Chapter 7: The Evidence They Couldn’t Erase

The next morning, I woke before sunrise.

Every part of my body hurt, but pain no longer frightened me.

For three years, pain had been the price of searching for the truth.

This time, I knew exactly what I was looking for.

The photograph.

I opened my phone and zoomed in again.

Francesca stood beside Dimitri outside the Tijuana warehouse.

The former deputy commissioner stood with them.

But there was something else in the background.

A black SUV was parked near the warehouse entrance.

Its license plate was partially visible.

I recognized it immediately.

It belonged to a private security company that had been hired by the NYPD years ago.

The same company had provided security during several of my investigations.

My heart began pounding.

Someone had been watching me from the beginning.

I asked the nurse for my clothes and a computer.

She refused at first, but when I told her I needed to preserve evidence before it disappeared, she finally brought me a hospital tablet.

I logged into an old cloud account I hadn't touched since my suspension.

Most of my files were gone.

But one folder remained.

CASE 4179.

The organ trafficking investigation.

I opened it.

My original evidence was still there.

Photos.

Audio recordings.

Financial transfers.

Names.

Dates.

Locations.

And one document I had completely forgotten about.

A copy of a confidential witness statement.

The witness had claimed that a prosecutor inside the district attorney's office had been protecting the trafficking network.

The prosecutor's name had been blacked out in the version I received.

But I had saved an earlier scan.

The redaction was never part of the original document.

I stared at the name beneath it.

Francesca Lombardi.

My sister.

My hands went cold.

She hadn't been undercover to destroy the organization.

She had been investigating it because she was connected to it.

I remembered the day Francesca supposedly died.

She had called me hours before the explosion.

She told me she had found something important.

She promised she would meet me that night.

She never came.

Instead, her car was found abandoned.

Everyone assumed she had been killed.

But she hadn't been running from the traffickers.

She had been running from me.

A knock sounded at my hospital door.

I quickly locked the tablet.

A detective entered.

I recognized him from Major Crimes.

He closed the door behind him.

“Lombardi, I need to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

He lowered his voice.

“The department received an anonymous tip about you last night.”

“It says you were responsible for the warehouse explosion three years ago.”

I stared at him.

“What?”

“The tip claims you staged the entire incident because Dimitri was planning to leave you.”

I almost laughed.

They were rewriting my life again.

“Who submitted it?”

“We don't know.”

He placed a sealed envelope on the table.

“But there's something else.”

I opened it.

Inside was a photograph.

It showed me standing outside the warehouse three years ago.

Except I had never seen that photograph before.

The timestamp was impossible.

It had been taken six minutes after the explosion.

And I was supposed to have been inside the police perimeter at that exact moment.

Someone had fabricated it.

The detective watched my expression.

“Do you know who could have done this?”

I thought of Dimitri.

Francesca.

My mother.

Clara.

The deputy commissioner.

Then I noticed something in the corner of the photograph.

A reflection in a broken window.

The person taking the picture was wearing a department-issued tactical jacket.

I looked up.

“I know where to start.”

The detective frowned.

“Where?”

I slid the photograph back into the envelope.

“Find out who signed out tactical equipment that night.”

He stared at me for a long moment.

Then he nodded.

“I'll see what I can find.”

After he left, I opened my phone again.

Another message from the unknown number was waiting.

“You found Francesca's name.”

A second message appeared.

“Now find out why Dimitri agreed to help her.”

My chest tightened.

Then came the final message.

“And whatever you do, don't trust Clara.”

I froze.

Clara had saved me from my family countless times.

She had been my closest friend since childhood.

She had been the one person I believed would never betray me.

But one by one, everyone I trusted had turned out to be lying.

I looked toward the hospital window.

A black SUV was parked across the street.

The same model as the one in the photograph.

Someone was sitting inside.

Watching my room.

I slowly pulled the blanket higher over my body and reached for the call button.

This time, I wasn't going to run.

I was going to make them come to me.