Chapter 3 - The Maid Who Wasn’t Supposed to Know
Darkness lasted less than two seconds.
Gabriel switched on a tactical flashlight.
Dominic pulled me behind the concrete wall beside the lockers.
A gunshot cracked through the door.
Metal sparked.
“Down,” Dominic ordered.
I dropped.
Another shot.
Then silence.
Luca remained across the room, hands still raised.
“Would you like me to continue being suspected,” he said tightly, “or can I help?”
Dominic tossed him a gun.
“Help.”
That was apparently the temporary appeals process.
Gabriel killed the flashlight.
Emergency lights flickered red.
The archive room had one door and no windows.
“Back exit?” Dominic asked.
Luca shook his head.
“Ventilation corridor behind the lockers.”
“How do you know?”
“I checked the building plans before we came.”
Dominic looked at him.
Luca added, “Because I’m good at my job, not because I murdered your brother.”
Another bullet hit the door.
Dominic pushed the metal case toward me.
“Take the ledger and drive.”
“You’re giving them to me?”
“They came from your father.”
“I’m also the least qualified person in this room to protect evidence.”
“You’re the person they came for.”
“That argument doesn’t help.”
Despite the danger, I saw Gabriel almost smile.
Luca removed a vent grate.
A narrow service tunnel ran behind it.
“You first,” Dominic told me.
“I hate small spaces.”
“You’ll hate bullets more.”
Fair.
I crawled.
The tunnel smelled like dust and rust.
Dominic followed.
Behind us, Gabriel and Luca held position.
We reached another grate twenty yards away.
Dominic kicked it free.
We emerged into a mechanical room.
An exterior door stood ahead.
He opened it carefully.
Alley.
Clear.
Then shooting erupted behind us.
Dominic stopped.
“Luca.”
“He told us to go,” I said.
“He has been with me fifteen years.”
“And you were prepared to shoot him fifteen seconds ago.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“He was in front of me.”
I stared at him.
“That may be the most Dominic Vale sentence anyone has ever said.”
He almost smiled.
Then Luca and Gabriel appeared from the corridor.
Both alive.
Luca had blood on his sleeve.
“Graze,” he said.
We ran.
Two attackers emerged near the loading dock.
Dominic moved faster than I expected.
He shoved me behind an SUV.
Shots cracked.
Glass shattered.
I clutched the metal case against my chest.
Winston chasing a contract suddenly felt like a story from another lifetime.
Within minutes, we escaped.
Nobody spoke until the city blocks blurred behind us.
Then Dominic turned to Luca.
“Talk.”
Luca pressed gauze against his arm.
“The initials aren’t mine.”
“They’re L.M.”
“Yes.”
“You are Luca Moretti.”
“I’m aware.”
“Impressive defense.”
Luca exhaled.
“Matteo used aliases.”
Dominic went still.
“What?”
“When he was investigating Hawthorne, he used one name more than once.”
Luca looked at me.
“Leon Mercer.”
Dominic frowned.
“Mercer?”
“As in Commissioner Mercer.”
Luca nodded.
“He was baiting them. Pretending to be Daniel Mercer’s relative.”
Dominic took out the torn contract.
L.M.
Leon Mercer.
Not Luca Moretti.
“You knew about the investigation?” Dominic asked.
“Parts of it.”
“And never told me?”
“Matteo asked me not to.”
Dominic’s voice hardened.
“He was my brother.”
“And he believed you would confront Richard immediately.”
“I would have.”
“That was why he didn’t tell you.”
Dominic looked away.
The accusation hurt because it was probably accurate.
I understood something then.
Dominic’s intimidation came naturally.
His control did not.
Control was something he had built because uncontrolled reactions had cost him people.
My apartment was compromised.
The storage facility was compromised.
So Dominic took me somewhere nobody expected.
Not the Vale mansion.
A townhouse overlooking Lincoln Park.
No guards at the front.
No visible security.
“This is yours?” I asked.
“It was Matteo’s.”
That stopped me.
The interior looked untouched by time.
Books.
Old records.
A guitar in the corner.
Photographs.
Dominic rarely entered.
I could tell.
Dust had settled where memory was too painful to disturb.
We spread my father’s documents across the dining table.
The ledger contained payments until three weeks before his death.
The flash drive contained another folder we had not opened.
EMMA.
I froze.
Dominic opened it only after asking.
Inside were photographs of me.
Age eighteen.
Leaving school.
Working at a coffee shop.
Walking with friends.
My stomach turned.
“Someone watched me.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
The final photograph was dated six months after my father died.
Then nothing.
Gabriel examined metadata.
“These weren’t taken by Jonathan.”
“How do you know?”
“Camera timestamps. Some were captured while he was already dead.”
Cold moved through me.
“So who?”
Dominic examined one image.
On the edge of the frame, reflected in a store window, was a man holding a camera.
Face unclear.
But his wrist showed a distinctive watch.
Luca leaned closer.
“I know that watch.”
“Who?”
“Richard.”
Dominic’s uncle.
Apparently Richard had not simply killed my father.
He had monitored me afterward.
“Why stop after six months?” I asked.
“Maybe he decided you knew nothing,” Dominic said.
“Or someone convinced him.”
The room fell quiet.
My mother.
I called again.
No answer.
Gabriel’s people in Arizona reported her house empty.
No signs of forced entry.
Her car gone.
“She ran,” Dominic said.
“Or they took her.”
“We’ll find her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
At least he did not lie.
For the next six hours, we worked.
I discovered my father had encoded account numbers using dates from my childhood.
My birthday.
My mother’s birthday.
The day we moved into our old house.
I hated knowing his love for us had become a cipher.
Dominic discovered another pattern.
Several payments were labeled M.V.
“Matteo?”
“No,” he said.
“Who else?”
“My mother was Maria Vale.”
She had died when Dominic was nineteen.
But the payments were years later.
Luca frowned.
“Could be a shell.”
Then I found an envelope sealed inside the ledger cover.
FOR EMMA ONLY.
Dominic slid it toward me.
I opened it.
The letter was short.
Emma,
If you found this, you are probably with Dominic Vale.
Do not judge him by the stories told about his family.
Matteo believed Dominic could become better than the men who raised him.
I believe it too.
But there is something you must understand.
Hawthorne was never just laundering money.
They were buying properties because something was hidden beneath one of them.
Matteo found it.
Richard killed him for it.
I moved the evidence before Richard could reach it.
You already know where.
Love, Dad.
I read the last sentence three times.
You already know where.
“I don’t,” I whispered.
Dominic sat opposite me.
“Think.”
“I was eighteen. Dad barely told me anything.”
“What place did he trust you with?”
I closed my eyes.
Memories came in fragments.
Sunday pancakes.
Baseball games.
A cheap lake cabin.
My grandmother’s cemetery.
The library.
Then—
A bank.
When I was sixteen, Dad had taken me downtown to open my first checking account.
He had joked that adults were just children with passwords.
But that was ordinary.
Another memory surfaced.
My eighteenth birthday.
He gave me a keychain.
Silver.
With a tiny engraved bird.
I still had it.
I pulled my keys from my purse.
The bird looked decorative.
Dominic took it.
Pressed the wing.
A hidden seam opened.
Inside was a micro-key.
Luca stared.
“Jonathan liked keys.”
I laughed despite myself.
“That is aggressively true.”
The number engraved on the micro-key was 224.
Gabriel searched.
“There’s a private deposit facility downtown. Hawthorne owned the building in 2018.”
Dominic stood.
“No.”
We all looked at him.
“No more running directly where the evidence tells us. Storage was a trap.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“We make them come to us.”
He began giving instructions.
False information would leak that we had recovered nothing.
The contract would be returned to his mansion safe.
The storage box would appear destroyed.
And I—
“No,” I said.
Dominic stopped.
“I haven’t told you your part.”
“You’re about to tell me to hide.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
His expression darkened.
“Emma.”
“My father spent eight years protecting me from something without letting me choose. My mother did the same. You don’t get to continue the family tradition.”
“This isn’t about choice.”
“It’s exactly about choice.”
“You have no training.”
“I survived your dog.”
“This is not funny.”
“No, but you were funnier before.”
Luca looked down to hide a smile.
Dominic stepped closer.
“You could die.”
“So could you.”
“That is different.”
“Why?”
“Because I chose this life.”
I held his gaze.
“And I’m choosing to find out why my father died.”
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then he said quietly, “You are unbelievably difficult.”
“Mrs. Bellamy said the same thing.”
“Mrs. Bellamy likes you.”
“She has questionable judgment.”
This time Dominic did smile.
Small.
Real.
Then his phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered without speaking.
A woman’s voice came through.
I knew it instantly.
My mother.
“Emma?”
I grabbed the phone.
“Mom?”
She sounded terrified.
“Listen to me. I don’t have much time.”
“Where are you?”
“Don’t come looking.”
“Mom—”
“Your father didn’t die because of what he found.”
Everyone went still.
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“What?”
“He died because of what he refused to give them.”
A noise sounded behind her.
She began whispering.
“The thing beneath Hawthorne’s property wasn’t money.”
“What was it?”
My mother started crying.
“I should have told you years ago.”
“Tell me now.”
A man’s voice interrupted somewhere near her.
My mother gasped.
Then she said the sentence that changed everything.
“Emma, your father wasn’t the only Carter working with Matteo Vale.”
The line crackled.
I could barely breathe.
“Who else?”
My mother whispered:
“Me.”
Then a door opened on her end.
May you like
And a man said, very clearly:
“Hello, Susan.”
