Chapter 5 - The House That Should Have Been Empty
Dante left Pier 19 before the masked men understood he was gone.
Luca remained their hostage.
Every instinct told Dante to stay.
To negotiate.
To destroy anyone standing between him and his brother.
But Harper had been taken to the one place connected to every clue.
The photograph.
His father.
Northstar.
That wasn't coincidence.
It was the center.
"Vincent takes the pier," Dante ordered.
Vincent stared at him.
"You trust me with Luca?"
"If I didn't, you wouldn't be standing."
"And you?"
"House."
Samuel stepped forward.
"I'm coming."
"No."
"You don't know what's underneath it."
Dante stopped.
"Underneath?"
Samuel realized he'd revealed too much.
Dante grabbed his jacket.
"What is underneath my childhood home?"
Samuel sighed.
"A bunker."
Dante released him slowly.
"We didn't have a bunker."
"Your father did."
"What for?"
"Records."
Gabriel spoke from behind them.
"And witnesses."
Everyone turned.
Gabriel continued.
"People Northstar wanted erased."
Dante stared.
"My father hid people beneath our house?"
"For years."
"And nobody noticed?"
"That was the point."
Samuel said, "Room 417 wasn't originally a hospital room."
Dante looked at him.
"It was a designation."
"For what?"
"Safe-site four, room seventeen."
The key suddenly made sense.
Dante looked down at it.
His childhood house.
Site four.
Room seventeen.
"Why give Harper the key?"
"Because your father chose the next custodian before he died."
Dante's eyes narrowed.
"Harper was a teenager when he died."
Samuel nodded.
"He didn't choose her personally."
"Then who did?"
"Her father."
Harper Reed rarely spoke about her father.
Dante knew only that Thomas Reed had died when she was sixteen.
Officially from a heart attack.
Now Dante doubted everything.
"Who was Thomas Reed?"
Samuel answered.
"Your father's accountant."
Dante went still.
Harper had applied to Moretti Holdings three years earlier through an ordinary recruitment process.
Or so he had believed.
"Did she know?"
"No."
"Then how did she get hired?"
Samuel looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel answered.
"I made sure her résumé reached you."
Dante's expression darkened.
"You put Harper in my office."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because the ledger would eventually surface."
"You used her."
"I protected her."
"You put her next to me."
"Exactly."
Dante understood the implication.
Nobody attacked people close to Dante casually.
Being beside him had been protection.
Until tonight.
He got into the SUV.
Samuel joined him without asking.
Dante didn't waste time arguing.
The childhood townhouse stood on a quiet block on the old west side.
Most neighboring properties had been redeveloped.
The Moretti house remained empty because Dante couldn't bring himself to sell it.
At 6:21 A.M., he entered through the front door.
Dust.
Covered furniture.
Old photographs.
Silence.
"Harper!" he shouted.
Nothing.
Samuel pointed toward the staircase.
"Basement."
Dante led.
The basement looked exactly as he remembered.
Boiler.
Shelves.
Old wine racks.
Nothing resembling a bunker.
Samuel moved toward the far wall.
He pressed a hidden catch.
Concrete shifted.
A narrow metal door appeared.
Dante inserted the silver key.
Click.
The door opened.
Stairs descended underground.
Lights automatically flickered on.
Dante went first.
At the bottom was a corridor.
Metal doors.
Numbers.
Then 417.
The door stood open.
Inside, Harper sat in a chair.
Her hospital gown had been covered with someone's dark coat.
Neck brace still on.
Hands free.
Alive.
Dante crossed the room.
"Are you hurt?"
"No more than before."
"Who brought you?"
"I don't know."
"Who was speaking behind you?"
"I never saw him."
Dante crouched beside her.
"You left the hospital."
Harper actually looked guilty.
"I escaped the hospital."
"That's worse."
"They were monitoring every exit."
"So you decided being kidnapped was efficient?"
"Technically, I followed the person who had the same star tattoo."
Dante stared at her.
Samuel coughed, hiding what might have been a laugh.
Dante looked at him.
He stopped.
Harper said, "He led me here."
"Why?"
"Because they wanted me to open that."
She pointed.
Against the far wall stood a steel cabinet.
Two locks.
One keyhole.
One small biometric plate.
Your blood.
Dante approached.
Samuel said, "Don't."
"Why?"
"We don't know what's inside."
"Everyone keeps trying to kill people over it. Seems worth checking."
Dante inserted the silver key.
First lock disengaged.
He placed his thumb against the biometric plate.
Nothing.
Red light.
Again.
Nothing.
Harper frowned.
"Your blood didn't work."
Samuel looked confused.
"It should."
Dante slowly turned.
"Whose blood?"
Gabriel had said your blood.
Not Dante's.
Your blood.
Family.
"Luca."
Samuel's face changed.
Dante immediately called Vincent.
"Status."
"They moved him."
"What?"
"We had a team closing the south exit. Van disappeared into a service tunnel."
"They need Luca alive."
"Why?"
"Biometric lock."
Vincent swore.
"We're searching."
Dante ended the call.
Harper said, "Maybe not Luca."
Dante looked at her.
"What?"
"The biometric reader is old."
"So?"
"It probably doesn't identify a specific fingerprint. Maybe DNA or blood type."
Samuel nodded.
"Possible."
"Your father had two sons," Harper said.
Dante looked back at the plate.
"Three."
Silence.
Samuel stared.
"What did you say?"
Dante had never spoken the fact aloud outside his family.
"My mother had another child."
Gabriel looked shocked.
"That's impossible."
"She miscarried."
Harper watched Dante carefully.
"Are you sure?"
Dante frowned.
His mother had been seven months pregnant.
He remembered the hospital.
The crying.
His father refusing to discuss it afterward.
He had been eight.
"What are you suggesting?"
Harper pointed toward a file sitting beneath the cabinet.
Nobody had noticed it.
Dante picked it up.
Hospital records.
His mother's name.
Elena Moretti.
Date: twenty-five years ago.
Delivery.
Male child.
Alive.
Dante stared at the page.
"No."
Samuel took the paper.
"It says transferred."
"Transferred where?"
The next page was missing.
Gabriel whispered, "Northstar."
Dante looked at him.
"What?"
"Succession program."
Samuel's face went pale.
"Gabriel, no."
"What succession program?" Dante demanded.
Gabriel sat down heavily.
"Children from powerful families. Raised separately. Controlled from birth."
Dante felt the room shrink.
"My mother was told the baby died?"
Gabriel nodded slowly.
"If they took him, yes."
Harper whispered, "Dante has another brother."
A noise came from the corridor.
Everyone turned.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Unhurried.
Dante moved in front of Harper.
A man appeared in the doorway.
Early twenties?
No.
Closer to thirty.
Dark hair.
Moretti eyes.
He looked at Dante as if studying a mirror that had aged differently.
The stranger held Luca's phone.
Dante's voice was barely audible.
"Who are you?"
The man smiled sadly.
"Your brother."
May you like
Then he held up his bleeding thumb.
"And I'm the one who can open the cabinet."
