Chapter 1 - The Eyes of a Dead Man
The baby crawled beneath Dominic Caruso’s desk and grabbed his trousers.
“Mr. Caruso… please don’t touch that.”
Dominic looked down and saw a silver locket beside the child’s hand.
The Caruso crest was scratched across its back.
Then he saw the baby’s gray eyes.
This was no longer about firing a maid.
Dominic Caruso had ended negotiations worth sixty million dollars less than thirty seconds earlier.
His laptop still showed the frozen faces of three executives waiting for the connection to close. A contract lay beside it. His black security button waited beneath his right hand.
Across the office stood Elena Russo.
Twenty-eight years old.
Housekeeper.
Employee number 417.
And, as far as Dominic had known until that morning, a woman with no family except an elderly mother living somewhere in Queens.
Now a baby was crawling across his marble floor.
Dominic had discovered the child after hearing a soft laugh beneath the conference table during his video call.
Elena had rushed inside.
Her face had gone white.
Dominic had not raised his voice.
He rarely needed to.
“You were told never to bring him in here.”
Elena clasped her hands against her white apron.
“Please, Mr. Caruso. I can explain.”
“You have thirty seconds.”
“My sitter canceled.”
“Twenty-five.”
“My mother is in the hospital. I had nobody else.”
“Twenty.”
She swallowed.
“I kept him downstairs. Rosa was watching him while I finished the east wing.”
Dominic reached for the security button.
The child escaped her attention before she could stop him.
He crawled directly toward Dominic.
Not Elena.
Not the bright windows.
Not the expensive objects scattered across the room.
Dominic.
The baby reached beneath the desk and wrapped two tiny fingers around Dominic’s trouser cuff.
Dominic froze.
The boy looked up.
Gray eyes.
Not blue-gray.
Not silver.
Gray.
Exactly the shade Dominic remembered from childhood.
Exactly the shade his younger brother Luca had inherited from their mother.
Dominic slowly removed his hand from the security button.
Elena whispered, “Matteo.”
The baby smiled.
Dominic crouched.
Matteo reached toward him without fear.
Something tightened inside Dominic’s chest.
Eighteen months had passed since Luca Caruso had been buried.
Dominic had watched the coffin disappear beneath white roses.
He had stood beside their father’s grave afterward and promised himself that no one would ever again see him break.
But looking at Matteo felt like watching a locked door inside his memory swing open.
Luca at six, laughing with a missing front tooth.
Luca at sixteen, stealing Dominic’s car.
Luca at twenty-nine, walking away from a family dinner after telling Dominic he wanted out.
Their final conversation had ended in anger.
“You think money makes you untouchable,” Luca had said.
“And you think running makes you innocent,” Dominic had answered.
Three days later, Luca was dead.
Dominic stared at Matteo.
“How old?”
Elena hesitated.
“Eleven months.”
The arithmetic hit him immediately.
He looked at her.
She knew he had calculated it.
Matteo released Dominic’s trousers.
Then he crawled farther beneath the desk.
“Elena.”
She moved.
Too late.
Matteo found the locket.
It had apparently fallen from the pocket of Elena’s apron when she had rushed into the office.
The silver oval dragged softly across the marble.
Dominic saw the crest.
His crest.
His family.
He took it.
Elena’s breathing stopped.
“Where did you get this?”
She stared at the floor.
“Mr. Caruso—”
“Look at me.”
She did.
Fear filled her face, but something else was there.
Grief.
Dominic opened the locket.
One side contained a photograph.
Luca.
Not the polished photograph from newspapers.
Not Luca in a tuxedo.
This Luca wore a cheap blue T-shirt and stood on a Brooklyn rooftop, smiling as if he had nothing to prove.
Beside him stood Elena.
Dominic’s pulse hammered.
The other side of the locket held a tiny photograph of an ultrasound.
He stood.
“His father.”
Elena’s eyes filled.
“Please.”
“Who was his father?”
She looked at Matteo.
Dominic already knew.
He simply needed to hear her say it.
“Luca.”
The office became silent.
Dominic turned away.
He stared through the windows.
Manhattan continued beneath him as though his dead brother had not just returned in the face of an eleven-month-old child.
“When?”
“We met almost three years ago.”
“You worked for my family.”
“Not then.”
“How long did he know?”
Elena wiped her cheek.
“About the baby?”
Dominic turned.
“Yes.”
“Three weeks.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“And he told nobody.”
“He was going to tell you.”
“He didn't.”
“He never got the chance.”
That landed harder than she intended.
Dominic stared at her.
Elena bent and lifted Matteo.
The baby immediately reached toward the silver locket.
Dominic closed his fist around it.
“Why are you working here?”
Elena looked trapped.
“That’s complicated.”
“Make it simple.”
“I needed work.”
“You could work anywhere.”
“I needed to work here.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
There it was.
The first real warning.
Not Luca.
Not Matteo.
Here.
“You applied under your mother’s surname.”
“Yes.”
“You concealed your relationship with my brother.”
“Yes.”
“You brought his child into my home without telling me.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re telling me you specifically needed access to this house?”
Elena’s eyes flicked toward the door.
Dominic noticed.
He walked around the desk.
“Why?”
She hugged Matteo closer.
“Because Luca asked me to.”
Dominic stopped.
“What?”
Elena looked down.
“Before he died.”
Dominic felt anger rising, but he forced it back.
“Luca knew he was in danger?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said he sent you here.”
“No. He gave me instructions. He told me if something happened to him, I should wait until Matteo was born and then find a way into this house.”
“Why?”
“He said there was something hidden here.”
Dominic stared at her.
“What?”
“He never told me.”
Dominic laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
The words surprised both of them.
Elena tightened her grip around Matteo.
“I loved your brother. He died before he could meet his son. I have spent eighteen months wondering whether the people who killed him even knew Matteo existed. So no, Mr. Caruso. At this point, whether you believe me is not the thing that frightens me most.”
Dominic’s face hardened.
“The police said Luca’s death was an accident.”
“Luca didn’t.”
Dominic went still.
Elena reached into the inner pocket of her apron.
Dominic’s bodyguard instincts surfaced.
“What are you doing?”
She withdrew a folded piece of paper.
Old.
Creased.
Dominic took it.
Luca’s handwriting covered one side.
Three lines.
If anything happens to me, get Matteo to Dominic.
Trust no one with the crest.
The truth is where we used to hide.
Dominic read it twice.
Then a third time.
The truth is where we used to hide.
He knew exactly what Luca meant.
Their childhood house in Brooklyn.
The abandoned Caruso property had been empty for fifteen years.
As boys, Dominic and Luca had hidden beneath the staircase whenever their father’s arguments became too loud.
Dominic folded the note.
“Who else has seen this?”
“Nobody.”
“Who knows Matteo exists?”
“My mother. Rosa. And now you.”
Dominic looked at the baby.
Matteo had fallen asleep against Elena’s shoulder.
Luca’s son.
His nephew.
His family.
Dominic reached for his phone.
Elena tensed.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure nobody removes you from this building.”
“You were about to fire me.”
“That was before I learned my dead brother left instructions to put his son in my hands.”
He called downstairs.
“Cancel security. Elena Russo and her son are staying.”
He disconnected.
Elena looked almost more frightened now.
Dominic understood.
“You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t know you.”
“You knew Luca.”
“That doesn’t mean I knew you.”
Dominic looked at the note again.
The truth is where we used to hide.
He walked toward a wall cabinet and unlocked it.
Inside was an old photograph.
Two boys stood outside a Brooklyn brownstone.
Dominic was twelve.
Luca was eight.
Dominic turned it over.
Nothing.
Then he noticed the date.
His expression changed.
The photograph had been taken twenty-four years earlier.
But beneath the date someone had recently written four numbers.
Elena stepped closer.
“Was that there before?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because this photograph has been in my office for ten years.”
Dominic looked toward the door.
Only a handful of people had unrestricted access to this room.
One of them was his uncle, Victor Caruso.
The man who had helped Dominic build the company after their father died.
The man who had identified Luca’s body.
The man who had told Dominic his brother’s death was an accident.
Dominic’s phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
It had been taken moments ago.
From somewhere inside the penthouse.
It showed Elena holding Matteo in Dominic’s office.
Below it were six words.
LUCA SHOULD HAVE KEPT HIS SECRET.
Dominic slowly raised his eyes toward the doorway.
May you like
Footsteps stopped on the other side.
Then someone turned the handle...
