Chapter 11 - The Night Dominic Lost His Empire
Marco stood twenty feet away.
His own phone was in his hand.
Not calling anyone.
Dominic showed him the screen.
Marco went pale.
“My number is being spoofed.”
Again.
But this time Riley noticed something.
The call originated from Castelli headquarters.
Someone was using Dominic’s own communications system.
They returned.
The building had been emptied.
Servers wiped.
Accounts drained.
Twenty-three million dollars gone.
Dominic’s remaining empire had disappeared in forty minutes.
On his desk sat a single envelope.
Inside:
YOU CHOSE HER.
NOW LIVE WITHOUT THE REST.
Dominic sat.
Riley watched him.
He had sacrificed power in pieces willingly.
Losing everything at once was different.
She expected rage.
He simply said, “Good.”
“What?”
“If Anthony owns it, we know where the rot is.”
Dominic had created backups.
Not of money.
Of evidence.
Every transaction made during the theft could be traced.
Anthony had exposed his financial network by stealing Dominic’s.
The federal task force followed the transfers.
Shell corporations led to shipping companies.
Shipping companies led to Pier 17.
Again.
Everything returned there.
Victor agreed to testify.
Elena did too.
Tony, facing decades in prison, finally broke.
Anthony planned to leave the country aboard a cargo vessel.
But he was taking something with him.
The original Harbor archive.
Names powerful people would kill to keep buried.
Dominic and Riley joined federal agents at the docks.
Anthony’s ship remained.
Anthony didn’t.
A hidden passage beneath Warehouse 12 led underground.
Riley recognized Ethan’s handwriting on an old maintenance map.
Her father had marked one tunnel.
DANGER.
Dominic wanted her to remain above.
She gave him a look.
He stopped arguing.
They descended.
The tunnel led to an underground records facility.
Hundreds of boxes.
Decades of crimes.
And photographs.
Victims.
Riley stood frozen.
Dominic quietly said, “This ends.”
Not vengeance.
Not power.
The system.
They heard a door slam.
Anthony.
They followed.
At the end of the tunnel was a steel door.
Locked.
Riley noticed an old butcher’s symbol scratched beside the handle.
Her father’s mark.
She pressed it.
A concealed latch released.
Dominic looked at her.
“Ethan built this.”
“No.”
Riley examined the mechanism.
“My grandfather did.”
The door opened.
Inside, a man sat beneath a single light.
Dominic stopped breathing.
Riley stared.
She had seen his face in photographs.
Daniel Castelli.
May you like
Dominic’s father.
The man who had supposedly died eleven years ago slowly raised his head...
