Chapter 7 - The Voice on the Recording
Claudia Castellano stepped into the room.
Dante did not lower the gun.
She was sixty, perhaps older, with dark hair streaked silver and the same eyes as her son.
Marcus looked from her to Dante.
Nobody spoke.
Then Claudia said, “You look like Alessandro when you’re angry.”
Dante’s hand trembled.
“You’re dead.”
“I needed to be.”
“For seventeen years?”
“To keep you alive.”
Dante laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You could have called.”
“No.”
“You could have written.”
“No.”
“You could have told your son you were alive.”
“And led Stefano directly to you?”
Dante lowered the gun.
Not because he trusted her.
Because his arm seemed suddenly too heavy.
I understood that kind of grief.
It was harder when the dead returned.
Claudia knew my mother.
They had worked together.
When Daniel discovered Northstar’s purpose, Evelyn contacted Alessandro.
Alessandro wanted to destroy the network.
Stefano wanted to own it.
Claudia became the bridge between them.
Then everything collapsed.
Daniel died.
Claudia disappeared.
My mother became pregnant with Alessandro’s child.
Marcus.
“Did they love each other?” Marcus asked.
Claudia answered carefully.
“Yes.”
Marcus looked at the floor.
I hated that he had to learn his parents as strangers.
Claudia continued.
Alessandro wanted to acknowledge Marcus.
Evelyn refused.
She believed the Castellano name would put a target on him.
She was right.
The forty-eight million dollars was not inheritance.
It was Northstar money Alessandro had seized.
Evidence and restitution.
Money intended for victims.
“Why attach it to Marcus?”
“Because Alessandro trusted neither himself nor Dante to survive.”
Dante looked at her.
“And Rosie?”
Claudia’s eyes settled on me.
“Evelyn trusted her.”
“With what?”
“Titan.”
The second dog had been trained to locate me if every other safeguard failed.
Titan was not merely carrying evidence.
He was the final key.
The implant contained only part of the archive.
The rest had been hidden physically.
“Where?”
Claudia looked at Titan.
“He knows.”
Titan knew a scent trail.
A place.
Someone had conditioned him years earlier.
But before we could test it, Victor interrupted.
“Why come back now?”
Claudia’s expression darkened.
“Because Stefano stopped hiding.”
She explained that Northstar had changed.
Stefano had begun selling information to anyone who paid.
The Castellano organization.
Federal witnesses.
Police.
Politicians.
Criminals.
Nobody mattered.
Only leverage.
“He wants Marcus,” Claudia said.
“Why?” I asked.
“The trust.”
“He can’t access it.”
“He can if Marcus authorizes the transfer.”
“He won’t.”
Claudia looked at me.
“People authorize many things when someone they love is screaming.”
The room went silent.
Dante stepped between Claudia and Marcus.
“You don’t speak to him like that.”
Claudia’s face softened.
“You protect him already.”
“He’s my brother.”
Marcus looked up.
Dante had said it without hesitation.
That mattered.
Later, I found Dante alone in the laundry room.
He was sitting on the edge of Titan’s basin.
His mother had returned from the dead.
His father had hidden another son.
His uncle wanted them both dead.
“You okay?” I asked.
“No.”
It was the first uncomplicated answer he had ever given me.
I sat beside him.
He looked at my wet shoes.
“You keep ruining uniforms.”
“You keep having emergencies near water.”
He smiled.
Small.
Real.
Then disappeared again.
“Rosie.”
“Yes?”
“If this ends badly—”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“Yes, I do. Powerful man gives noble speech about sending vulnerable woman away for her safety.”
His eyebrow lifted.
“I wasn’t going to call you vulnerable.”
“Good.”
“I was going to ask you to take Marcus.”
That stopped me.
“And leave you?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
His eyes held mine.
“You barely know me.”
“I know enough.”
“What?”
I thought about the man who had obeyed a maid when she told armed guards to lower their hands.
The man who kept a dangerous dog alive because he believed everyone else might be wrong.
The man who had learned Marcus was his brother and immediately stood between him and danger.
“You listen when it matters.”
Dante’s expression changed.
His hand moved toward mine.
Titan shoved his enormous head between us.
I laughed.
Dante actually laughed too.
For three seconds, we were ordinary.
Then Marcus appeared.
“Sorry to interrupt whatever extremely weird thing this is.”
I pulled my hand away.
“What?”
“Titan found something.”
In the surveillance room, Marcus had played the tone embedded at the end of my mother’s recording.
Titan reacted instantly.
He ran downstairs.
Across the mansion.
Through the courtyard.
Toward the old family chapel.
He scratched at a stone beneath the altar.
Dante and Victor lifted it.
Underneath was a steel case.
Inside were paper ledgers and photographs.
Northstar’s original archive.
At the bottom lay a sealed envelope.
DANTE — READ ALONE.
He opened it anyway.
Alessandro’s handwriting.
Son,
If you are reading this, Stefano won.
Trust the woman Titan chooses.
Dante looked at me.
Below that:
She will know what to do with the second key.
“What second key?” I asked.
Titan began barking.
Not at the case.
At the chapel confessional.
Someone was inside.
Dante approached.
The door opened an inch.
May you like
A bloody hand fell through the gap.
And Marcus’s voice whispered from behind us, “If I’m standing here… then who is inside?”
