Chapter 8 - Someone Inside the House Was Lying
Clara had faced death before.
Cancer had introduced her to it slowly.
Hospital corridors.
Chemotherapy bags.
Doctors speaking in careful voices.
But the fear she felt when Ethan disappeared was different.
It had teeth.
Dominic found her in the hospital hallway arguing with security.
“Where is my brother?”
A nurse shook her head.
“We’re checking cameras.”
“He couldn’t walk two floors without getting exhausted.”
Dominic arrived behind her.
“Clara.”
She turned.
“Find him.”
Not please.
Not can you.
Find him.
Dominic nodded.
“I will.”
Security footage revealed Ethan had not been dragged away.
At 1:12 a.m., he had walked out of his room wearing a coat.
Beside him was Martin Vale.
The administrator.
Clara stared at the screen.
“He went willingly?”
Matteo shook his head.
“Look closer.”
Ethan’s hand remained inside his coat pocket the entire time.
A man walked several feet behind them.
“Weapon,” Dominic said.
They tracked the vehicle until it entered an underground parking garage.
After that, nothing.
No demands arrived.
No call.
No message.
Clara returned to the estate at dawn.
Mia refused to let go of her hand.
Gabriel sat nearby.
Dominic watched Clara trying to comfort his children while her own brother was missing.
Something inside him broke open.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said.
She looked up.
“Do what?”
“Take care of them right now.”
“I need to.”
“For them?”
“For me.”
He understood.
Caring for Mia and Gabriel gave Clara something fear could not take.
Purpose.
Later, Matteo entered Dominic’s study.
“We found something.”
A GPS signal from Ethan’s hospital bracelet.
Weak.
Intermittent.
But active.
Location: a warehouse near Newark.
The same warehouse Thomas Hayes had named eight years earlier.
Dominic loaded a weapon.
Clara appeared at the door.
“No.”
He stared at her.
“You’re not coming.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Absolutely not.”
“My brother is there.”
“And I’m bringing him back.”
“You don’t get to decide I stay home.”
“I absolutely do.”
Clara stepped closer.
“No, Dominic. You control security. You control businesses. You control men who are afraid of you.”
She pointed at herself.
“You do not control me.”
He stared at her.
Then quietly said, “That’s what scares me.”
Her anger faded.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t order you to stay alive.”
The admission hung between them.
Clara’s eyes softened.
“I’m coming.”
He closed his eyes.
“Of course you are.”
They reached the warehouse before sunrise.
The building appeared abandoned.
Inside they found ledgers, computers, shredded records.
And blood on the floor.
Clara stopped.
“Ethan.”
Dominic caught her arm.
“Not necessarily.”
They followed the trail.
Behind a locked office door, they found Martin Vale.
Dead.
Ethan was not there.
On the wall, written in red marker, were four words:
TRAITORS DIE BEFORE FAMILY.
Matteo examined the room.
“This happened recently.”
Dominic found a phone on the desk.
One saved video.
He pressed play.
Ethan appeared on screen.
Pale.
Exhausted.
But alive.
“Clara, don’t freak out.”
She almost laughed from shock.
“That’s easy for him to say.”
Ethan continued.
“I’m okay. They moved me.”
A man’s voice spoke from behind the camera.
“Tell Dominic to bring Sofia’s original evidence.”
Ethan looked straight into the lens.
“And tell him Matteo knows where.”
Everyone turned.
Matteo froze.
Dominic’s expression hardened.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
The video ended.
Dominic grabbed Matteo by the jacket.
“You have five seconds.”
“Dominic—”
“Four.”
“There is another drive.”
Clara stared.
“What?”
Matteo pushed Dominic’s hands away.
“Sofia gave it to me.”
“When?”
“The night before she died.”
Dominic looked devastated.
“You lied to me.”
“I protected what she told me to protect.”
“For two years?”
“She said there was a traitor inside your family.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t know.”
“You should have told me!”
“I watched what her death did to you. You were barely functional.”
“That was my decision to make.”
“No. It wasn’t. Not when you had two children who needed you alive.”
Dominic drew back.
Matteo continued.
“The drive contains names. Accounts. Judges. Police. Politicians. Everyone Salvatore paid.”
“Where is it?”
Matteo hesitated.
Dominic’s voice went cold.
“Where?”
“In Sofia’s grave.”
Clara stared.
“No one would search there.”
Dominic looked sick.
“You buried evidence with my wife?”
“She asked me to.”
They drove to the cemetery under heavy security.
Dominic stood before Sofia’s headstone.
For the first time, Clara saw him completely defenseless.
“I’m sorry,” Matteo said.
Dominic did not answer.
A hidden compartment had been built beneath the base of the memorial.
Inside was a sealed metal tube.
The drive remained intact.
Back at the estate, they opened it.
Hundreds of documents.
Names.
Payments.
Photographs.
Then Clara saw one face and stopped breathing.
A much younger man stood beside Salvatore.
She knew him.
Not from Dominic’s world.
From her own childhood.
“Who is that?” Dominic asked.
Clara whispered the name.
“Daniel Hayes.”
Matteo frowned.
“Hayes?”
Clara looked at him.
“My father’s brother.”
Her uncle.
A man Clara had been told died when she was ten.
But the photograph was dated only eight months earlier.
Daniel Hayes was alive.
And if the captured attacker had been telling the truth, he was the man Clara already knew.
The man connected to her father.
Her brother.
Sofia.
And perhaps every tragedy that had brought her to the Castellano gates.
Then Dominic opened the final file.
It contained a live feed.
Ethan sat tied to a chair.
Behind him stood Daniel Hayes.
Clara’s uncle looked into the camera and smiled.
“Hello, Clara.”
May you like
He leaned closer.
“You’ve grown up.”
