Chapter 5 - What My Father Left Behind
The worst secrets are rarely the ones enemies keep from you.
They’re the ones good people decide you’re better off never knowing.
I read my father’s letter three times.
Every time, another part of my childhood changed.
Dominic stood across the room.
Isabella sat by the fireplace.
No one interrupted me.
Finally I said, “Your family is in the ledger.”
Isabella nodded.
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Not the extent.”
“Did Dominic?”
“No.”
I looked at him.
He seemed furious.
But not at me.
At the dead.
“My father knew Daniel was collecting evidence,” he said.
“And wanted it.”
“Yes.”
“Because it implicated him.”
“Apparently.”
I laughed bitterly.
“So Victor Costa and your father were enemies publicly and business partners privately?”
“Maybe.”
“That sounds like a yes.”
Dominic turned to Enzo.
“Find every company Daniel audited during those eighteen months.”
“Already started.”
“Old federal filings too.”
Enzo nodded.
I stared at them.
“No.”
Dominic looked at me.
“No what?”
“No more meetings where everyone decides what happens while I sit upstairs.”
“You should be resting.”
“I spent twenty years being lied to. I’m done resting through my own life.”
Isabella smiled faintly.
Dominic did not.
“You’re injured.”
“I can read bank records while injured.”
“You know forensic accounting?”
“My father wasn’t the only accountant in the family.”
That surprised him.
I had never mentioned the associate degree I abandoned when Ellen got sick.
Or the bookkeeping work I occasionally did at the diner.
His surveillance had apparently missed something.
Good.
I needed at least one mystery left.
For the next forty-eight hours, we turned the dining table into a war room.
Old corporate filings.
Bank transfers.
Photographs.
Property records.
Enzo brought in a computer specialist named Maya who spoke in sentences shorter than Dominic’s.
My mother joined by encrypted video.
When Ellen saw the old ring again, she cried.
“Daniel wore it every day.”
“Then how did Dominic’s father get it?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Isabella did.
“He gave it to Antonio Rossi.”
Dominic’s face darkened.
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
Everyone turned.
Isabella folded her hands.
“Daniel told your father the ring contained one component of the key. He believed that if each side held something valuable, nobody would move against the others.”
“He trusted my father?”
“No,” Isabella said. “He trusted fear.”
That sounded like the world Dominic had inherited.
Three pieces.
My mother had one.
The ring had another.
The third had vanished with my father.
Until I remembered something.
“A music box.”
Ellen froze on the video screen.
“What?”
“Dad gave me a music box.”
I could see the memory hit her.
A little blue wooden box.
Broken ballerina.
I hadn’t thought about it in years.
“We left it in storage when we moved from Cleveland.”
My mother shook her head.
“No.”
“What?”
“I kept it.”
“Where?”
“In the apartment.”
My Queens apartment.
Dominic was already standing.
“Enzo.”
“I’m calling New York.”
I grabbed his sleeve.
“No.”
He looked down.
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“This is my father’s.”
“And Costa may be watching your apartment.”
“Then we don’t walk through the front door.”
His expression said absolutely not.
Mine said try me.
Six hours later we were driving into Queens.
Some arguments become traditions.
My apartment building looked exactly as pathetic as I remembered.
Paint peeling from the entrance.
Broken buzzer.
Mrs. Alvarez’s plant dying on the third-floor landing.
It nearly made me cry.
Normal life had never looked so beautiful.
We entered through the basement.
Dominic hated every second.
My apartment door had been replaced.
“You replaced it?”
“Someone broke in after the shooting.”
My stomach tightened.
“Did they take anything?”
“Not that we could tell.”
Inside, everything had been searched and restored.
Too carefully.
I went straight to the closet.
Old winter coats.
Christmas decorations.
A plastic bin labeled MAYA’S SCHOOL.
My name.
Dominic watched.
I pulled it down.
Beneath yearbooks and notebooks was the music box.
Blue.
Scratched.
The ballerina no longer turned.
My hands trembled.
I opened the bottom.
Nothing.
Dominic crouched beside me.
“May I?”
I handed it over.
He examined the hinges.
Then pressed a small wooden seam.
A hidden panel opened.
Inside was a tiny brass key and a strip of paper containing twenty-four characters.
Enzo whispered, “Jesus.”
I looked at Dominic.
“Is that it?”
“Part.”
Maya photographed the code.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Everyone froze.
Dominic reached for it.
I moved away.
“No.”
“It could be Costa.”
“Exactly.”
I answered.
“Hello?”
A man laughed softly.
“Daniel’s daughter.”
My skin went cold.
Victor Costa.
“I was beginning to think Dominic would never let you near a phone.”
Dominic held out his hand.
I ignored him.
“What do you want?”
“You.”
“How original.”
Victor laughed again.
“You sound like your father.”
My stomach twisted.
“You knew him?”
“Very well.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
I looked at Dominic.
Victor continued.
“But the man standing next to you knows who did.”
My eyes narrowed.
“You’re lying.”
“Ask Dominic where his father was the night Daniel Mercer died.”
I looked at Dominic.
His face changed.
Victor knew.
“Ask him,” Victor said softly, “who ordered Marco onto that road.”
I lowered the phone.
“Your father?”
Dominic didn’t answer.
That was enough.
Victor laughed through the speaker.
“Secrets, Maya. Dominic has always loved them.”
He knew my name.
Not the name from the hotel.
My real name.
The one my father had written.
“Maya Mercer,” Victor continued. “Bring me the key, and I’ll give you the truth.”
The call ended.
I stared at Dominic.
“You knew Antonio ordered Marco.”
“Yes.”
“You told me Marco caused my father’s death.”
“He did.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
“You protected your father.”
“I was sixteen.”
“For how long?”
He had no answer.
Twenty years.
He had carried the truth.
And watched me from a distance.
And married me while I couldn’t speak.
Something broke inside me.
“You don’t get to protect me anymore.”
“Maya.”
“No.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
His silence made me laugh.
“After I fell in love with you?”
His expression changed.
The question had escaped before I understood what I was saying.
Neither of us moved.
Enzo suddenly turned toward the window.
“Car.”
Dominic pulled the curtain aside.
A black sedan idled across the street.
Then my phone buzzed.
A message.
A photograph.
My mother.
Again.
But this time she wasn’t in Cleveland.
Behind her was a sign I recognized immediately.
The old train yard outside Queens.
My mother had been taken from Dominic’s safe house.
Again.
And below the image was one sentence.
COME ALONE OR ELLEN DIES KNOWING WHAT ROSSI DID.
Dominic read it over my shoulder.
“I’m coming with you.”
I stepped away.
“No.”
“You won’t survive five minutes.”
“I survived seven bullets.”
“This isn’t bravery.”
“No.”
I removed the wedding ring.
For the first time since waking up, my finger was bare.
I placed the ring in his palm.
“This is me choosing.”
Dominic looked down at it.
His face went completely still.
Then I walked out.
I made it to the stairwell before Enzo stopped me.
Not by force.
With words.
“Maya.”
I turned.
He held up a tablet.
“We found the third key.”
I stared.
“Where?”
“Inside an old insurance account.”
“And?”
His face was pale.
“The ledger is open.”
Dominic came into the hallway.
Enzo looked at him.
“There’s something you both need to see.”
On the screen was a list of payments.
Costa.
Judges.
Police officials.
Antonio Rossi.
Then one name appeared beside the payment made the week my father died.
A name I had never seen.
But Dominic knew it.
His face changed.
“Impossible.”
I looked at him.
“Who is that?”
He stared at the screen.
“Someone who has been dead for twenty years.”
The payment had been authorized by Marco Rossi.
Three days after Dominic said his brother had been stripped of power.
Except according to the ledger, Marco hadn’t been acting alone.
Someone else had ordered Daniel Mercer’s death.
May you like
And that person was still inside Dominic’s family.
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