Chapter 5 - THE LAST NIGHT OF THE ROMANO MARRIAGE|
Dominic did not sleep.
He sat in the nursery until dawn, surrounded by the things he had bought for a daughter he had not yet met. The white blanket lay across his knees. The tiny socks were still folded in their paper wrapping. On the wall, Laura had painted a row of pale yellow stars.
He remembered her standing on a chair, seven months pregnant, insisting she could reach the top corner herself.
He had told her to get down.
She had told him to stop treating her like glass.
Then she had laughed, and he had lifted her down anyway.
He pressed the blanket against his face.
The scent of the detergent she used had faded, but he could still imagine her beside him.
His phone rang.
“Boss,” Marco said. “We traced the photograph. It came from a private security system at the hospital.”
“Who had access?”
“Hospital staff, your security detail, and someone using an administrator account.”
“Find the account.”
“Already working on it. But there's something else.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
“Tell me.”
“The attack wasn't meant to kill you.”
“What?”
“The shooters had clear opportunities. They didn't take them. They fired at the chandelier, the wall, the staircase. They created panic, but they weren't trying to finish you.”
Dominic stood.
“Then what were they trying to do?”
“Separate you from Laura.”
The words connected every detail he had tried not to examine: the gunman behind Elena, the document case, the way the shots had forced Laura toward the staircase, the conveniently open secure corridor.
Someone had known exactly how he would react.
Someone had known he would choose the case.
Someone had known he would run toward Elena.
“Bring me the original security footage,” Dominic said.
“It's been wiped.”
“Then recover it.”
“I'm trying.”
Dominic looked at Laura's empty side of the bed in his mind. He remembered her asking whether protecting her had become another word for shutting her out.
He had answered nothing.
Now he wondered how many people had been waiting for that silence.
At nine, Elena returned to the study. She looked exhausted.
“You need to leave the estate,” Dominic told her.
“That's not possible.”
“It's an order.”
“Your men are being watched. If I disappear, the Salazars will know the operation failed.”
Dominic walked around the desk.
“Tell me what you know.”
Elena took a breath.
“Six months ago, someone inside your organization began transferring money through shell companies. The payments went to a network connected to Salazar. I followed them. The trail led to the old tunnel beneath your house.”
“Who authorized the transfers?”
“I don't know. The accounts were approved with your father's old credentials.”
“My father has been dead for twelve years.”
“Exactly.”
Dominic stared at her.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I was trying to identify the person using his credentials. I thought the leak was inside your family.”
“Who knew about the investigation?”
“Three people. Me. You. And—”
She stopped.
“And who?”
“Laura.”
Dominic felt the room tilt.
“She knew nothing about my accounts.”
“She knew about the tunnel. She found a maintenance plan in your father's old papers and asked me why it was marked on the estate map. I told her it was sealed.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I thought she might have found something else.”
Dominic's voice dropped.
“What did she find?”
Elena looked toward the door.
“A ledger. She said it had your father's handwriting and a list of payments to people who were supposed to be dead.”
Dominic remembered a night six months earlier when Laura had entered his study holding a yellow envelope. He had been on the phone. He had told her to leave it on the desk.
The next morning, the envelope was gone.
He had never asked about it.
“Where is the ledger?”
“I don't know. Laura stopped answering my calls.”
Dominic reached for the phone.
“Find her.”
Elena's expression changed.
“Dominic, if she's alive, we have to assume someone else knows it.”
“She's alive.”
“You don't know that.”
He looked at her with a terrible certainty.
“I know what that photograph means.”
His phone vibrated. An unknown number.
A message appeared with an address and a time.
Come alone. Bring the ring. If you want to know what happened to your daughter, don't bring Marco.
Dominic read it twice.
Then he looked at the tiny white blanket on the nursery chair.
His daughter.
The message had not said child.
May you like
It had said daughter.
And whoever sent it knew something he didn't.
