Chapter 3 - The Silver Link
Matthew knelt down on the linoleum floor, keeping his movements slow so as not to frighten the boy. Leo watched him with wide, solemn eyes, shifting the broken fire truck from one hand to the other.
"Hi, Leo," Matthew said gently, his voice trembling despite his best efforts to remain steady. "That’s a very nice truck. What happened to the wheel?"
"It broke when Uncle Richard dropped it in the driveway," Leo said, his voice small but clear. "He said it was cheap garbage anyway."
Matthew’s jaw tightened at the mention of his uncle, but he forced his eyes to stay fixed on the silver medal resting against the boy's shirt. "That’s a beautiful necklace you have there, Leo. Can I see it?"
Leo reached down, lifting the small silver disc with his tiny fingers. "Uncle Richard gave it to me for my birthday last year. He told me it belonged to a very bad man who went away a long time ago, but that the medal itself was good luck. He said I should never take it off, or the bad man would come back."
Elena gasped behind him, her hand flying to her mouth. Arthur stood up from his chair, using his cane to steady himself as he stepped closer to the boy.
"Richard gave you that?" Arthur asked, his voice shaking with a sudden, volatile realization. "He told us he lost Matthew’s personal effects after the police released them. He told us the box was stolen from the trunk of his car."
"He lied about that too," Matthew said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, chilling register. He looked closely at the medal. On the back, hidden beneath years of tiny scratches, was a distinct, hand-stamped inscription: M.R. - 05/14/1999. His birth date. His initials.
This wasn't just a stolen piece of jewelry. The night of the warehouse fire, Matthew had been at the scene because Richard had called him, begging him to pick up a box of corporate records before the facility closed for the night. When Matthew arrived, the building was already engulfed in flames, and the night watchman was dead. The police found Matthew standing by the service door, his clothes smelling of smoke, and his St. Jude medal was found inside the burned office—the primary piece of physical evidence that proved he had entered the building before the fire started.
Except Matthew had never gone inside. He had told the police he dropped the medal in the parking lot while running away from the heat.
"He didn't find it in the parking lot," Matthew muttered, the horror of the frame-up unfolding in his mind. "Richard took it from my room weeks before the fire. He planted it inside the office before he lit the match. And then he kept it like a trophy... until he gave it to my sister’s son as a twisted joke."
"Matthew, what does this mean?" Elena pleaded, clutching his arm.
"It means the evidence that sent me away wasn't an accident, Mom," Matthew said, standing up and pulling the phone book from the drawer beneath the counter. "Richard didn't just isolate me from you to keep us from talking. He isolated me because he knew that if we ever put our heads together, we’d realize he was the one who set the fire to collect the five-million-dollar commercial insurance payout on the Oak Park warehouse."
He flipped through the pages until he found the listing for Reyes Development Group LLC.
"I’m going to see him," Matthew said, his eyes burning with a primal, triumphant light.
"No, Matthew, you can't," Arthur intervened, placing his heavy hand on his son's shoulder. "You're on parole. If you go to his office, if you cause a scene, his security will call the police. One report of a parole violation and they’ll throw you back in that cell before you can even explain about the letters. That’s exactly what he wants."
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Matthew looked at his father, then down at little Leo, who was now playing with the broken truck on the floor. His father was right. Richard was a political donor; he had the police chief on speed dial. A direct confrontation would only end in Matthew’s ruin.
"Then we don't go to his office," Matthew said, a cold, calculated smile breaking across his face. "We go to the man he paid to build the wall. We find Marcus Sterling."
