
Nico rubbed both hands over his face.
"Uncle Vittorio wanted to know whether Elena was really there."
Adrien's voice lowered. "So you paid a stranger to ask where my newborn daughter had been moved."
"He was supposed to ask if she had delivered. That's it. Mercer went off script."
"There should never have been a script."
Nico flinched.
Adrien leaned back.
"Did Vittorio threaten Elena eight months ago?"
"I don't know."
"Don't waste my time."
"I don't know."
Nico's voice rose.
He looked genuinely frightened now, but not of Adrien. Of the answer itself.
"I know Uncle was angry about her. I know your father thought she made you distracted. I know everybody at that table talked like your life was a company with a succession problem. But I never heard anyone order a threat."
Adrien watched him.
"Then why help Vittorio now?"
Nico laughed without humor. "Because I owe him."
"Money?"
"My life."
Adrien frowned.
Nico looked toward the closed door.
"Three years ago, when I got picked up with those stolen cars, you remember?"
"I remember you claiming the charges disappeared."
"They didn't disappear. Uncle paid the guy who actually owned the operation to say I was just a driver. He took the hit."
Adrien had never known that.
Nico continued, "Vittorio reminds me whenever he needs something. Never says it directly. Doesn't have to."
"And you call that loyalty?"
"No. I call it debt."
Adrien looked at his cousin and saw the family in miniature: favor becoming obligation, obligation becoming control, control being renamed love.
"Did you send Elena the text last night?"
"No."
"Did Vittorio?"
"I don't know."
Nico swallowed.
"But I know somebody has been asking about her for months."
Adrien's posture changed.
"Who?"
"A guy named Frank Dorsey. Used to do security for the docks."
"Works for Vittorio?"
"Sometimes. Works for whoever pays."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Nico gave him a tired look.
"Because until last night, telling you anything meant picking a side."
"And now?"
"Now there's a baby."
Adrien hated how many men had suddenly discovered morality after Sofia was born.
"Where do I find Dorsey?"
Nico shook his head.
"Don't."
"Nico."
"You asked me why nobody tells you things. This is why. You hear a name and you move."
Adrien stared at him.
Nico continued, quieter, "Call the detective. Give them the name. Let somebody else move for once."
It was humiliating advice because it was good.
Adrien took out his phone.
Nico blinked.
Adrien called Detective Lena Brooks, whose number Jenkins had texted him. He gave her Dorsey's name, the connection to Mercer, and what Nico had admitted.
Brooks listened without interrupting.
"Mr. Moretti," she said when he finished, "if your cousin paid Mercer, I need to speak to him too."
Adrien looked at Nico.
Nico looked sick.
For years Adrien would have found a way around that.
He covered the phone.
"Your choice," he told Nico. "Walk into the precinct yourself, or wait for them to come here."
Nico stared at him.
"You'd let them arrest me?"
"I won't stop them."
Nico stood so fast the chair tipped backward.
"Family means nothing to you now?"
Adrien looked at the fallen chair.
"I'm trying to figure out what it should mean."
Nico's face twisted.
Then he left.
Adrien remained alone in the back room.
His phone buzzed before he could stand.
A message from Elena.
DISCHARGE TOMORROW. I AM NOT GOING TO YOUR HOUSE.
Adrien stared at it.
He typed three different replies and deleted each one.
Finally he wrote:
OKAY. WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO?
The answer came a minute later.
MY APARTMENT.
Adrien knew the place. A second-floor walk-up in Queens she had rented under her cousin's name after returning to New York two weeks before the birth.
No security desk. No cameras. No controlled garage.
His first instinct was immediate and total rejection.
He let the feeling pass without obeying it.
Then he typed:
I'LL DRIVE YOU IF YOU WANT.
Elena answered:
YOU CAN DRIVE.
A second message appeared.
YOU CANNOT MOVE IN.
Nico did not go to the precinct immediately.
For forty minutes he sat in his car outside the restaurant and called Adrien twice. Adrien did not answer. The third call went to Teresa.
Later she told Adrien what Nico had said.
"He asked whether turning himself in made him a rat," Teresa said.
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him a rat saves himself by selling someone else. He was being asked to answer for his own choice."
Adrien looked at his mother.
"Since when do you make that distinction?"
Teresa's face tightened.
May you like
"Since I watched this family teach three generations of boys that consequences were something weaker people faced."
Nico finally walked into the precinct at 5:18 p.m. with a lawyer Vittorio had not chosen. That small fact mattered. For the first time in years, Nico had made a decision without checking which older man would approve of it.
