Chapter 5 - WHAT A BROTHER IS WORTH
Alessandro watched the rain trail down the window of the west guest suite and wondered when he had begun to fear the sound of footsteps.
At forty-one, he had a reputation for knowing which people could be bought, which could be threatened, and which were too proud for either. He had not expected to become the man sitting on the edge of a borrowed bed, waiting to find out whether his own brother would bring the police or a gun.
Dominic came with Detective Ellis and a recorder.
Alessandro looked at the device. “That's new.”
“A lot of things are new,” Dominic said.
Ellis sat in the chair by the door. “You can decline to answer questions. You can ask for your lawyer. You can tell the truth. Those are your choices.”
“My lawyer seems to have found himself in trouble.”
“He can find you another lawyer.”
Alessandro smiled faintly. “You really have no idea what this house is, do you?”
“I know what the evidence looks like,” Ellis said. “A witness saw you put something into Dominic's glass. Dr. Vale found an unidentified toxic agent. Your attorney entered a locker connected to a dead dockworker. The last voice on a recording made before that dockworker died appears to be yours.”
The smile disappeared.
Dominic remained standing. “I heard Daniel Carter tell you he would come to me.”
“Then you know he came to the wrong brother.”
“He never came.”
“No,” Alessandro said. “He didn't.”
“Why?”
Alessandro looked at the rain. “Because I told him I'd handle it.”
***
They had grown up in the same house, but their father had given them different lessons. Dominic learned how to command a room. Alessandro learned how to notice who was missing from it. Dominic could leave a meeting with three handshakes and a promise. Alessandro stayed afterward to make the promise affordable.
For years he had told himself this made him indispensable. Then their father died, Dominic became head of the family, and all the ugly paperwork settled in Alessandro's hands while his brother collected the reputation for restraint.
Pier Nine had been the centerpiece of Alessandro's plan to create a legitimate shipping empire. Lionel Pierce brought customers, financing, and contracts. The first irregular manifests were easy to overlook. The second group required signatures and explanations. By the time Alessandro understood that the business was moving stolen medical equipment and using fraudulent charity paperwork, the partnership was worth more than the family's other legal operations combined.
“Why didn't you tell me?” Dominic demanded.
“I tried. You told me to stop bringing you details.”
“I told you to stop bringing me excuses for late payments.”
“And in that sentence is the entire history of us.” Alessandro rubbed a hand over his face. “You wanted a clean report. I built you one.”
Ellis interrupted. “Did you authorize the fire?”
“No.”
“Did you know someone planned it?”
He looked at the recorder. “Daniel brought me evidence that Pierce was stripping shipments and altering inspection reports. He wanted me to go to Dominic. I said I'd confront Pierce first.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He told me the warehouses would be shut down. That he'd lose everything. I thought he was bluffing.” Alessandro closed his eyes. “That night Victor called and said there'd been an accident. He told me Daniel was still inside.”
“You didn't call for help?” Sophia asked from the doorway.
No one had heard her enter. She had come with Ellis's permission, planning to listen until her own courage held. Now the words escaped her before she could stop them.
Alessandro stood so abruptly his chair tipped backward. “Mrs. Carter.”
“Answer me.”
His eyes moved to Dominic, as though a brother could still rescue him from an unwelcome truth.
Sophia took another step. “You knew my husband was inside. Did you call for help?”
“I called Victor back. He said the fire crews were already there.”
“Did you go?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anybody Daniel warned you?”
“No.”
“Did you tell me when I came to collect the settlement?”
Alessandro's voice shrank. “No.”
The silence that followed was not dramatic. It was simply large enough to hold eighteen months of grief.
“You let me think he was careless,” Sophia said. “You let his daughter think he forgot to come home.”
“I never said he was careless.”
“You didn't have to. You let the report say it for you.”
Dominic lowered his gaze. There was no way to defend his brother without insulting the woman standing there, and no way to defend himself without admitting how little he had asked.
***
Ellis waited until Sophia had taken a chair before continuing.
“Let's talk about the wine.”
Alessandro became still.
“Victor gave you a vial,” Ellis said. “You administered it during the second song.”
His mouth tightened. “I believed it would put Dominic in the hospital. A heart problem, something that looked natural.”
“You believed it would make him ill?”
“That's what Victor said.”
“And you did it anyway?”
“Yes.”
Dominic looked at him as though the word itself had struck him. “You wanted me out of the way.”
“I wanted you alive and unable to stop the board meeting on Friday. Pierce intended to sell the port leases and destroy the old records. He said if you interfered, he would go after my daughter.”
“Your daughter is thirty,” Dominic said. “She lives in Oregon. You haven't called her in five years.”
“And that means I wouldn't care if she died?” Alessandro's voice rose for the first time. “He sent me pictures of her walking to work. Pictures of her apartment. He knew her husband's name.”
“You could have come to me.”
“And would you have believed me? You wouldn't even look at the accounts.”
“That doesn't excuse putting poison in my wine.”
“I know.”
Alessandro's shoulders sagged. “I knew it was wrong. I did it anyway. There's nothing in your face you can show me that I haven't seen in the mirror.”
Ellis held up a hand. “Do you have the threatening messages?”
“Victor wiped my phone. The backup may still be in my office.”
“Then we'll seek it.”
He looked directly at Sophia. “I didn't intend to kill your husband.”
She could not believe he'd chosen that sentence. “You knew he was in danger, and you saved yourself. Maybe you didn't strike the match. You stood outside and let the building burn.”
His face crumpled for a second, then composed itself.
“I won't ask your forgiveness,” he said.
“Good,” Sophia replied. “Because I haven't brought any.”
***
Outside the suite, Dominic stopped beside the staircase. Sophia had walked ahead with Ellis, but he caught up before she reached the landing.
“I signed the leases,” he said.
She faced him. “I heard.”
“I didn't know what Pierce was doing.”
“Did you want to know?”
The question reached a place he had kept protected for years. He thought of the documents his brother carried into his office, the fundraisers, the speeches about jobs created along the waterfront. He had liked the respectable numbers. He had not asked what they cost.
“No,” he admitted.
Sophia nodded once. “Then start there.”
She descended the stairs without waiting for him.
At the bottom, Lily was building a tower from wooden blocks in Elena's sitting room. When Sophia entered, the child held out a block with a star printed on it.
“Mommy, this one goes on top.”
Sophia helped her place it. The tower wobbled, then held.
“Did the nice man stop being sad?” Lily asked.
“Which nice man?”
“The man with the ring.”
Sophia looked at the open doorway. “I don't know, sweetheart.”
Lily considered this and picked up another block. “Maybe he needs to say sorry.”
“Yes,” Sophia whispered. “Maybe he does.”
***
That evening, Ellis received the first independent lab confirmation. The sample from Dominic's glass contained a dangerous synthetic compound; it was not a harmless sedative. The laboratory was still preparing the full report, but there was no reasonable interpretation in which the wine had been safe to drink.
She called Dominic and told him Alessandro's statement would not protect his brother from serious charges.
“I'm not asking it to,” he said.
“Then I need to warn you about Pierce. We searched for his name in open contracts. He has interests in nine different shipping companies, and three are already moving funds overseas.”
“Freeze what you can.”
“That's the prosecutor's job. My job is to find the people.”
After the call, Marco brought Dominic a battered ledger found in a locked cabinet behind Victor Hale's former office. Its first pages contained fuel expenses and security shifts. The middle pages were blank. Near the back, somebody had written four initials beside dates and dollar amounts.
D.C. was listed beside a payment of two hundred thousand dollars, dated the day after the fire.
“Daniel Carter?” Dominic asked.
“That's what I thought,” Marco said. “But the payment didn't go to his widow. It went to an account opened under his name two weeks after he died.”
Dominic flipped to the next page. Another name stood beside a larger payment.
V.H.
And beneath it, written in red ink, were four words:
SECOND LIST—NOT FOR RELEASE.
***
Across the city, Victor Hale sat in a parked sedan outside a dark brick building, holding a phone that would not stop vibrating.
A message from Lionel Pierce appeared on the screen.
THE GIRL AT THE DINNER. WHAT DOES SHE KNOW?
Victor typed: SHE SAW THE GLASS. NOTHING ELSE.
A second message arrived.
YOU SAID THAT ABOUT THE ELECTRICIAN.
Victor looked up at the third-floor window of the building. A light was on behind the curtains. Somewhere inside, a teenage girl named Emma March was waiting for her mother to bring her home.
May you like
Victor had told himself he was only watching her. Now he understood what Pierce wanted.
He deleted the message. He had done many things for money, and some for fear. He could no longer tell which kind of man he had become.
