Chapter 2 - The Boy Upstairs
Dominic had opened contracts worth millions without feeling what he felt while staring at Arthur Hayes’s envelope.
Unease.
Not fear.
He refused to call it fear.
But something about his father’s name being connected to a dead butcher’s hidden box disturbed him in ways Tony Valente’s hospital room never could.
Riley stood opposite him.
“Open it.”
Dominic looked at her.
“You haven’t?”
“My father told me not to.”
“And you listened for five years?”
“I trusted him.”
Dominic almost said that trust was an expensive weakness.
Then he remembered what Riley had done to him ten minutes earlier and decided she probably did not need lessons about weakness.
He broke the seal.
Inside was a folded document.
The paper had yellowed.
Two signatures waited at the bottom.
Arthur Hayes.
Salvatore Castelli.
Dominic stopped breathing for half a second.
His father had been dead three years.
Seeing his handwriting still did something to him.
He read.
The agreement was not complicated.
It stated that businesses protected by Arthur Hayes would never be subjected to unauthorized collections, threats, or violence by the Castelli organization.
Hayes Prime Cuts was named specifically.
So were eleven other businesses in the neighborhood.
Dominic read it twice.
“This isn’t possible.”
Riley folded her arms.
“Your father disagreed.”
“I handled the books after he got sick. I never saw this.”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to.”
Dominic looked sharply at her.
Riley did not retreat.
“Why?”
“That’s probably in the rest of the box.”
Dominic reached for the leather notebook.
Riley placed her hand over it.
“Not yet.”
His eyes lowered to her fingers.
“You just told me the box was for a Castelli.”
“I said the envelope was.”
“And the notebook?”
“My father said the notebook was for when the wrong people started pretending to be the right ones.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“You enjoy speaking in riddles?”
“My father did.”
“I remember.”
“That’s probably why he lived as long as he did.”
A floorboard creaked overhead.
Riley looked up.
“Noah.”
Silence.
Dominic glanced toward the stairs.
“He listens.”
“He thinks he’s invisible.”
“I did that at his age.”
Riley looked surprised.
“You?”
“I was eight once.”
“Hard to imagine.”
Dominic ignored that.
“His father?”
Riley’s face changed.
The question had crossed a boundary.
Dominic recognized it immediately.
“You don’t have to answer.”
“Then don’t ask.”
“Fair.”
Another creak.
Riley sighed.
“Noah, come down.”
A head appeared.
Noah descended slowly, dinosaur still in hand.
He stopped beside Riley.
Dominic stepped away from the table.
The boy noticed.
That seemed to matter.
Riley crouched.
“I told you five minutes.”
“It was seven.”
Dominic looked at his watch.
The boy was correct.
Riley noticed.
“Okay. Seven.”
Noah whispered something into her ear.
Riley’s expression softened.
“There’s soup upstairs.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re always hungry.”
“I’m worried.”
Riley went quiet.
Dominic watched mother and son.
He had known families in which affection was treated as leverage. His father believed the easiest way to control a man was to discover what he loved.
Perhaps that was why Dominic had avoided loving anything openly.
Noah’s eyes moved to him.
“Are you going to make Mom pay money?”
Riley stood.
“Noah—”
Dominic answered.
“No.”
Riley looked at him.
Noah studied his face.
“You promise?”
Dominic hesitated.
Promises meant something in the world he had inherited.
“Yes.”
The boy nodded as if a contract had been completed.
“Okay.”
Riley stared at Dominic after Noah went upstairs.
“You shouldn’t promise things casually.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t even know what’s in that box.”
“I know Tony had no right to collect here.”
“That’s only the beginning.”
Dominic returned to the table.
“What do you know?”
“Enough to know Tony isn’t acting alone.”
Dominic’s gaze sharpened.
Riley opened another section of the metal box and removed photographs.
She placed three on the table.
Tony leaving a warehouse near the river.
Tony meeting a city councilman.
Tony sitting in a restaurant with a man Dominic recognized instantly.
Marco Bellini.
Head of a rival organization.
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“When were these taken?”
“My father took the older ones. I took those two.”
“You followed Tony?”
“He followed me first.”
Dominic picked up one photograph.
“What does Bellini want?”
“You.”
“Meaning?”
“Out.”
Dominic stared at her.
Riley tapped the leather notebook.
“My father believed somebody inside your family would eventually try to sell the neighborhood piece by piece. He wrote down names. Meetings. Payments. Favors.”
“You’re telling me Arthur predicted a coup five years ago?”
“I’m telling you he understood greedy men.”
Dominic gave a humorless smile.
“That isn’t prediction. That’s statistics.”
Riley almost smiled.
Then Noah screamed upstairs.
Riley moved before the sound finished.
Dominic followed without thinking.
They reached the apartment.
Noah stood beside the kitchen window.
Someone had thrown a brick through it.
Glass covered the floor.
A note was tied around the brick.
Riley pulled Noah against her.
Dominic’s entire demeanor changed.
He took the note.
Three words were written across it.
PAY OR BURN.
Riley went pale.
Not for herself.
For Noah.
Dominic looked at the shattered window.
Then at the street below.
A black sedan disappeared around the corner.
He called Paulie.
“Find that car.”
Riley grabbed his wrist.
“No.”
Dominic looked down.
“You want me to let them go?”
“I want my son safe.”
“That’s exactly why I’m not letting them go.”
“You bring men into this, you make it worse.”
“It’s already worse.”
“No.”
Riley’s voice broke for the first time.
Dominic became still.
She looked at him.
“I grew up around people who thought every problem needed another threat. My father spent half his life cleaning up after men who believed violence was the fastest language.”
Dominic lowered his voice.
“And what did he believe?”
“That the fastest language usually creates the longest war.”
Noah held Riley’s waist.
Dominic looked at the boy.
Then at the broken window.
Something settled inside him.
A decision.
“Pack a bag.”
Riley’s eyes narrowed.
“No.”
“There’s a safe apartment three blocks away.”
“I am not hiding.”
“It isn’t hiding.”
“It sounds exactly like hiding.”
Dominic stepped closer.
“This is no longer about a payment.”
“It was never about a payment.”
“I know.”
Riley stared at him.
Dominic continued.
“Tony knew I was coming here tonight.”
“So?”
“So if that brick came from his people, he expected me to fail.”
The meaning landed.
Riley looked toward the stairs.
Dominic returned to the butcher shop below.
Paulie had come back inside.
Vincent stood beside him.
“Car?” Dominic asked.
“Stolen plates,” Paulie said.
“Description?”
“Black Lincoln.”
Dominic looked at Riley.
She had followed him down.
Tony owned three black Lincolns.
Everybody knew it.
Too obvious.
Which meant either Tony wanted Dominic to know—
or someone wanted Dominic to blame Tony.
Dominic looked at the metal box.
“Give me the notebook.”
Riley shook her head.
“No.”
“Riley.”
“My father left instructions.”
“Your son almost got hit by a brick.”
“And that is exactly why I’m not handing everything to a man I met twenty minutes ago.”
Paulie raised an eyebrow.
Dominic turned toward him.
“Not a word.”
Paulie closed his mouth.
Riley picked up the notebook.
“There’s another condition.”
Dominic’s patience thinned.
“What?”
“My father said if the Castelli agreement was ever broken, whoever came to this shop had to bring me to one place before I could show him the ledger.”
“Where?”
Riley looked at the photograph of Arthur.
“Saint Michael’s Cemetery.”
Paulie swore under his breath.
Dominic looked at the rain.
“Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
“Why?”
Riley slipped the notebook beneath her coat.
“Because my father buried the part of the secret that frightened him most.”
Dominic stared at her.
“And you’re telling me this now?”
“You didn’t ask.”
For the second time that evening, Vincent had to look away to hide a smile.
Dominic pointed at the door.
“Get the car.”
Paulie left.
Riley went upstairs to get Noah.
Dominic stopped her.
“He stays somewhere safe.”
“He stays with me.”
“Cemeteries at midnight aren’t safe for children.”
“Neither are butcher shops, apparently.”
Dominic had no answer.
Ten minutes later, the four adults and one silent boy walked into the rain.
Noah held Riley’s hand.
As Dominic opened the rear door of the sedan, Noah looked at him.
“Are you really a bad man?”
The question hit Dominic harder than threats ever had.
He looked at Riley.
She waited.
Dominic could have lied.
Instead he said, “I’ve done bad things.”
Noah considered that.
“Are you going to do one tonight?”
Dominic looked toward the dark road leading to Saint Michael’s Cemetery.
“No,” he said.
But as the car pulled away, Paulie received a message on his phone.
He read it once.
His face drained of color.
Dominic noticed.
“What?”
Paulie turned the screen around.
The message contained a photograph taken less than a minute earlier.
It showed Riley, Noah, Dominic, Paulie, and Vincent getting into the car.
Below the photograph were six words.
May you like
DON’T OPEN ARTHUR HAYES’S GRAVE.
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