Chapter 2 - The Billionaire's Safe House
Cara screamed Dante's name as a shadow moved between the trees.
Gabriel spun toward the forest.
“Contact!”
Three security men raised their weapons while another pulled Cara behind the wreck.
Dante ignored the pain tearing through his shoulder and grabbed Cara's arm.
“Stay down.”
A figure disappeared through the darkness.
Gabriel sent two men after them but ordered the others to remain.
No shots were fired.
That made Dante suspicious.
A professional assassin who had remained close enough to photograph Cara had possessed every opportunity to attack.
Instead, the person wanted Cara frightened.
Or controlled.
The paramedics stabilized Dante and insisted he needed a hospital.
Dante refused.
“The hospital is predictable.”
“You may have internal injuries,” the medic argued.
“My physician has a private trauma unit.”
Gabriel understood immediately.
“House Seven?”
Dante nodded.
Cara had no idea what House Seven meant.
She only understood one thing.
“I'm going home.”
Dante looked at her.
“No.”
“That wasn't a request.”
“Neither was my answer.”
Cara stared at him.
“You don't own me.”
“No. But somebody just sent you a death threat because you saved my life.”
“I'll go to the police.”
“We don't know who inside the police department can be trusted yet.”
“That's convenient.”
Dante almost smiled.
Even bruised and bleeding, Cara Fields had enough nerve to challenge him in front of his entire security team.
“You want convenient?” he said. “Convenient would have been letting me die.”
That silenced her.
Dante lowered his voice.
“You heard the people who planned this. You are now the most important witness alive.”
Cara hated that he was right.
Twenty minutes later, she sat inside an armored SUV wearing a borrowed security jacket over her soaked waitress uniform.
Dante lay beside her on a medical stretcher.
Gabriel occupied the front passenger seat.
Nobody mentioned the destination.
The convoy changed routes three times.
Cara watched Blackridge disappear behind rain-covered windows.
Eventually they entered a private tunnel hidden behind an abandoned maintenance building.
Cara stared.
“You have secret tunnels?”
Dante closed his eyes.
“One.”
“That is one more secret tunnel than normal people have.”
He gave a faint laugh and immediately winced.
The sound surprised everyone.
Gabriel glanced backward.
Cara wondered how long it had been since anyone had made Dante Moretti laugh.
House Seven turned out not to be a house.
It was a secure compound built into the mountainside.
Dante's personal physician treated him while Gabriel questioned Cara.
She told him everything.
Vanessa.
Miles.
The office.
The conversation.
The timing.
Gabriel recorded every word.
Dante listened from the medical bed.
His face remained unreadable when Cara repeated Vanessa saying, “He won't survive.”
That disturbed Cara.
“You don't look surprised.”
Dante's gaze stayed on the ceiling.
“Vanessa and I haven't had a real marriage for two years.”
“Then why stay married?”
“Companies. Contracts. Families.”
Cara frowned.
“That's depressing.”
“It was efficient.”
“Your wife just tried to kill you.”
Dante looked at her.
“Efficiency has limits.”
Gabriel coughed into his hand, hiding something that might have been amusement.
They spent the next hours reviewing security footage from Bellamonte.
The camera covering the service hallway had gone offline for exactly seven minutes.
The office microphone had been disabled.
Dante's car had been parked in a supposedly secured garage.
Only four people possessed access.
One was Dante.
One was Gabriel.
One was Ellis, the dead guard.
The fourth was Miles Voss.
“That's enough for police,” Cara said.
“Not yet,” Dante replied.
“Why?”
“Because evidence this neat bothers me.”
“You think Miles was framed?”
“I think Miles may be guilty. I also think someone wants me to stop looking once I find him.”
Cara leaned against the table.
“So there's someone above your wife and CFO?”
Dante looked grim.
“Maybe.”
At three in the morning, Gabriel received preliminary information from Ellis's death scene.
The security guard had not been shot.
He had been poisoned.
Estimated exposure time?
Before Dante's crash.
“He was already dying,” Gabriel said.
Dante looked toward Cara.
“Meaning Ellis wasn't killed because you saw his message.”
“He knew he wouldn't live long enough to be questioned,” Cara said.
Gabriel nodded.
“Exactly.”
They searched Ellis's financial records.
Two transfers appeared.
Each for fifty thousand dollars.
Both from a shell company called Briar Holdings.
Dante recognized it.
“My father created Briar Holdings twenty-eight years ago.”
Cara frowned.
“I thought your father was dead.”
“He is.”
Gabriel pulled corporate records.
Briar Holdings had supposedly been dissolved after Alessandro Moretti's death.
Yet money had moved through an account bearing its name four days earlier.
Dante became very still.
“Find whoever controls it.”
Gabriel began working.
Cara moved toward the kitchen.
“Where are you going?”
“Coffee.”
“You should sleep.”
“You should be in a hospital.”
“Fair.”
She found an enormous commercial espresso machine and stared at it.
Dante appeared several minutes later, one arm in a sling.
“You escaped your doctor.”
“He's angry.”
“He should be.”
Dante stood beside her.
Cara looked at him.
“What happens when this is over?”
“If we survive?”
“That wasn't comforting.”
He studied her.
“You go back to your life.”
“My manager is going to fire me for abandoning a private dinner.”
“I own Bellamonte.”
Cara stared at him.
“Of course you do.”
“You're not fired.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
He laughed again.
Then his expression softened.
“You saved my life.”
Cara looked away.
“Anybody would have.”
“No.”
The certainty in his voice made her look back.
“Most people would have called someone. You followed me onto a mountain road.”
“That probably proves poor judgment.”
“It proves something.”
Neither spoke for several seconds.
Cara became suddenly aware of how close they stood.
Dante smelled faintly of antiseptic and rain.
She stepped away.
Gabriel entered.
“I found Briar.”
Dante followed him to the command room.
Cara came too.
The shell company had been reactivated twelve months earlier through a lawyer in Switzerland.
Its beneficiary remained hidden.
But several payments linked Briar Holdings to companies recently acquired by Moretti Global.
Someone was quietly moving money through Dante's empire.
“How much?” Dante asked.
“Forty-three million that I can identify.”
Cara whistled.
Dante didn't react.
Gabriel opened another document.
“There is something else.”
A life insurance policy.
Dante Moretti.
Coverage: $500 million.
Beneficiary: Vanessa Moretti.
“That gives her motive,” Cara said.
Dante shook his head.
“She already gets far more than that if I die.”
Gabriel looked uncomfortable.
“What?”
“The policy was modified last month.”
“To what?”
“The beneficiary isn't Vanessa anymore.”
Cara leaned closer.
“Who is it?”
Gabriel turned the screen.
The beneficiary line contained a company.
Briar Holdings.
Dante stared.
His father's dead corporation would receive half a billion dollars after his death.
Before anyone could speak, an alarm sounded.
Red lights flashed.
Gabriel drew his weapon.
“Perimeter breach.”
Cara's heart stopped.
“This place is secret.”
“It was,” Gabriel said.
Security feeds appeared across twelve monitors.
The exterior cameras showed nothing.
Then Camera Eight flickered.
A man stood directly in front of it.
He wore no mask.
Dante's face drained of color.
Cara looked at him.
“You know him?”
Dante didn't answer.
The man on the screen lifted a photograph.
It showed Dante as a child standing beside his father.
Then the stranger turned the photograph around.
Three words were written across the back.
ASK YOUR MOTHER.
Dante whispered, “That's impossible.”
May you like
The man smiled into the camera.
Then every light in House Seven went black.
