Chapter 9 - A Dead Man’s Voice
Dominic answered.
No one spoke.
Then a recording played.
His father’s voice.
“If you are hearing this, Rafael survived.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
His father had known.
The recording explained the contingency fund.
Two hundred million dollars.
Money meant to dismantle the Moretti organization and convert its legitimate assets if the family ever needed a way out.
Rafael wanted it.
Dominic had never known it existed.
The rabbit’s hidden device contained coordinates to access instructions.
James had discovered them accidentally.
That was why he died.
Adrian survived the shot.
Barely.
Before the ambulance took him, he confessed.
He had helped Rafael steal.
He had falsified accounts.
He had covered James’s murder.
But he claimed he had not ordered it.
“Who did?”
Sophia demanded.
Adrian looked at her.
“Rafael.”
“Did he drive James off the road?”
“No.”
Sophia froze.
“What?”
“James wasn’t killed in the crash.”
Her world tilted.
“The coroner—”
“Was paid.”
Dominic stepped closer.
“What happened to him?”
Adrian coughed blood.
“He survived.”
Sophia could not hear anything for several seconds.
“My husband survived?”
“For six hours.”
“Where?”
Adrian’s eyes closed.
“Pier Seventeen.”
Sophia grabbed him.
“What happened?”
“He recorded everything.”
“Then?”
Adrian opened his eyes.
“Someone Dominic trusted arrived.”
“Who?”
The paramedics pulled Sophia back.
Adrian was taken away.
Dominic caught her before she fell.
James had survived.
For six hours.
Someone could have saved him.
Instead, they had finished what the crash began.
Sophia cried against Dominic’s chest.
He held her without speaking.
Not as employer and employee.
Not as a feared man comforting a housekeeper.
Just two people who understood what it meant to discover grief had been built on lies.
When she finally stepped away, Dominic said, “We finish this.”
They traced the coordinates hidden in the rabbit photographs.
A private bank vault.
Inside was not money.
It contained a letter from Dominic’s father.
And a small recorder.
The letter said:
The final access code belongs to the person Rafael will never understand.
A child who has nothing to gain.
Emma.
Dominic stared.
His father had arranged the fund years before Emma was born.
“How could this refer to her?”
Sophia turned over the letter.
Different handwriting.
James’s.
He had modified the security system.
The final authentication was based on a phrase he taught Emma before he died.
A nursery phrase.
Sophia remembered.
Every night James had whispered it.
“Brave hearts tell the truth.”
Emma still said it sometimes.
Rafael needed her.
Not the key.
Not the rabbit.
Emma herself.
Dominic grabbed his phone.
“Call the house.”
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Sophia ran for the car.
They reached the mansion in eighteen minutes.
The front doors were open.
Two guards were unconscious.
Vivian lay on the foyer floor, alive but bleeding from her forehead.
Sophia raced upstairs.
Emma’s bed was empty.
Mr. Hops sat on the pillow.
Beside him was a phone.
It rang.
Sophia answered.
Emma’s tiny voice came through.
“Mommy?”
Sophia nearly collapsed.
“Baby, where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
Then a man took the phone.
Rafael.
May you like
“Now,” he said, “we can finally discuss James.”
The line went dead.
