Chapter 7 - The Brother Dominic Couldn’t Save
Dominic spun around.
Nobody.
Tommy ran outside.
Vincent checked the ceiling.
A tiny camera blinked above the door.
They were being watched.
Then Vincent collapsed.
Clara screamed his name.
Blood spread beneath his jacket.
A small puncture marked his neck.
Dart.
Poison.
Dominic carried his brother to the car.
For the first time that night, control left his face.
“Stay with me.”
Vincent tried to laugh.
“You sound scared.”
“Shut up.”
“That scared, huh?”
“Vincent.”
His brother’s eyes closed.
The clinic identified the poison.
Same compound used on Isabella.
But the dose was nonfatal.
A message.
Someone wanted Dominic remembering his mother.
Vincent survived.
Barely.
While he slept, Dominic sat beside him.
Clara entered quietly.
“You love him.”
Dominic didn’t look up.
“He’s an idiot.”
“That wasn’t my observation.”
Dominic rubbed his face.
“When our father died, Vincent was twenty-one. I told him I’d take care of everything.”
“You did.”
“No. I took control of everything. There’s a difference.”
Clara sat beside him.
“He kept secrets because he wanted to protect you.”
“That sounds familiar.”
Their eyes met.
Clara looked down.
Dominic took her bandaged hand.
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
“Neither do you.”
The words remained between them.
At sunrise Vincent woke.
His first sentence was:
“Kingmaker.”
Dominic leaned closer.
“What?”
“I know where I heard it.”
Vincent described a Crown Club initiation.
One member had toasted “the man who makes kings without wearing a crown.”
Vincent had secretly recorded the meeting.
The recording was stored in his apartment.
They retrieved it.
Seven voices.
Six identified.
The seventh remained distorted.
But Clara recognized a phrase.
“Numbers don’t lie. People do.”
Her mother’s phrase.
Then the unknown man said something else.
“Evelyn taught me that.”
Clara froze.
Whoever the Kingmaker was had known Evelyn personally.
Tommy traced the six known men.
Every one had connections to a cemetery outside Chicago.
One grave there belonged to Salvatore DeLuca.
They opened it legally through a friendly judge.
The coffin contained a body.
DNA proved it wasn’t Salvatore.
It was Thomas Moretti.
Tommy’s father.
Tommy stood beside the open grave, expression empty.
Dominic put a hand on his shoulder.
Tommy whispered, “My father didn’t disappear.”
“No.”
“Salvatore killed him and used his body to fake his own death.”
Clara noticed something inside the coffin.
A metal box.
Inside was Thomas Moretti’s police badge.
And a photograph.
Enzo.
Isabella.
Evelyn.
Thomas.
Four people.
On the back:
THE FOUR WHO KNEW.
Below that, a fifth name had been scratched away.
Clara tilted the photograph toward the light.
Indentations remained.
She rubbed pencil graphite over paper placed above it.
Letters appeared.
Dominic read them.
Then went completely still.
The fifth person was someone alive.
Someone close.
Someone who had been inside Dominic’s home for decades.
Tommy whispered the name.
“Father Michael.”
At that exact moment, the cemetery chapel bell rang.
Once.
May you like
The chapel door opened.
And Father Michael stepped outside holding a gun.
