Chapter 4 - THE VALE HOUSE|
The car arrived at 9:58 a.m.
Emma had expected a black sedan. Instead, a dark SUV waited at the curb, its windows tinted and its driver dressed like a man attending a funeral.
“I can get there myself,” she told him.
“Mr. Vale asked me to bring you.”
“Does Mr. Vale always get what he asks for?”
The driver considered that.
“Usually.”
“Then he's about to experience something new.”
She climbed in anyway.
The Vale residence stood behind iron gates on a quiet stretch of Manhattan's Upper East Side. It was less a house than a statement: pale stone, enormous windows, clipped hedges, and security cameras positioned so discreetly that Emma almost missed them.
Inside, the foyer smelled of cedar and expensive flowers.
A woman in a navy dress approached.
“Miss Hayes? I'm Mrs. Bennett, the house manager. Mr. Vale is waiting in the library.”
Emma followed her through a corridor lined with paintings. She noticed that none of the portraits showed Dominic's parents.
The library doors stood open.
Dominic was beside a fireplace, wearing a charcoal suit without a tie. In daylight, the silver at his temples looked more pronounced. A thin scar crossed one knuckle.
“You came,” he said.
“I want answers.”
“You'll get them.”
“Start with my mother.”
He gestured toward a chair. Emma remained standing.
Dominic accepted that without argument.
“Your mother worked for my father,” he said. “Not as a housekeeper or secretary. She was an accountant. She discovered that money was being diverted through companies connected to his organization.”
“Why would she work for a criminal?”
“She didn't know what the company was doing when she accepted the job. By the time she understood, she had access to records that could have put several men in prison.”
Emma folded her arms.
“And you knew her?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Dominic looked toward the window.
“I was twenty-one. My father believed fear was the only language worth speaking. Your mother was one of the few people who ever told him he was wrong.”
Despite herself, Emma almost smiled.
“That sounds like her.”
“She helped me, too. When I wanted to leave the organization, she gave me information that could have destroyed my father.”
“Then why didn't you leave?”
“Because my father found out.”
Dominic's face hardened.
“On October seventeenth, your mother was supposed to meet me with copies of the records. She never arrived. My father told me she had taken the money and disappeared. Two weeks later, I heard she'd been killed in a car accident.”
Emma's stomach tightened.
“She died of cancer.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you say she was killed?”
“Because I never believed the accident story. I spent years trying to find out what happened. When I learned she was alive after the date my father claimed she died, I began looking again.”
Emma stared at him.
“Alive?”
“I have evidence that she survived the night she disappeared. I don't know what happened afterward.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Dominic opened a drawer and placed a photograph on the table. It showed Margaret outside a hospital, her hair tied back, a paper cup in one hand.
The date printed on the reverse was fourteen years earlier.
Emma picked it up with trembling fingers.
“Where did you get this?”
“From a former employee who died before he could tell me more.”
“Why didn't you find me?”
“I tried. Your mother had changed her name, and the records had been altered. By the time I found your address, I learned she'd died.”
Emma forced herself to breathe.
“Someone left a note telling me not to trust you.”
“That's sensible advice.”
She looked at him sharply.
“Are you trying to convince me you're a good man?”
“No. I'm trying to make sure you understand the difference between a man who admits what he is and one who lies about it.”
He slid another photograph across the table.
This one showed a younger Dominic standing beside Margaret in front of a brick building. Her hand rested on his shoulder.
On the back were four words, written in her handwriting.
Protect him if I can't.
Emma's eyes burned.
“What does that mean?”
May you like
Dominic looked at her.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
