Chapter 4 - The Safehouse on Montgomery
The black Mercedes slid through the slush of Back Bay with its lights dimmed, taking two unnecessary turns through the narrow, one-way alleys behind Marlborough Street to ensure we hadn't picked up an electronic tracker.
"You shattered the glass in the conservatory," Enzo muttered from the driver’s seat, checking his side mirrors with methodical, cold focus. "Thirty years I worked for the Morettis. I have never seen a man throw a candelabra through the Don's personal greenhouse and live to tell the story."
"Did Cassian’s chase car follow us?"
"No," Enzo replied, a dry smirk touching his lip. "Before I parked by the greenhouse, I cut the hydraulic brake lines on both of his Escalades. They're sitting on the lawn with warning lights flashing on their dashboards."
"Remind me to double your pension, Enzo."
"Pay me when we're alive next month, Dominic."
He pulled up to the curb outside Number 42 Montgomery Street—a four-story Victorian brick rowhouse with black wrought-iron railings and a cracked stone stoop.
"Stay with the car," I ordered, checking the nine-millimeter Glock concealed in my shoulder holster. "Keep the engine running. If you see a silver Chrysler 300 or a black Tahoe with tinted plates, hit the high beams twice."
"Got it."
I climbed the worn brownstone steps two at a time, stepped into the drafty entryway smelling of boiled cabbage and old radiator steam, and made my way up the creaking stairs to the third floor.
Apartment 3B was at the end of the hall.
I stood before the faded green door, took a breath, and knocked three times.
Silence.
"Elena," I said through the wood, keeping my voice low. "It's Valerio."
A brass chain rattled on the other side. A deadbolt clicked back with a heavy thud.
The door swung open four inches, revealing Elena’s face. She was still wearing the charcoal coat, her eyes red, her fingers white where they gripped the edge of the doorframe.
"You came," she breathed.
"I told you I would."
She released the chain and pulled the door wide.
The apartment was small—clean, modest, but filled with the chaotic, vibrant clutter of four active young boys. Four small backpacks were hung neatly on coat hooks by the door. On the low pine coffee table sat four identical plastic cups of milk, a plate of half-eaten graham crackers, and four sets of watercolor paints drying on butcher paper.
Sitting on the floor around the rug, their backs to the radiator, were the four boys.
They were wearing flannel pajamas now—plaid, slightly worn at the knees. When I stepped inside, all four snapped their heads toward me in unison.
Julian, the one with the slightly rounder face, pointed a half-eaten cracker at me.
"You didn't go to the party," Julian said. "Mom said you were getting married."
"Julian," Elena said sharply, closing the door and throwing both locks. "Go into the bedroom with your brothers. Now."
"No," Leo said, standing up from the rug. He stood with his feet planted shoulder-width apart, his chin up, his small fists clenched at his sides. The posture was so absurdly familiar that my throat tightened until it ached. "I want to hear why he has our face."
I took off my overcoat, folded it over the back of an armchair, and knelt down on the linoleum floor so that I was at eye level with Leo.
"Leo," I said, keeping my voice steady. "My name is Dominic."
"Are you our father?" Nico asked from behind the coffee table, his thumb resting near his mouth.
The word hung in the humid, radiator-heated air like an electrical charge.
Elena let out a stifled, ragged sob and covered her mouth with both hands, leaning against the kitchen counter.
I looked at Nico, then at Mateo, then at Julian, and finally back at Leo.
"Yes," I said. "I am your father."
"Where were you?" Mateo asked, his hazel eyes wide and accusatory. "Other kids at school have dads who pick them up in trucks. We had to take the bus. Mom said you were on a long trip for work."
"I was," I answered, the truth burning my tongue like sulfur. "I was on a trip because very bad men told me that you didn't exist. They told me your mother had gone away, and they hid you from me."
"Are the bad men coming here?" Leo asked, stepping half an inch closer, his gaze searching my face with that razor-sharp, six-year-old scrutiny.
"Not if I have anything to say about it," I told him.
I stood up, walked into the cramped kitchen alcove, and took Elena by the elbow, guiding her two feet away from the children.
"We have less than forty minutes before Vincenzo’s network figures out who you are," I whispered, pulling a burner phone from my pocket. "He’s going to run facial recognition against every public camera in the Back Bay district. When he sees four boys with my jawline walking into that restaurant, the entire syndicate will be mobilized."
"I have savings," Elena said frantically, opening a drawer and pulling out four small leather-bound passports and an envelope of cash. "I can take them to Maine. My aunt has a cabin near Bangor—"
"Bangor is the first place Cassian will check," I said, gripping her shoulders to steady her trembling. "Listen to me, Elena. Running ends tonight. If we run, we spend the next fifteen years looking over our shoulders at every rest stop and airport terminal. Vincenzo doesn't stop. He doesn't forgive, and he doesn't forget."
"Then what are you going to do?" she cried, tears spilling over her lashes. "He has the police chief! He has the district attorney! He controls the courts!"
"He controls the local courts," I said, a dark, cold smile touching the corners of my mouth. "He doesn't control the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Elena froze, staring at me as if I had lost my mind. "The FBI? Dominic, your family has been fighting federal indictments for forty years! If you go to the feds, you go to prison with him!"
"Not if I have the master ledger," I replied quietly.
Her breath caught in her throat. "The ledger? You found it?"
"Eighteen months ago," I said, glancing back toward the living room where the four boys had clustered around the coffee table, watching us in silence. "I spent two years decoding the offshore accounts my father left behind before his plane crashed. I was going to use it to buy my freedom after the Barrett merger."
May you like
I reached out, gently wiping a tear from her cheek with the pad of my thumb. Her skin was warm, familiar, breaking through six years of frozen numbness.
"Now," I told her, "I'm going to use it to burn Vincenzo's empire to the ground."
