Chapter 3 - Web of Deceit
For forty-eight hours, Roman did not leave the Brookline estate. He remained by Claire’s side, feeding her soup, holding her hand while she slept, and listening as she slowly unspooled the nightmare of her last seven months.
She told him about the night she disappeared. How Thomas had walked into her private dressing room while Roman was at a dinner with the mayor. How Thomas had laid out the photos of her sister, Sarah, walking into her bakery in Chicago with a red laser dot pinned to her chest. How Thomas had handed her a prepaid cell phone with a single contact and told her to walk out the rear service exit, board a greyhound bus to New York, and never return.
“He told me if I ever tried to contact Sarah, she’d be dead within five minutes,” Claire whispered into the darkened room, her head resting against Roman’s shoulder. “I lived in a women's shelter in Manhattan for three months until I found out I was pregnant. I was so terrified he’d find me there that I took the bus back up to Revere, thinking the last place he’d look for me was right under his nose.”
Roman smoothed her hair back, his heart aching with a profound, bitter sorrow. “Sarah is safe, Claire.”
Claire pulled back, looking at him with wide eyes. “What?”
“Mateo sent a team to Chicago yesterday morning,” Roman explained softly. “They’ve secured Sarah. She’s currently in a safehouse in Wisconsin under twenty-four-hour guard. Thomas’s men were watching her apartment, but they’ve been... neutralized. Quietly.”
A heavy, shuddering breath escaped Claire’s lips, and she sank back against him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “She’s safe?”
“She’s safe,” Roman confirmed. “No one can hurt her now. And no one is going to hurt you.”
Later that evening, while Claire slept under the influence of mild sedatives prescribed by Dr. Vance, Roman met Mateo in the lower level library. The room was illuminated only by a single green banker's lamp. Spread out across the mahogany desk were bank ledgers, phone records, and wire transfer logs.
“We traced the security breach at the townhouse,” Mateo said, sliding a folder across the desk. “It wasn't just Thomas acting alone. He had help from the inside. Someone high up in your personal security team disabled the perimeter codes.”
Roman opened the folder. The name at the top of the page made his jaw tighten.
Marcus Vance.
Not related to Dr. Vance, but Marcus was Roman’s head of house security—a man who had stood at the door of Roman’s bedroom for six years.
“Marcus,” Roman breathed out. “Where is he now?”
“He’s at the main compound in South Boston, acting like nothing happened,” Mateo replied. “He doesn't know you found Claire. Thomas kept the search teams running in circles by feeding them fake leads in Canada. But Thomas is getting suspicious, Roman. He noticed that three of his enforcers in Chicago went dark yesterday.”
“Good,” Roman said, his voice dropping an octave into a register of icy lethalness. “Let him panic. A panicking rat makes mistakes.”
“What’s the move, boss?”
Roman leaned over the desk, staring at the structural map of the family’s syndicate operations. “We don't attack Thomas directly yet. If we execute him without exposing his treason to the captains, the family splits into a civil war, and Claire won't be safe. We isolate him. We pull his foundation out from under him, brick by brick.”
“How?”
“Marcus is the key,” Roman said, looking up. “Bring Marcus to the docks tonight. Tell him I found a break in the case regarding Claire’s disappearance. Tell him I need him to secure a warehouse for a sweep.”
May you like
Mateo nodded grimly. “And when he arrives?”
“I will give him the opportunity to explain why he sold my wife’s life to my brother,” Roman said softly. “And then we will use him to drag Thomas into the open.”
