Chapter 4 - The Man Cassian Trusted Most
Darkness swallowed the room.
I heard Cassian move before I saw anything.
One hand grabbed my wrist.
Another pressed me behind him.
"Stay down."
Marco's voice came from somewhere near the desk.
"Backup power should activate."
It didn't.
Three seconds.
Five.
Ten.
Then glass shattered downstairs.
Cassian drew a gun.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"Safe room."
He guided me toward the wall.
Marco followed.
Cassian stopped.
"Not you."
Silence.
"Cassian."
"You heard Dominic."
"You're believing him?"
"I'm believing nobody."
Emergency lighting flickered weakly in the hallway.
Marco raised both hands.
"I've protected you for eleven years."
"Then you'll understand why I'm asking you to stay here."
Marco's face tightened.
But he obeyed.
Cassian moved me toward the hidden safe room behind the library.
Before we reached it, Marta appeared.
"Sir!"
"What?"
"The east entrance is open."
"Who opened it?"
"I don't know."
Cassian looked toward the security panel.
Disabled.
This wasn't an outside attack.
Someone had prepared the house.
He locked me inside the safe room with Marta.
"No."
"Celia."
"My mother is missing."
"And you're pregnant."
"So I have two reasons not to sit inside a box."
He touched my face.
It was the first time he'd done that during an emergency.
"If something happens to you, none of this matters."
My anger disappeared.
"Cassian—"
"Please."
One word.
That frightened me more than an order.
I stayed.
For forty minutes, we heard movement outside.
Then silence.
Eventually Cassian returned.
Nobody had entered.
That was the strange part.
The broken window was deliberate.
A distraction.
Something had been taken.
From Cassian's office.
His mother's wooden box.
Nothing else.
"Why steal a photograph?" I asked.
"It wasn't just a photograph," Marta said.
Cassian looked at her.
She lowered her eyes.
"What was inside it?"
Marta hesitated.
"The backing opened."
Cassian stared.
"You knew?"
"Your mother told me never to open it unless your life depended on it."
"What was there?"
"A key."
Cassian closed his eyes.
"To what?"
"I don't know."
Marco was questioned that night.
Cassian didn't torture him.
Despite the mythology surrounding the Raldis, violence wasn't Cassian's first tool.
Information was.
Marco surrendered his phone, weapon, financial records, and access codes.
Nothing implicated him.
But something else did.
The east entrance had been opened using Marco's security credentials.
He stared at the access log.
"That wasn't me."
Cassian sat across from him.
"Prove it."
"I can't."
"Then you're suspended."
Marco looked hurt.
Not afraid.
That mattered to me.
As he left, he stopped beside me.
"Mrs. Raldi."
Cassian immediately stiffened.
Marco kept his eyes on me.
"Check your father's debt."
"What?"
"All of it."
Then he walked away.
I didn't understand until midnight.
My father had owed $340,000.
Cassian had inherited the obligation from another lender after my father's death.
At least, that's what I'd believed.
We pulled the original records.
The debt had changed ownership exactly eleven months before my father died.
Buyer:
Raldi Capital Holdings.
Authorized by:
Dominic Raldi.
I stared at Cassian.
"Dominic bought my father's debt."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Cassian looked furious.
"That's what we're going to find out."
We discovered more.
My father hadn't been a gambler as I'd been told.
He had worked as an accountant.
Years earlier, one of his clients had been a construction company tied to Renato.
My father had uncovered irregularities.
Shell companies.
Political payments.
Medical payments.
The same network.
My marriage had never started with random debt.
I had been pulled into the Raldi family because my father knew something.
And Dominic had known.
Suddenly the anonymous warnings made sense.
Dominic hadn't created my father's debt.
He had acquired it.
Maybe to protect me.
Maybe to control me.
We couldn't know which.
Then he sent an address.
No message.
Just a location.
An abandoned Catholic school outside Chicago.
Cassian wanted to go alone.
I refused.
"My mother is there."
"You are not walking into a possible ambush."
"If Dominic wanted me dead, he could have let whoever took my mother keep her."
Cassian looked at me for a long time.
Finally he agreed.
We arrived with two cars but kept security outside.
Inside the school gymnasium, Dominic waited.
My mother sat beside him.
Alive.
Unhurt.
I ran to her.
"Celia."
I wrapped my arms around her.
She trembled.
"I'm okay."
Dominic looked exhausted.
There was blood on his shirt.
Cassian noticed.
"Whose?"
"Mine."
"What happened?"
"My father finally realized I've been working against him."
Dominic lifted his shirt slightly.
A bandage wrapped his side.
"Why should I believe you?" Cassian asked.
"You shouldn't."
He tossed him a flash drive.
"You should believe that."
Cassian caught it.
"What is this?"
"Everything your mother died trying to expose."
Cassian froze.
Dominic continued.
"She didn't die in an accident."
Marta's suspicion had been right.
Renato had ordered the crash.
Cassian's father discovered the truth years later.
He intended to remove Renato from the family.
Then he died after a supposed heart attack.
Poison.
Cassian's face emptied.
I had learned that when Cassian showed no emotion, he was feeling too much.
Dominic looked toward me.
"Your father found part of the financial trail."
"So Renato killed him too?"
"No."
I almost collapsed with relief.
"Then how did he die?"
"Natural causes. But my father used his death to bury the evidence by creating debts against his estate."
"Why?"
"To scare you away from digging."
"Then why did you buy the debt?"
"To keep it from my father."
I stared at him.
"You could have told me."
"I tried."
"When?"
"Three days before your wedding."
I remembered.
A letter had arrived.
Cassian's security had intercepted it as suspicious.
I had never seen it.
Dominic looked at Cassian.
"Ask Marco."
The room went cold.
Cassian's eyes hardened.
"He intercepted it."
"Yes."
"So Marco works for Renato."
"No."
Dominic shook his head.
"Marco works for someone worse."
Cassian stared.
"Who?"
Dominic looked at my mother.
Then at me.
Finally at Cassian.
"Your father never died."
Nobody breathed.
Cassian gave a tiny, disbelieving laugh.
"I buried him."
"You buried a closed coffin."
Cassian's expression changed.
Dominic continued.
"Renato didn't kill your father. Your father disappeared after learning what Renato had done. He built another network. He let you believe he was dead because he thought it would protect you."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Then how does Marco work for him?"
"Because Marco told me."
Cassian took out his phone.
Called Marco.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Then my phone vibrated.
A live video appeared.
Our mansion.
Cassian's study.
Marco stood beside the desk.
Someone entered behind him.
An older man.
Tall.
Silver hair.
Cassian dropped into silence.
I looked at the screen.
The man faced the camera.
Cassian whispered one word.
"Dad."
May you like
On-screen, his supposedly dead father smiled.
Then he said, "Bring my son home."
