Chapter 2 - Poison at the Kennel
I ran outside before Nonna could stop me.
By the time I reached the mansion, the upstairs window was empty.
Dante intercepted me in the foyer.
“What happened?”
“Someone was watching the gatehouse.”
“That happens.”
“They were wearing my mother’s bracelet.”
His expression changed immediately.
“What bracelet?”
I described it.
Thin gold chain.
Small oval charm.
One side engraved with an E.
The other with two tiny stars representing Marcus and me.
My mother had worn it every day.
I had watched a funeral director remove it from her wrist.
I had placed it inside her coffin myself.
Dante ordered the gates locked.
Nobody entered.
Nobody left.
For the first time, I understood that the security surrounding the Castellano estate was not there only to keep police or enemies outside.
Sometimes it kept secrets inside.
Dante took me upstairs.
Titan followed.
We searched the room behind the window.
A guest bedroom.
Empty.
The carpet near the window was damp.
A faint footprint crossed the marble bathroom floor.
Small.
Probably a woman’s.
Dante crouched.
“Harbor mud.”
“How can you tell?”
“I grew up around the docks.”
Titan sniffed the floor.
Then the dresser.
Then the door.
He stopped at the hallway.
The trail disappeared.
“Someone cleaned it,” I said.
Dante nodded.
“Someone knew we’d use the dog.”
That afternoon, I called Marcus.
He complained about school, asked when I was coming home, and told me Biscuit had eaten half a loaf of bread.
Ordinary things.
Beautiful things.
I almost told him everything.
Then I remembered the bracelet.
“Lock the doors tonight.”
“Rosie?”
“Just do it.”
“You’re doing the weird older-sister voice.”
“Marcus.”
“All right.”
I made Dante send two men to watch our duplex without telling Marcus.
Three mornings later, Titan woke me before dawn.
He stood at the gatehouse door.
Silent.
Rigid.
Outside his kennel sat a chipped ceramic bowl.
Raw beef.
Titan approached.
I smelled sweetness.
Chemical.
I grabbed his collar.
“Leave it.”
He obeyed immediately.
Antifreeze.
Enough to kill him.
I carried the bowl toward the harbor.
Dante appeared halfway down the path.
“What is that?”
“Someone tried again.”
His jaw tightened.
He called his security chief, Gabriel Voss.
Gabriel was in his forties, gray at the temples, controlled, polite.
The kind of man who looked harmless because he had spent years learning how.
He inspected the bowl.
“Kitchen inventory?”
“Check it,” Dante said.
Gabriel nodded.
Titan growled.
Not at the bowl.
At Gabriel.
Gabriel stopped.
I watched Titan.
His ears had shifted.
His body leaned backward.
Not aggression.
Recognition mixed with fear.
“Has Titan always disliked him?” I asked Dante later.
“Titan dislikes everybody.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“That was different.”
Dante studied me.
“How?”
“He wasn’t warning Gabriel away.”
“What was he doing?”
“Remembering him.”
That evening, Dante showed me Titan’s veterinary records.
They were strangely incomplete.
Vaccinations.
Weight.
Basic treatment.
Nothing about his first eighteen months.
Nothing about where he had been trained.
Then I found something.
Microchip number.
I recognized the prefix.
The same manufacturer used by the veterinary clinic where I had worked.
I accessed an old offline reference database on my laptop.
The chip had been implanted at Harbor Point Animal Hospital.
My former clinic.
Two years before I worked there.
The registered owner had been hidden behind a corporate account.
But the emergency contact remained.
Evelyn Whittaker.
My mother.
I stared at the screen.
Dante stood behind me.
Neither of us spoke.
“My mother was dying then,” I finally said.
“You’re certain?”
“I was taking her to chemotherapy.”
Dante leaned closer.
“What if she wasn’t going to chemotherapy every time?”
Anger flashed through me.
“Don’t.”
“I’m asking.”
“She was sick.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t.”
I turned toward him.
“What did your father do?”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“He built the legitimate companies people associate with us.”
“And the illegitimate ones?”
“He built those too.”
“Was my mother involved?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer sounded genuine.
Which made it worse.
We searched the microchip record further.
One hidden note appeared.
TRANSFER AUTHORIZATION: E.W.
SECONDARY AUTHORIZATION: A.C.
“Who is A.C.?” I asked.
Dante went still.
“Alessandro Castellano.”
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
Titan rested his head on my knee.
I looked at the dog.
At the scars.
At my initials around his neck.
My mother and Dante’s father had known each other.
Somehow Titan connected them.
Then my phone rang.
Marcus.
I answered.
No voice.
Only breathing.
“Marcus?”
Silence.
Then Biscuit barked in the background.
A man spoke.
Not Marcus.
“Tell Castellano to stop digging.”
The call ended.
Dante was already reaching for his gun.
We drove to my duplex.
The front door was open.
The two men Dante had stationed outside were unconscious but alive.
Marcus was gone.
I ran inside.
His phone lay on the kitchen floor.
Biscuit hid beneath the table.
On the wall above the FINAL NOTICE someone had written one sentence in black marker:
BRING THE DOG.
Dante read it.
Then Titan began scratching at the pantry door.
I opened it.
Inside sat a bloodstained envelope addressed in my mother’s handwriting.
I reached for it.
May you like
Something moved on the other side of the wall.
Then a voice I had not heard in eleven years whispered my childhood nickname...
