Chapter 3 - The Man Beside Me
Garrett reached for Damian and said:
“Give me the phone.”
Damian stepped backward while gripping Hazel’s abandoned device.
A scratched symbol was visible beneath Garrett’s cuff.
R-1.
It matched the mark from Antonio Russo’s secret program.
Damian suddenly did not know which man beside him was real.
“Why do you have that mark?”
Garrett stopped.
The gunfire downstairs had ended.
Silence spread through the upper corridor.
“Damian.”
“Answer.”
Garrett slowly rolled up his sleeve.
The scar was deliberate.
Someone had burned away the final digit.
“I was R-12.”
Damian stared at him.
“You were part of the protocol.”
“Yes.”
“And you never told me.”
“I was ordered not to.”
“By my father?”
“Yes.”
Damian laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“My secretary wasn’t my secretary. My security chief wasn’t simply my security chief. Is there anyone in my life who actually applied for their job?”
Garrett did not answer.
“Hazel told me not to trust you.”
“I assumed she would eventually.”
“Why?”
“Because Hazel believes I betrayed the protocol.”
Damian’s expression hardened.
“Did you?”
Garrett looked toward the emergency exit.
“Not intentionally.”
That was not the answer Damian wanted.
They returned to the Apex Building.
Bastion was detained until Damian could verify his involvement.
Garrett finally explained the Russo Protocol.
Antonio had created a covert protection network after surviving an assassination attempt seventeen years earlier.
Members were assigned numbers rather than names.
They operated independently.
No protector knew the entire network.
If one was compromised, the others survived.
Hazel had been recruited unusually young.
“She was nineteen,” Garrett said.
“Why her?”
“Victor Hale found her.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“It’s the truth.”
Garrett poured water.
“I met her during training. She was better than everyone.”
“At nineteen?”
“At nineteen.”
“What happened to the network?”
“Your father dissolved it before his death.”
“Hazel didn’t stop.”
“No.”
“Neither did you.”
Garrett looked away.
Damian understood.
“Antonio never dissolved it.”
“I think he tried.”
“Why?”
“Because someone inside the protocol had turned.”
Damian’s mind returned to the audio.
The greatest threat will not come from an enemy.
“Who?”
“We never knew.”
Victor Hale had supposedly died.
Antonio died six months later.
Several protocol members disappeared.
Garrett burned his identification mark and joined Damian openly.
Hazel vanished for years.
Then she resurfaced as his secretary.
Damian walked to Hazel’s old desk.
It remained empty.
Her badge still rested where she had left it.
Precisely centered on the keyboard.
He lifted it.
Something felt wrong.
Too heavy.
Damian examined the edge.
“Garrett.”
They opened the badge.
A micro-storage chip had been embedded inside.
Garrett connected it to an isolated computer.
One directory appeared.
THURSDAY.
Damian frowned.
Hazel’s final words to Garrett returned to him.
Make certain Mr. Russo drinks chamomile tea on Thursdays.
It had sounded absurd.
Now it sounded like an instruction.
They opened the directory.
Financial transfers.
Photographs.
Audio recordings.
Vehicle records.
Every Thursday for nearly two years, money had moved from one of Damian’s legitimate holding companies into shell corporations.
Millions.
Someone inside his organization had been stealing from him.
But the money was not the important part.
Each shell company eventually funded private security contractors.
The same contractors connected to Eric Voss.
Damian’s own money had financed attempts on his life.
“Who authorized the transfers?”
Garrett searched.
His face changed.
“Your credentials.”
“I didn’t authorize them.”
“They came from your office terminal.”
“Who has access?”
“You. Hazel. Me.”
Damian looked at him.
Garrett’s jaw tightened.
“I didn’t do this.”
Hazel’s warning echoed again.
DO NOT TRUST GARRETT.
But Hazel could have framed him.
So could anyone with enough access.
Damian studied the transaction times.
Every transfer occurred Thursday between 3:00 and 3:15 p.m.
His weekly physical therapy appointment.
He was never at his desk then.
Hazel usually was.
Damian felt something cold move through him.
Could Hazel have been stealing?
Could the entire protection story be camouflage?
No.
The footage was real.
But loyalty and betrayal could exist inside the same person.
His phone rang.
Bastion.
Damian answered.
“You have thirty seconds.”
“I know who Voss worked for.”
Damian stood.
“Who?”
“Not over the phone.”
“Then you have ten minutes to get here.”
“I’m not coming to your building.”
“Why?”
“Because the last man who told me the name died in your lobby.”
Damian exchanged a look with Garrett.
“Where?”
Bastion gave an address.
An abandoned church.
Damian arrived with Garrett and four men.
Bastion stood near the altar.
He looked genuinely frightened.
“I want immunity.”
Damian almost smiled.
“You sell narcotics to half the South Side.”
“Not from the police. From you.”
“Give me the name.”
Bastion swallowed.
“Victor Hale.”
Damian’s face went still.
“Victor is dead.”
“No. He’s not.”
Bastion pulled out a photograph.
Recent.
Victor Hale, older but unmistakable, entering a black SUV.
Beside him stood Eric Voss.
Damian stared.
“Where was this taken?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Why target me?”
Bastion shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
A window shattered.
Hazel appeared from the side aisle.
“DOWN!”
Damian moved instinctively.
A bullet struck the altar where his head had been.
Chaos erupted.
Garrett’s men fired toward the balcony.
Hazel grabbed Damian and pulled him behind a stone column.
For the first time since she left the Apex Building, they stood face-to-face.
“You look terrible,” Damian said.
Hazel stared at him.
“You’re welcome.”
Another shot struck stone.
“Victor is alive.”
“I know.”
“Garrett says you think he betrayed the protocol.”
Hazel looked past Damian toward Garrett.
“I don’t think.”
The shooting stopped.
Hazel stepped away.
Garrett approached.
Their eyes met.
Years of history passed silently between them.
“Hazel,” Garrett said.
“Garrett.”
Damian looked between them.
“Someone start talking.”
Hazel reached into her coat.
Garrett immediately drew his gun.
Damian moved between them.
“Enough.”
Hazel slowly removed an envelope.
She handed it to Damian.
“This is why I became your secretary.”
Inside was a photograph.
Antonio Russo.
Victor Hale.
A much younger Hazel.
And another person.
Damian’s mother.
Elena Russo had died when Damian was fourteen.
He had watched her coffin lowered into the ground.
Yet the date on the photograph was eight years after her funeral.
Damian looked at Hazel.
“That’s impossible.”
Hazel’s expression softened for the first time.
“No.”
Damian turned the photograph over.
Four words were written on the back.
ELENA AUTHORIZED THE PROTOCOL.
Then Bastion, still crouched near the altar, made a strangled sound.
Everyone turned.
A red laser dot moved across his chest.
Hazel looked upward.
“MOVE!”
The church doors suddenly opened.
An older man stepped inside.
Gray hair.
Burn scar along his jaw.
May you like
Victor Hale.
And he was holding Damian’s mother’s wedding ring.
