Chapter 3 - The Daughter They Were Waiting For
Dominic wanted to send me back to the hospital.
I wanted to break his nose.
Neither of us got what we wanted.
The SUV sped north beneath a gray winter sky while Enzo coordinated with men in Cleveland.
I sat in the second row wrapped in a blanket because my body couldn’t decide whether it was burning or freezing.
Dominic sat across from me.
For twenty minutes, I didn’t look at him.
Finally I said, “Tell me everything.”
“No.”
I turned.
“If you say ‘not yet,’ I swear I’ll open this door.”
“At seventy miles an hour?”
“I’m emotional.”
Enzo glanced back.
“She might.”
Dominic shot him a look.
Then he faced me.
“Your father discovered Victor Costa was moving money through legitimate companies.”
“I know that part.”
“He documented accounts, shell corporations, judges, union officials, contractors.”
“And?”
“He created a ledger.”
“What ledger?”
“Not paper.”
My brow furrowed.
“Encrypted records.”
“This was twenty years ago.”
“Daniel was ahead of most people.”
Despite everything, I felt a strange burst of pride.
“So Victor wants those records?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“We never found them.”
“Then why does he think I know?”
“He doesn’t think you know.”
Dominic’s eyes held mine.
“He thinks you can access them.”
I stared.
“How?”
“Your father built the encryption around family information.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means Victor spent twenty years trying to unlock it.”
“And couldn’t.”
“No.”
“So he needs me.”
“Yes.”
“Why now?”
Dominic hesitated.
“Because six months ago, one of the old accounts became active.”
Six months.
The photograph of Ellen had been taken six months earlier.
“You started watching us when the account moved.”
“Yes.”
“You thought my mother did it?”
“At first.”
“And then?”
“We learned she didn’t.”
“Then who?”
“We don’t know.”
I laughed bitterly.
“That seems to happen a lot around you.”
His expression remained flat.
I leaned back, exhausted.
“What did my father do for you?”
Dominic’s eyes sharpened.
“What?”
“The photograph told you to protect me. He didn’t write that to your mother. He wrote it to you.”
Dominic said nothing.
“You were what? Fifteen?”
“Sixteen.”
“Why would a grown man ask a sixteen-year-old boy to protect his daughter?”
The silence inside the SUV became suffocating.
“Because,” Dominic said slowly, “I was with him the night he died.”
My breath stopped.
Enzo looked out the window.
Dominic continued.
“My father had sent me with two men to bring Daniel somewhere safe.”
“Your father sent a teenager?”
“I wasn’t treated like one.”
“What happened?”
“We reached him before Costa’s men did.”
“That sounds like a good thing.”
“It wasn’t.”
Something in his voice made my stomach twist.
“My father wanted the ledger.”
I stared.
“Your father betrayed him?”
“He believed possessing the information would give the Rossi family leverage.”
“And my father refused.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“An argument.”
“Then?”
“A car arrived.”
“Costa?”
“Yes.”
Dominic’s gaze turned distant.
“Your father made me leave with Ellen and you.”
“You took us?”
“For six blocks.”
“What happened after six blocks?”
“Your mother realized Daniel wasn’t behind us.”
I could almost see it.
My mother young.
Terrified.
Me six years old.
Dominic sixteen.
“She made me stop,” he said.
“She ran back?”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
“I followed.”
His jaw tightened.
“We were too late.”
I felt tears sting my eyes.
“How did he die?”
Dominic looked directly at me.
“He was hit by a car while trying to escape.”
I blinked.
“My mother said highway accident.”
“She didn’t tell you the rest.”
“Who was driving?”
Dominic looked away.
And suddenly I knew why he had been terrified of this conversation.
“Who?”
He remained silent.
“Dominic.”
“My brother.”
Everything inside me went still.
“You have a brother?”
“Had.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died three years later.”
I struggled to breathe evenly.
“Your brother killed my father?”
“It wasn’t deliberate.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I was there.”
“Then tell me.”
“Marco was seventeen. My father had ordered him to block the road. Daniel ran across it. Marco tried to stop.”
I laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“Your family boxed him in, and now you want me to believe it was an accident?”
Dominic didn’t defend them.
“That is why your mother disappeared.”
“What?”
“She blamed the Rossi family.”
“She should.”
“Yes.”
The simple admission caught me off guard.
“My father caused the situation. Marco caused Daniel’s death. I helped your mother leave New York afterward.”
“You were sixteen.”
“I still remember.”
“And the photograph?”
“Daniel gave it to me before he went back for the ledger.”
I looked down at the ring.
“So you watched me because you felt guilty.”
“At first.”
“At first again.”
He leaned forward.
“I watched you because Costa’s people started looking for Ellen.”
“And you didn’t warn us.”
“If I approached, Costa would know you mattered.”
“He knows now.”
“Yes.”
“Because I saved your mother.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
“No.”
The word came too fast.
“What does that mean?”
He hesitated.
“Costa knew you were at the gala before you saved Isabella.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
“How?”
“That is what we’re trying to determine.”
“Someone put me there.”
“We think so.”
I remembered the catering manager calling me at noon.
Someone else had canceled.
Four hundred dollars plus tips.
Easy money.
Not luck.
A setup.
“They wanted me there.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To force me to identify you publicly.”
I stared.
“But nobody knew who I was.”
“Someone did.”
Enzo’s phone rang.
He answered.
“Go.”
He listened.
“Location?”
Another pause.
Then he looked at Dominic.
“We have Ellen.”
I grabbed the seat.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Abandoned clinic outside Akron. Costa’s people left twenty minutes ago.”
Dominic frowned.
“They just left her?”
“That’s what the team says.”
I didn’t trust it.
Neither did he.
“Trap,” we said simultaneously.
His eyes met mine.
For the first time, he looked almost impressed.
The convoy changed direction.
An hour later, Dominic refused to let me leave the vehicle.
I waited until he stepped away.
Then I opened the door.
Enzo sighed.
“I’m going to get fired.”
“You should negotiate better.”
He helped me out.
The clinic smelled like damp plaster and old chemicals.
Two Rossi men stood near the entrance.
At the end of a hallway, I heard a voice.
“Baby?”
I stopped breathing.
“Mom.”
I forgot the pain.
I forgot the stitches.
I moved as fast as my body allowed.
Ellen sat on an examination table wrapped in a coat.
She looked smaller than I remembered.
Pale.
Terrified.
But alive.
I threw my arms around her.
Pain exploded through my side.
I didn’t care.
She cried against my shoulder.
“I thought you were dead.”
“So did I.”
She pulled back and touched my face.
Then her eyes landed on Dominic.
Everything in her changed.
Fear.
Then fury.
“You.”
Dominic stood in the doorway.
“Ellen.”
She stepped between us.
“Get away from my daughter.”
“Mom.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than I did last week.”
Her eyes dropped.
To the ring.
She stared.
“What is that?”
I almost laughed.
“Long story.”
“You married him?”
“Technically.”
Dominic said, “Ellen—”
“Don’t say my name.”
Her voice shook.
“You promised Daniel.”
“I know.”
“You promised you would never let your family touch her.”
“They didn’t.”
“She was shot seven times!”
Dominic took the words like blows.
I looked at my mother.
“Why did Dad build the ledger around me?”
Her face changed.
“Who told you?”
“He did.”
She looked at Dominic with hatred.
“You had no right.”
“Costa already knows.”
“That doesn’t mean she should.”
“I think I’m done with everyone deciding that.”
My mother looked at me.
For years, she had been the only person I trusted without question.
Now I realized how much she had hidden.
“What is in the ledger?”
She sat slowly.
“Names.”
“I know.”
“Not just criminals.”
“Who?”
“People who became senators. Federal judges. Executives. Police commissioners.”
Even Dominic looked surprised.
“You never told us that.”
“Daniel trusted no one.”
“What unlocks it?” I asked.
My mother stared at me.
“You.”
“How?”
She took my hand.
“When you were born, your father opened an account in your name.”
“A bank account?”
“Not exactly.”
She looked at Dominic.
“He divided the access key into three pieces.”
Dominic’s face hardened.
“Where?”
“One with me.”
“One with Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“And the third?”
My mother looked at the gold ring on my finger.
For a second I thought she was staring at my marriage.
Then she whispered, “That ring.”
I froze.
“What?”
Dominic looked down.
“That’s impossible.”
Ellen reached toward my hand.
“Take it off.”
I tried.
The swelling made it difficult.
Dominic carefully removed it.
My mother examined the inside.
There, almost invisible beneath the engraving Dominic had added, was an older marking.
Three tiny numbers.
Then a symbol.
Ellen went pale.
“That belonged to Daniel.”
Dominic stared.
“No. It was my father’s.”
“Your father got it from mine,” she said.
Silence.
The ring Dominic had placed on me in the ICU wasn’t just a wedding ring.
It had belonged to my father.
Dominic hadn’t known.
Or if he had, he was the best liar I’d ever met.
A sound cracked somewhere down the corridor.
Enzo immediately drew his weapon.
“Move.”
Lights died.
Darkness swallowed the clinic.
A window shattered.
Men shouted.
Dominic grabbed me around the waist and pulled me behind a concrete wall as gunfire erupted outside.
“Stay down.”
“My mother.”
“Enzo has her.”
Another burst.
Dominic covered me with his body.
Then someone inside the building fired.
Not outside.
Inside.
Dominic went completely still.
The realization passed between us.
The attackers had known exactly which hallway we were using.
Exactly when we arrived.
Exactly where Ellen was.
Someone had given them our movements in real time.
Enzo appeared from the darkness.
“We have a leak.”
Dominic’s voice became colder than anything I had heard from him before.
“No.”
He stared toward the men guarding the entrance.
“We have a traitor.”
May you like
And whoever it was had been close enough to Dominic to know where he would hide his wife.
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