Chapter 4
Three weeks after Chloe tore up the papers that were supposed to give her freedom, someone tried to kill her with a cup of coffee.
It happened on a Thursday morning.
The estate had settled into something resembling normal life again. Dominic had returned to the city four days a week. Laura had reopened after the firebombing attempt, although the front windows had been replaced with reinforced glass and two men now stood discreetly near the kitchen entrance.
Sam had returned to school under a different last name.
Chloe had returned to work.
But not to the maître d’ stand.
Dominic had given her an office upstairs.
He claimed it was because she had become too valuable to waste seating people.
Chloe suspected it was because he hated watching strangers look at her.
She had teased him about it exactly once.
His response had been to stare at her for several seconds before saying, “Correct.”
That morning, Chloe sat behind a walnut desk studying shipping invoices when a waiter named Anthony knocked and entered carrying coffee.
“Compliments of the kitchen.”
Chloe looked up.
“I didn’t order anything.”
“Chef said you looked tired.”
Anthony placed the cup beside her ledger.
Chloe smiled faintly.
“Tell him thank you.”
Anthony left.
She continued working.
The numbers bothered her.
Three refrigerated trucks belonging to Rossi Food Distribution had used almost forty percent more fuel than their documented mileage justified.
Once could be an accounting error.
Three times was a pattern.
Chloe circled the figures.
She reached for the coffee.
The door opened.
Dominic entered without knocking.
His eyes moved immediately to the cup in her hand.
“Where did that come from?”
Chloe stopped.
“The kitchen.”
Dominic crossed the room.
“Who brought it?”
“Anthony.”
He took the cup from her fingers.
“Dominic, what—”
He smelled it.
Then he looked at her.
Something in his expression made her stomach tighten.
“Don’t drink anything you didn’t watch being poured.”
“That seems slightly paranoid.”
“I’m alive because I’m slightly paranoid.”
He carried the cup to the small bathroom attached to her office and poured a little into an empty glass.
Then he removed something from his pocket.
A narrow paper strip.
Chloe stared.
“You carry poison tests?”
“I carry several.”
“That is the least comforting answer you could possibly have given.”
Dominic dipped the strip.
They waited.
The paper changed color.
Dominic became still.
Chloe saw it.
“What?”
He said nothing.
“Dominic.”
He picked up the telephone.
“Paulie. Upstairs. Now.”
Less than thirty seconds later, Paulie entered.
Dominic held out the strip.
Paulie looked at it.
His face hardened.
“What is it?” Chloe demanded.
“Probably anticoagulant,” Dominic said.
“Probably?”
“A high enough dose can cause internal bleeding.”
Chloe looked at the coffee.
The cup suddenly seemed enormous.
She imagined herself drinking it without thinking.
Driving home.
Getting dizzy.
Collapsing.
Sam finding her.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the desk.
Dominic noticed.
“Who made this?” he asked.
“Anthony brought it.”
Paulie was already moving toward the door.
Dominic caught his arm.
“Alive.”
Paulie nodded.
They found Anthony in the alley behind the restaurant.
Dead.
He had been shot once behind the ear.
No wallet.
No phone.
No witnesses.
By noon, Laura was closed.
Every employee had been questioned.
Security footage showed Anthony entering the kitchen at 8:41 a.m., speaking briefly to someone outside the camera’s field of view and then carrying the coffee upstairs.
The missing section of the kitchen was normally covered by camera seven.
Camera seven had stopped recording at 8:39.
It resumed at 8:46.
Seven missing minutes.
Dominic stood in the security room watching the footage for the sixth time.
Chloe leaned against the wall behind him.
“This isn’t Varga.”
“No.”
“Varga is dead.”
“Yes.”
“Then who?”
Dominic froze the image.
Anthony stood beside the kitchen doorway, turning his head toward someone they could not see.
“Someone who knows our systems.”
Chloe looked at him.
“Inside?”
“Maybe.”
The word hung between them.
The Varga war had already revealed that someone had leaked the route of Dominic’s convoy.
That traitor had never been found.
Dominic had assumed the leak came from one of Varga’s informants in the city.
Now he was reconsidering.
Paulie entered.
“No family. No girlfriend. Anthony rented a room in Queens. Clean record except a possession charge six years ago.”
“Debts?”
“Checking.”
Dominic nodded.
“Find everyone he called during the last thirty days.”
Paulie hesitated.
“There’s something else.”
He placed a small plastic evidence bag on the table.
Inside was a silver coin.
Chloe frowned.
“What is that?”
Dominic did not answer.
The coin bore the image of a wolf.
On the reverse side was a crown split down the middle.
Chloe looked at Dominic.
She had seen fear on him only once.
Not when Varga threatened him.
Not when he returned bleeding from the war.
Now she saw something close to it.
“Dominic?”
He picked up the coin.
“My father used to carry one of these.”
Chloe waited.
Dominic turned it between his fingers.
“The Bellandi family.”
Paulie muttered a curse.
Chloe recognized the name.
Not from Dominic.
From newspapers.
Twenty years earlier, the Bellandis had been one of the largest criminal organizations on the eastern seaboard. Federal prosecutions, internal assassinations and a brutal succession war had supposedly destroyed them.
“Supposedly,” Dominic said when Chloe mentioned it.
He placed the coin down.
“My father worked for them before he worked for the Rossi family.”
Chloe stared.
“I thought your father was a runner.”
“He was.”
“For the Bellandis?”
“At first.”
Dominic walked toward the window.
“My father wasn’t important. But he heard things. Carried things. Delivered envelopes.”
“And Silvio?”
Dominic looked over his shoulder.
“Silvio Bellandi.”
Chloe felt cold.
The man who had taken Dominic’s father.
The man whose revolver had broken an eight-year-old boy’s jaw.
The man Dominic had spent decades believing was dead.
“Silvio died twenty-five years ago,” Paulie said.
Dominic’s expression remained hard.
“That’s what everyone was told.”
Chloe approached the table.
“Why would someone from his family want me dead?”
“That’s the question.”
Dominic’s gaze moved to her.
“And until I have an answer, you don’t leave my sight.”
“No.”
His eyebrows lowered.
“No?”
“You don’t get to lock me in the estate every time somebody threatens me.”
“Someone poisoned your coffee.”
“And I’m standing here.”
“Because I walked into your office.”
“Exactly. Luck saved me. Locking me away doesn’t solve the problem.”
Dominic’s jaw flexed.
“Chloe.”
She stepped closer.
“You said if I stayed, I stayed completely.”
“I remember what I said.”
“Then stop treating me like luggage you can put in a safe.”
Paulie suddenly became fascinated by the security monitors.
Dominic stared at Chloe.
She did not retreat.
Finally, he exhaled through his nose.
“What do you suggest?”
Chloe pointed toward the ledger she had brought from her office.
“We find out what they’re doing.”
She opened it.
“Three trucks are burning more fuel than their routes justify.”
Dominic looked down.
“How much more?”
“Enough for an extra hundred and twenty miles each week.”
Paulie stepped closer.
“Could be drivers stealing fuel.”
“No. Receipts match the company cards. The trucks are actually driving somewhere.”
Chloe turned several pages.
“Same three vehicles. Every Tuesday and Friday.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“Who dispatches them?”
Chloe had already checked.
“Michael D’Angelo.”
Silence.
Paulie looked at Dominic.
Michael had worked for the Rossi family for nineteen years.
He had attended Dominic’s mother’s funeral.
He had taught Dominic how to drive.
“No,” Paulie said.
Chloe looked at him.
“The numbers don’t care how long you’ve known him.”
Dominic closed the ledger.
“Bring Michael in.”
They did not find him.
His apartment was empty.
His passport was gone.
His bank accounts had been drained at 9:02 that morning.
But in the basement of the trucking depot, behind an old electrical panel, Paulie found a second dispatch book.
The handwriting belonged to Michael.
It listed unauthorized routes.
Warehouses.
Dates.
Payments.
And one address appeared again and again.
An abandoned textile mill forty miles north.
Dominic wanted Chloe at the estate.
She refused.
At midnight, three black SUVs stopped half a mile from the mill.
Dominic stepped from the first.
Chloe stepped from the second.
He stared at her.
“You were supposed to stay in the car.”
“I am standing beside the car.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know.”
Dominic almost argued.
Then Paulie approached.
“Movement inside.”
They entered through a loading bay.
The building smelled of dust and machine oil.
Old textile equipment sat beneath plastic sheets.
Dominic’s men spread through the darkness.
Chloe remained beside him.
They reached an office.
Paulie kicked the door open.
Empty.
A desk stood against the wall.
On it were photographs.
Dozens.
Dominic approached slowly.
The first showed Chloe leaving Laura.
The second showed Sam outside school.
The third showed Dominic at the cemetery where his mother was buried.
Then Chloe saw the oldest photograph.
A boy stood outside a decaying apartment building.
Eight years old.
Jaw bandaged.
One eye swollen shut.
Dominic.
Beside the photograph lay a handwritten note.
Dominic picked it up.
His face drained of color.
Chloe moved closer.
“What does it say?”
He handed it to her.
The handwriting was shaky.
Old-fashioned.
Only one sentence had been written.
YOU GREW UP WELL, LITTLE DOMINIC.
A floorboard creaked above them.
Dominic looked up.
Gunfire exploded.
He shoved Chloe behind the desk.
Glass shattered.
Paulie fired toward the catwalk.
A figure ran through the darkness.
“Stay down!” Dominic shouted.
He chased the shooter.
Chloe heard boots pounding upstairs.
Then a crash.
Then silence.
Paulie kept his weapon trained on the staircase.
Thirty seconds later Dominic returned.
Alone.
“Gone.”
“How?”
“Roof access.”
His expression was murderous.
Chloe stood.
Something white had fallen from the desk during the shooting.
An envelope.
She picked it up.
Inside was another photograph.
A man sat in a wheelchair beside a window.
Old.
Thin.
But alive.
Dominic looked at the photograph.
His breathing stopped.
Chloe turned it over.
There was a date on the back.
Three days earlier.
And beneath it, a name.
SILVIO BELLANDI.
Dominic stared at the man who had destroyed his childhood.
For twenty-five years, Dominic had believed the monster was dead.
He had built an empire over the grave of that belief.
May you like
Now the grave had opened.
And something had climbed out.
