Chapter 2 - The Enemy at the Gate
The air left my lungs like I’d been hit in the ribs with an iron bar.
Victor.
Victor Moretti had been at my wedding. He had held Olivia in his arms when she was brought home from the hospital. When Isabelle was murdered fourteen months ago, Victor was the one who pulled me off the pavement, held me back while the paramedics worked, and spent six months wiping out small-time street crews in a bloody rage trying to find her killers.
Except he hadn't been hunting her killers. He had been eliminating the witnesses.
My hand flexed instinctively, the phantom weight of a firearm burning against my hip even though my jacket lay back in the kitchen.
I looked at Grace. Her face was marble-pale, her gray eyes dark with a mixture of terror and fierce protectiveness as she gathered all three girls into her arms. She didn't look at me like I was a king or a monster; she looked at me like I was a man whose house was actively on fire.
"Did they ever tell you this before today?" I asked, my voice barely a raspy whisper.
"No," Grace said, her hands smoothing down Nora’s curls. "They didn't talk at all, Mr. Romano. Not until an hour ago. We were baking. Sophie dropped a tray of flour, and when it hit the floor, she screamed 'No, Victor, don't!' That was the first word she’s spoken in over a year."
My chest tore open. All those months of silent torment—the doctors, the therapy, the useless toys—while my traumatized children carried the terrifying secret that the monster who took their mother was walking through their home every single day, giving them candy and patting their heads.
Suddenly, heavy footsteps echoed across the marble tiles of the hallway outside.
"Dominic?" a loud, gravelly voice called out. "I saw your car out front. You're home early, boss."
Victor.
He was inside the house.
Grace caught her breath, her arms tightening around my daughters. The girls shrank against her, their silence returning like an instant, suffocatng cloak.
I looked at Grace. "Take them up the back service stairs. Lock my private office door from the inside. Do not open it for anyone except me."
"Mr. Romano—"
"Go!" I snapped, keeping my voice low.
She didn't argue. Grace was smart—smarter than anyone I’d hired in five years. She swept Nora into her arms, grabbed Sophie and Olivia by their hands, and slipped silently through the side servant door into the darkened hallway just as the heavy brass handles of the library doors began to turn.
I took three slow steps toward the center of the room, rolling my sleeves up to my elbows, forcing my facial muscles into a mask of pure, unbothered fatigue.
Victor stepped inside.
He was fifty-two, built like a fire hydrant, with short grey hair and a thick leather coat. He was carrying a stack of ledger envelopes.
"There you are," Victor smiled, stepping into the light of the chandelier. "Luca said you wrapped up the warehouse meeting early. I thought we were meeting at the club at six."
"I was tired," I said, my voice steady, flat, devoid of emotion. "I wanted to see the girls."
Victor sighed, putting a sympathetic hand over his heart—the same heart that had planned my wife's murder. "How are they doing today? Still no progress with that new doctor from Boston?"
"No," I lied, looking him dead in the eye. "Still quiet."
"Pity," Victor muttered, shaking his head. "Poor sweet things. If I ever find the rest of the bastards who did that to Isabelle, Dominic, I'll tear them apart with my bare hands."
It took every ounce of my soul, every decades-old reflex built in the gutter streets of New York, not to kill him right there with the bronze paperweight on my desk.
"I know you would, Victor," I said quietly. "You've always been family."
He smiled—a wide, comfortable smile of a man who believed his secrets were buried six feet under the autumn leaves of Garden City.
"I'm heading down to the gatehouse," Victor said. "We have the shipment coming from the docks at midnight. You coming?"
"Give me twenty minutes," I replied. "I'll meet you in the courtyard."
May you like
"Sounds good, boss." Victor turned and walked out, his leather boots thudding rhythmically against the floor until the front door clicked shut behind him.
The moment he was gone, I ran to the kitchen, grabbed my coat and my gun, and sprinted up the service stairs toward my office.
