Chapter 3 - The Dead Man’s Last Message
Mateo shut every blind in the penthouse.
Nobody left.
Nobody entered.
By midnight, the building felt less like a luxury residence and more like a bunker.
Harper sat at the dining table while Liam examined the photograph.
“The angle is impossible from another building,” he said.
Mateo looked up.
“Meaning?”
“It was taken from inside.”
Harper's stomach tightened.
Mateo's security team consisted of seventeen people on rotating shifts.
Six were currently inside the penthouse.
Any one of them could have taken the photograph.
Or someone else was hiding among them.
“Check every room,” Mateo ordered.
They did.
Nothing.
Harper watched Mateo become colder with every negative report.
At one in the morning, she found him alone in the office.
The broken bourbon glass had been removed.
The ultrasound photograph remained on his desk.
“You kept it.”
Mateo looked down.
“You want it back?”
“I have copies.”
He picked it up carefully.
“I missed everything.”
Harper's anger returned.
“You think I wanted it that way?”
“No.”
“I was terrified.”
“I know.”
“No, you don't.”
Her voice cracked.
“I woke up bleeding in St. Louis at eleven weeks.”
Mateo went completely still.
“I thought I was losing the baby.”
He said nothing.
“I drove myself to an emergency clinic and sat alone for five hours because I was too scared to give them my real emergency contact.”
His face tightened.
“The baby was fine. But I wasn't.”
“Harper—”
“I hated you.”
He absorbed it without defense.
“I know.”
“I hated Simon. I hated myself. And sometimes I hated this baby because it connected me to the man I thought wanted me dead.”
Mateo lowered his eyes.
“And then I'd feel it move.”
Her hand covered her belly.
“And I'd love it so much I couldn't breathe.”
Mateo stepped closer.
“I'm sorry.”
This time it was an apology.
A real one.
Harper looked at him.
“I should have trusted you,” he said. “You worked beside me for two years. You never stole a dollar. Simon gave me evidence, and I believed evidence instead of you.”
“You're supposed to believe evidence.”
“I should have asked who controlled it.”
That was the accountant's answer.
Despite herself, Harper smiled faintly.
Then the silver drive beeped.
They both turned.
A file had unlocked automatically.
Harper frowned.
“I didn't do that.”
Mateo called Liam.
They opened it on the isolated computer.
A video appeared.
Simon Gorski filled the screen.
Alive.
Recorded months earlier.
“If you're seeing this,” Simon said, “I'm probably dead.”
Harper's blood chilled.
Simon looked frightened.
She had never seen him frightened.
“I thought I understood what I joined. I didn't.”
Mateo leaned closer.
Simon continued.
“The twenty million was never the objective. Falcone was.”
Mateo's eyes narrowed.
“Someone wanted his empire from the inside.”
Simon looked directly into the camera.
“And Harper Reed discovered it before I did.”
Harper stopped breathing.
“I framed her because they told me they would kill my daughter if I didn't.”
Mateo whispered, “Daughter?”
Simon had told everyone he had no children.
“They still killed her.”
His voice broke.
Harper looked away.
“I tried to fix it. Too late.”
Simon raised a piece of paper.
“The person controlling this operation has been beside Mateo longer than I have.”
Liam stiffened.
Simon spoke one final sentence.
“Don't trust the man who gave Mateo his first gun.”
The video ended.
Silence.
Harper looked at Mateo.
“Who gave you your first gun?”
Mateo did not answer.
His face had become unreadable.
“Mateo?”
“My father.”
Harper frowned.
“Your father is dead.”
“For nineteen years.”
Liam stared at the blank screen.
“Then Simon was lying.”
“No,” Mateo said.
His voice had changed.
“My father gave me the gun.”
He walked toward an old cabinet.
“But someone else put it in his hand.”
Mateo opened a hidden compartment.
Inside lay an old photograph.
Two teenage boys stood beside Mateo's father.
One was Mateo.
The other had been scratched out.
Harper turned the photograph over.
A handwritten name remained on the back.
Before she could read it aloud, someone knocked three times on the locked office door.
Mateo drew his gun.
Liam whispered, “Nobody should be on this floor.”
The knock came again.
Then a man's voice spoke from the hallway.
“Mateo, open the door.”
Mateo's face went white.
Harper looked at him.
“You know that voice?”
Mateo raised his weapon.
“Yes.”
May you like
The handle began to turn.
And the man outside said, “Hello, little brother.”
