33. Prodigy Moretti
PRODIGY MORETTI
The address Jamir sent led me deep into Michigan.
The paved road disappeared first. Then the houses vanished and were replaced by woods.
By the time my GPS told me I’d arrived, trees surrounded both sides of the narrow road, and the small house sat far enough back that somebody could live there for years without being noticed.
I parked and stared through the windshield.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I hated coming without telling Wise, Vega, my mother, or the rest of the family.
Novi was the only person who knew I had planned to make the trip.
She’d offered to come with me, but I told her no.
If this turned into some shit I couldn’t control, I needed her home and safe.
I’d been shot at. I’d watched men die. I’d walked into situations knowing I might not walk back out. None of that had scared me this much.
My father was really on the other side of that door.
I got out and forced my legs to walk toward the porch. Each step made the eighteen years between us feel heavier. Every birthday I’d wondered about him came with me. So did every time I’d searched a crowd for his face and every question my mother couldn’t answer.
I reached the door and knocked.
I waited a few minutes before I knocked again.
“Papà!” I bellowed, but I got silence in response.
I stood there long enough to wonder if Jamir had been wrong or if my father had seen me pull up and escaped through the back.
Then I heard movement inside. My heart slammed against my ribs.
I struck the door with my fist. “Pop! I know you in there! Open the door!”
Suddenly, the door swung open, and I forgot how to breathe as I stared into the eyes I remembered looking down at me when I was a boy. Those eyes glazed over the second they landed on me.
Love was there. I saw it before he buried it beneath fear. He swallowed hard, forcing back the yearning in his eyes and spat, “You shouldn’t be here.”
Offended, I took a step back. “That’s what you got to say to me?”
He avoided my eyes, looking behind me as if he was expecting someone else to show up. “You need to leave.”
“I spent eighteen years looking for you, and that’s all you have to fucking say?!’
Finally, he gave me his full attention. “I’ve been hiding for a reason.”
“From me?”
His face twisted with pain. “No, son. I would never leave because of you. I left for you.” As my brows furrowed in confusion, he looked beyond me toward the road. “Who knows you’re here?”
The fear in his eyes gave me the first answer I needed. He hadn’t left because he stopped loving me. Somebody had scared him enough to abandon his entire life.
“Nobody knows I’m here,” I assured him. “But they will if you don’t tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“Prodigy—”
“I’m not leaving. You can talk to me inside, or I can stand out here yelling until somebody hears me.”
He stared at me for several seconds before stepping aside.
The house was small and old, with plain furniture and no pictures on the walls. Nothing inside suggested he had built another family or created a life he enjoyed. He had just existed there.
Renzo closed the door, then turned toward me. His eyes moved over my face, taking in every year he’d missed.
Tears threatened to spill from them. “Mio figlio. (My son.)”
Those two words broke me down. I crossed the room and grabbed him.
His arms came around me immediately. He held me hard enough to tell me he’d wanted and needed this as much as I had.
I shut my eyes and fought tears against his shoulder.
For one moment, I was a little boy again, holding the father I’d expected to return before bedtime.
Then anger brought me back.
I stepped away. “Tell me the truth.”
He wiped his face free of tears that had fallen, looking as if he was fighting an internal battle with himself.
“Please,” I begged. “Liberami da questo. (Free me from this.) I’ve been miserable for eighteen years trying to answer questions only you can answer.”
Renzo sat down, so I did the same. He stared into space, and I allowed him to think, hoping that it would lead him to tell me the truth.
Finally, he began to speak. “Your grandfather Teddy never wanted me with your mother. He said I couldn’t provide for Denise and that I wasn’t good enough for his daughter. He tried to pay me to leave. When that didn’t work, he started threatening me.”
Frowning, I asked, “You left because Grandpa Teddy didn’t want you with my mother?”
“No.” He took a deep breath as if this pained him to say out loud. “My parents came from Italy to visit. They died in a car accident while they were here.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t know everything.” The pain in his face deepened. “When I went to identify their bodies, a man came into the morgue. He told me you’d be the next body I identified if I didn’t leave Denise.”
My stomach turned.
“After that, pictures started coming of you at school, playing outside, getting on the bus. Whoever sent them knew your routine and could reach you whenever they wanted.”
“Grandpa Teddy did that?”
“He was behind it, but he didn’t have the money or connections to do it alone.”
“Who helped him?”
“At first, I didn’t know. I thought it might be connected to Vittorio Carbone.
I thought the men who came after him might’ve believed I was involved in his business too.
But I was a regular man trying to take care of my family.
I didn’t have money, soldiers, or any way to fight people who could watch my child without being seen.
I couldn’t go to the police without risking your life. ”
“So, you left.”
“I left because they promised you’d live if I disappeared.”
Anger and grief were at war inside me. “You could’ve told Ma.”
“That wouldn’t have protected you.”
I turned away from him and dragged my hand over my face.
“Over the years, I started investigating,” he continued. “I found out your grandfather had help from somebody much closer to us…Marcus.”
I fell back against the chair, in pure disbelief, hoping I had heard wrong. I couldn’t form words. I just stared at him in disbelief.
“Marcus wanted your mother. He’d wanted her for years, ever since they met when your grandfather started doing work for Marcus. Marcus promised to help Teddy build the family’s wealth if Teddy helped get rid of me.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“I wish it was.”
“Marcus raised me.”
“I know.”
“He loves my mother. You telling me he killed your parents?”
“He was the man that approached me in the morgue. I can prove he moved money to Teddy. I can prove he benefited from my disappearance.”
I shook my head, struggling to take all of this in. He was asking me to question the man who had attended every school event, taught me how to drive, and stood beside my mother through every loss.
Then Renzo said, “That isn’t the worst thing I found out.”
I stared at him, wondering if I wanted to know more.
“Sitting out here for years has given me time to think back on everything that felt off or didn’t add up. It never sat right how the hospital handled your sister’s death, so I did some digging. Mercy didn’t die.”
My heart stopped.
Nodding, he said, “The death certificate was falsified. People at the hospital were paid off. Renee worked at that hospital. She knew the paperwork wasn’t right.
But Sal was facing serious immigration problems and drowning in debt.
Marcus promised to make everything disappear if Sal and Renee stayed quiet about the baby surviving. ”
“So, Marcus has something to do with Mercy’s disappearance too?”
Renzo slowly nodded his head.
“Why would he do that?”
Renzo shrugged. “I have no idea. But it’s true. Sal verified it when I confronted him.”
My eyes bucked. “You’ve been talking to Sal? He knows where you are?”
“Yes.”
“Renee knows too?”
“Marcus had all of them scared and dependent on him. They’re under Marcus’s control too. The only people that don’t know is your mother and grandmother.”
I stared at my father, waiting for him to tell me I’d misunderstood. A humorless laugh left my throat. Sal and Renee had watched me search for Renzo. Marcus had raised me while hiding the fact that he helped force my father out of my life.
Some of the people I trusted the most had allowed me to believe Renzo chose to abandon me.
“I stayed gone to protect you. Marcus has money, influence, and people willing to hurt whoever he points toward. I have none of that. And the more I found out, the more I wanted to protect you and your mother from the truth.”
“You left me with the man that was threatening to kill me.”
His face folded in response to that accusation.
“Everybody told me you were safe, that he was loving to you and was a good father to you.”
“Safe?” I sat up. “I was raised by the nigga who forced my father to disappear.”
“He was good to you.”
“That’s supposed to make it better?”
“I had no choice.”
“Everybody had a choice except me.” My voice cracked.
Renzo reached for me, but I stepped back.
“Do you know where Mercy is?” I asked.
“No.”
“Does Sal?”
“He claims he doesn’t. He and Renee never learned which family took her.”
“And you believe them?”
Renzo’s expression grew cold. “I don’t believe anything Sal or Denise says anymore.”
I looked around the house that had hidden my father while lies shaped the rest of our lives.
“I’m sorry that I left, that you lived with all these unanswered questions. I just didn’t know what else to do. Marcus has enough power to bury anyone he wants.”
“So do I.”
Fear returned to his eyes. “Prodigy, you don’t understand what he’s capable of.”
“I’m about to find out.”
“You can’t confront him without knowing everything. You know what I could prove. There are still pieces missing.”
“Then we find them.”
“We?”
“You think I’m leaving you here after waiting eighteen years?”
His eyes filled with emotion again. “Marcus can’t know you found me before we understand everything he’s hiding.”