Chapter 7 - A Betrayal at Pier Seventeen
“Drop it.”
Gabriel pressed the weapon against Evelyn’s neck.
Dante didn’t move.
Vittorio smiled.
“Still stubborn.”
Harper looked between them.
“You murdered Arthur.”
Gabriel answered.
“Arthur murdered himself the moment he tried to confess.”
“You sent the messages.”
“Yes.”
“The photograph?”
“Yes.”
“My mother’s voice?”
Vittorio chuckled.
“Technology is useful.”
Harper hated him immediately.
Not because he was frightening.
Because he was pleased with himself.
Dante lowered his weapon slightly.
“What do you want?”
“The key.”
Harper held it up.
Vittorio looked at her.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
Gabriel pushed the gun harder against Evelyn.
Harper’s mother winced.
“Now?”
“No.”
Dante glanced at Harper.
She saw the warning.
She ignored it.
“Kill her and you lose the phrase.”
Vittorio’s smile faded.
Harper continued.
“You need my identity, this key, and something only she knows. So stop pretending you can shoot your way through a three-factor authentication system.”
Even Marco looked impressed.
Vittorio stared.
“You’re irritating.”
“I get that a lot.”
Dante almost smiled.
Then Thomas attacked.
Everything happened at once.
He struck Gabriel.
Evelyn dropped.
Dante fired.
Marco tackled Vittorio.
Harper ran.
She reached the stairs before Gabriel caught her gown.
The fabric tore.
She kicked backward.
His grip broke.
Harper raced downstairs and out the rear door.
A car waited.
Engine running.
She climbed in.
Dante appeared seconds later.
“Drive!”
She did.
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
Gunshots sounded behind them.
Marco jumped into the rear seat at the last second.
Thomas and Evelyn escaped through another vehicle.
For several miles nobody spoke.
Then Harper opened her hand.
The brass key remained there.
Dante laughed.
“What?”
“You kept it.”
“Of course I kept it.”
“You almost died.”
“That would have been embarrassing.”
They regrouped near the river.
Thomas had been grazed again.
Evelyn was unharmed.
The plan changed.
No more running.
Harper wanted access to the trust.
If it contained evidence, they would expose everything.
Dante agreed.
The access point was not a bank.
It was a private archive beneath Pier Seventeen.
They returned to the place where the warehouse had burned.
Beneath an adjacent structure, Thomas revealed a hidden elevator.
The key opened it.
Below was a climate-controlled vault.
Harper supplied her fingerprint.
Evelyn whispered the phrase.
“Debts belong to the guilty.”
The vault opened.
Inside were paper ledgers, drives, photographs, recordings.
Decades of evidence.
Harper stared.
“This could destroy Lombardi Holdings.”
Dante stood beside her.
“Yes.”
She looked at him.
“You knew?”
“I knew there were things I didn’t want to know.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
He picked up a ledger.
“But maybe it should have been.”
They searched.
Vittorio’s name appeared everywhere.
Judges.
Port officials.
Police officers.
Business executives.
Political intermediaries.
But Dante’s name appeared too.
Harper looked at him.
He didn’t flinch.
“My father used companies I inherited.”
“Did you know?”
“Not everything.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Dante met her eyes.
“I knew enough to know I should have asked more questions.”
Harper appreciated the answer because it cost him something.
Then she found Arthur’s private ledger.
His final entries showed panic.
VITTORIO MOVING MONEY.
GABRIEL HAS COPIES.
DANTE DOESN’T KNOW.
Then:
H.H. FOUND IT.
And beneath that:
IF HARPER FINDS ACCOUNT 7719, EVERYTHING CHANGES.
Harper searched the digital archive.
Account 7719.
One file.
Password protected.
“What password?”
Evelyn looked at Thomas.
Neither knew.
Harper tried dates.
Names.
Nothing.
Then she remembered Arthur’s strange habit.
Every Friday, he brought his daughter lilies.
His daughter had died as a teenager.
Her name was Caroline.
Harper typed CAROLINE.
The file opened.
A video appeared.
Arthur Pendleton sat alone.
“If you’re watching this, I’m probably dead.”
Harper swallowed.
Arthur continued.
“Vittorio thinks this is about money. It isn’t.”
Dante leaned closer.
“Salvatore discovered something before he died. Something that would remove Vittorio from the family permanently.”
The video flickered.
“He discovered Vittorio wasn’t a Lombardi.”
Dante stared.
Arthur continued.
“And when Vittorio learned Salvatore planned to expose him, he poisoned him.”
Dante’s face drained.
Harper reached for his hand without thinking.
He didn’t pull away.
Arthur looked directly into the camera.
“But there’s something worse.”
A noise sounded behind Arthur in the recording.
He turned.
The video ended.
Harper checked the folder.
Another document.
DNA REPORT.
She opened it.
Dante read the names.
Then stopped breathing.
Because the report didn’t compare Vittorio with Salvatore.
May you like
It compared Dante Lombardi with someone else.
Thomas Hayes.
