Chapter 12 - The Door Beneath the Warehouse
“Dominic?”
The word barely came out.
Dominic couldn’t move.
Daniel Castelli was older, thinner, scarred.
But alive.
Anthony had faked his death.
Kline had helped.
Daniel had been imprisoned because Anthony needed access codes only he possessed.
Dominic knelt beside his father.
For the first time Riley saw the powerful man become simply a son.
Daniel touched his face.
“You grew up.”
Dominic looked away.
“You missed it.”
Three words carrying eleven years.
Daniel’s eyes filled.
“I know.”
There was no time for reunion.
Anthony had initiated a purge.
The archive would burn.
Daniel knew the shutdown system.
They separated.
Marco escorted Daniel.
Dominic and Riley went after Anthony.
They found him in the original control room.
He had Ethan’s final ledger.
Anthony smiled.
“You two are persistent.”
Riley stepped forward.
“You murdered my father.”
“Yes.”
No denial.
No remorse.
Dominic’s hand tightened.
Anthony looked at him.
“And yours should have died.”
Dominic raised his gun.
Riley touched his wrist.
“Don’t.”
Anthony laughed.
“She’s made you weak.”
Dominic lowered the weapon.
“No. She taught me the difference between power and control.”
Sirens sounded above.
Anthony’s smile faded.
He ran.
They pursued him through the loading tunnels.
Anthony reached the river exit.
A boat waited.
He jumped aboard.
Dominic could have fired.
He didn’t.
Federal patrol boats closed from both sides.
Anthony was arrested.
Alive.
Able to testify.
Riley watched agents handcuff him.
It should have felt finished.
It didn’t.
Daniel revealed why.
Anthony was not Harbor’s final owner.
Someone else had financed the expansion.
Someone politically connected.
Someone whose name Ethan had discovered shortly before his murder.
Daniel had never learned it.
But Ethan had hidden it somewhere Anthony never found.
Riley knew immediately.
The butcher shop.
Again.
They returned to the ruins.
Riley searched the old cutting block.
Nothing.
The freezer.
Nothing.
Then she remembered her father’s favorite phrase:
Always check what people overlook because they think they understand it.
The old scale.
Anthony had taken it.
Federal evidence now held it.
They retrieved it.
Riley dismantled the weighing mechanism.
Inside the central brass cylinder was a rolled strip of microfilm.
Daniel stared.
“Ethan.”
They developed it.
Names appeared.
At the bottom was the financier.
Dominic read it.
Then looked at Riley.
“That’s impossible.”
The name belonged to a man who had publicly helped the investigation from the beginning.
The federal prosecutor overseeing Anthony Valente’s case.
U.S. Attorney Malcolm Crane.
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At that exact moment, Riley’s phone rang.
Crane’s name appeared on the screen...
