Chapter 4 - THE BROTHER WHO DIED TWICE
Frank drew first.
Nicholas did not flinch.
He stood twenty feet away beneath the emergency light with both hands visible, palms turned slightly forward.
“If I meant to hurt him,” he said, “I wouldn’t introduce myself first.”
Frank’s expression did not change. “People have made worse plans.”
Dominic stared at the man.
There were similarities that became more obvious the longer he looked. The eyes. The line of the jaw. The way Nicholas held his shoulders when irritated. Even the slight tilt of his head resembled Alessandra when she listened to something she suspected was nonsense.
But resemblance proved nothing.
Families produced cousins who looked like brothers and strangers who looked like ghosts.
Dominic stepped into the hallway.
“You knew I would come here.”
Nicholas nodded.
“How?”
“Gabriel told me where the records were.”
“Then why didn’t you take them?”
“Because they were meant for both of us.”
“You could have opened the locker.”
“I didn’t have the key.”
Dominic held it up.
Nicholas looked at the brass tag and gave a sad smile.
“Rosa kept it.”
“You knew Rosa Vega?”
“She helped save my life.”
Frank’s weapon lowered half an inch.
Dominic noticed.
“So tell me,” Dominic said. “How did a boy supposedly killed in 1988 grow into a man who waits in dark hallways?”
Nicholas glanced toward the far end of the corridor.
“Maybe somewhere with cameras working would be smarter.”
Frank looked at his phone.
“No signal from the hall units.”
Nicholas nodded. “That’s why I came up when I did.”
“You cut the power?” Frank asked.
“No. Victor did. Or someone working for him.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re certain?”
“I’ve been following two of his men for three days.”
“Why?”
“Because Gabriel is dead.”
“That answer needs more words.”
Nicholas stepped closer, slowly.
“Gabriel had been sick for almost a year. Pancreatic cancer. He refused treatment until there wasn’t much point. About two months ago he called me to his apartment and told me something had changed in Chicago.”
“What?”
“Victor had begun asking questions about old trust accounts. Gabriel thought someone had found a copy of your mother’s correspondence.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Dominic smiled without warmth. “That phrase is popular tonight.”
Nicholas’s eyes sharpened. “You think I owe you immediate trust?”
“I think you appeared from the dead in a storage facility while somebody shut off the cameras.”
“And I think my brother grew up to sound exactly like our father when he’s scared.”
Frank’s eyes moved toward Dominic.
The insult landed because it was accurate enough to hurt.
Dominic stepped closer until only several feet separated them.
“Do not compare me to him.”
Nicholas looked at him for a long moment.
“Then don’t make me.”
The emergency lights flickered.
A door slammed downstairs.
Frank touched his earpiece. “Team two?”
Static.
Nicholas swore.
“They’re already in the building.”
Dominic returned to the locker and lifted the sealed box.
“Then we leave.”
“No,” Nicholas said.
Dominic turned.
“There’s another exit behind the wine vault. Gabriel showed me years ago.”
Frank asked, “Why would Gabriel know a modern wine vault?”
“Because he came back to Chicago twice.”
Dominic froze.
“When?”
“Once after your mother died. Once after Salvatore did.”
“He came here?”
“Yes.”
“And never came to me.”
Nicholas’s face softened slightly. “He was afraid you’d choose your father’s version of the family.”
Dominic almost laughed.
“So everyone spent thirty years deciding what I would do without asking me.”
“That is more or less what happened.”
Footsteps sounded in the stairwell.
Frank made the decision for them.
“We can discuss emotional failures in the car.”
Nicholas led them through the east corridor, down a narrow service staircase and behind a temperature-controlled room lined with private wine cages. At the rear was a steel door disguised as paneling.
Frank looked offended again.
“How many exits does this building have that my people don’t know about?”
“Apparently enough,” Nicholas said.
They emerged into an alley behind an old loading platform.
Two of Frank’s men met them there.
Nobody followed.
Dominic did not breathe normally until the storage boxes were locked inside the trunk of the sedan.
Nicholas walked toward a gray SUV parked across the alley.
Dominic said, “Where are you going?”
Nicholas stopped.
“Home.”
“No.”
Nicholas looked back.
Dominic heard how absurd the command sounded between two grown men who had met five minutes earlier and allegedly shared parents.
“You’re coming with us.”
“Why?”
“Because I have questions.”
“I have thirty-seven years of answers you are not getting in the back of a car surrounded by armed men.”
Frank muttered, “He’s definitely family.”
Dominic ignored him.
“Come to the house.”
Nicholas’s expression changed.
Not fear.
Something closer to grief.
“I haven’t been inside that house since I was six.”
“Neither have I,” Dominic said. “Not really.”
Nicholas studied him.
Then he nodded.
They returned at 2:06 a.m.
Marisol was waiting in the kitchen.
She had changed from her uniform into jeans and an old sweater, but she still wore the expression of someone who expected trouble to enter through any door.
Lucy slept upstairs.
Anthony sat at the long kitchen table with coffee he had not touched.
When Nicholas entered behind Dominic, the old man stood so quickly his chair scraped backward.
“Nicky.”
Nicholas stopped.
Anthony looked thirty years older in one second.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Nicholas’s face became unreadable.
“For which part?”
Anthony swallowed.
“All of it.”
“That’s convenient.”
Marisol stared between them.
Dominic looked at her.
“You knew he was alive?”
“No.”
Nicholas looked at Marisol.
“Rosa’s daughter.”
She nodded slowly.
“You knew my mother?”
“Not well. I met her once when I was twelve.”
Marisol gripped the back of a chair.
“She never told me.”
“She wasn’t supposed to.”
Dominic set the box from locker 214 on the table.
“Everybody sit.”
Nobody obeyed immediately.
Then, strangely, Marisol did.
Anthony followed.
Nicholas took the chair opposite Dominic.
Frank remained standing.
Dominic unfolded Alessandra’s letter.
“My mother wrote that Nicholas’s death was not an accident.”
Nicholas looked down.
“You know what she meant.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
Nicholas rested both hands on the table.
“Our father tried to make me disappear.”
Marisol inhaled sharply.
Dominic’s voice stayed level. “Why?”
“Because our mother was leaving him.”
That answer Dominic had not expected.
Nicholas continued.
“She had found proof he stole from the trust. She also knew he had started using family companies for deals your grandfather had forbidden. Gabriel wanted her to take everything to your grandfather. She decided instead to leave Chicago with us.”
“Us.”
“You and me.”
Dominic saw flashes of a childhood he could not remember: a woman packing suitcases, his father shouting behind a closed door, Rosa crying in the laundry room.
“Our father found out,” Nicholas said. “He told Ma she could leave, but only with one child.”
Dominic stared.
“He chose you?”
“No.”
The word struck harder than it should have.
Nicholas saw it.
“He chose me because I was the oldest. The heir.”
Dominic looked away.
“He said you could go because you were young enough to forget.”
Silence settled across the kitchen.
Marisol whispered, “That’s monstrous.”
Nicholas nodded.
“Ma refused. Two nights later, a driver took me to what I was told was a doctor’s appointment. Rosa was working in the front hall and heard our father give different instructions over the phone.”
“What instructions?” Dominic asked.
Nicholas’s gaze hardened.
“To make sure I never came home.”
Anthony covered his mouth.
Nicholas continued before Dominic could react.
“Rosa called Gabriel. Gabriel intercepted the car before it reached the lake road. He took me. By morning, our father announced there had been an accident.”
Dominic’s pulse hammered.
“And Ma?”
“She wanted to go public.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Because Salvatore threatened you.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
Nicholas leaned forward.
“He told her if she spoke, he would take you somewhere Gabriel could never find you.”
Dominic stood abruptly and walked to the counter.
No one spoke.
The kitchen clock ticked.
His father had been dead nine years.
Yet somehow the man was still controlling the room.
Dominic gripped the edge of the counter.
“Why didn’t you come back after he died?”
Nicholas’s answer came quietly.
“Because by then, you were him.”
Dominic turned.
Anthony whispered, “Nicholas.”
“No. He deserves the truth.”
Nicholas met Dominic’s eyes.
“You inherited his businesses. His men. His reputation. Every article about you described the same kind of power. Gabriel said we should watch and wait.”
“So you judged me from newspapers.”
“I judged you from what people were afraid to say when your name came up.”
Dominic walked back to the table.
“And tonight?”
Nicholas glanced toward the ceiling, where Lucy slept.
“Tonight I saw the security feed Gabriel’s contact sent me.”
Dominic’s face hardened. “Someone inside my house has been sending you security feeds?”
“One feed. After the break-in.”
“Who?”
“I promised not to say yet.”
Dominic laughed once. “You’ve known me an hour and you’re already keeping secrets.”
Nicholas almost smiled.
“Definitely family.”
Even Frank failed to hide a grin.
Dominic did not.
He opened the box again.
“Then we verify everything.”
“Good.”
“DNA.”
Nicholas nodded. “Tomorrow.”
“Records.”
“Take whatever you need.”
“Gabriel’s files.”
“I’ll give you access.”
Anthony looked relieved.
Dominic noticed and turned on him.
“You don’t get to relax.”
The old man’s shoulders dropped.
“I know.”
Dominic pulled out another envelope from the box.
This one was addressed to Rosa.
Marisol leaned forward.
“That’s my mother’s name.”
Dominic handed it to her.
Her fingers shook as she opened it.
Inside was a short letter and a small photograph.
Marisol read silently.
Then began to cry.
Not loudly.
The tears simply fell.
Dominic waited.
She passed him the letter.
Rosa,
If I fail, keep the bear. Someday Dominic may need proof that Nicholas existed and that Gabriel saved him.
You have already risked too much for my children.
There is one more thing Salvatore must never find: the original ledger page bearing Victor’s mother’s signature.
Hide it where even you cannot reach it without remembering me.
— Alessandra
Dominic looked up.
“Victor’s mother?”
Anthony went completely still.
Nicholas noticed.
“What?” Dominic asked.
Anthony’s lips parted.
Before he could answer, a small sleepy voice came from the doorway.
“Mommy?”
Lucy stood there holding Benny.
Marisol wiped her face quickly. “Sweetheart, why are you awake?”
“I had a dream.”
She shuffled toward the table.
Then stopped when she saw Nicholas.
Lucy looked at Dominic.
Then Nicholas.
Then Dominic again.
Her eyes widened.
“You have the same grumpy face.”
Nicholas laughed.
Dominic did not.
Lucy climbed into Marisol’s lap and hugged Benny.
The bear’s newly stitched stomach faced outward.
Nicholas stared at it.
Then at the blue ribbon.
“Wait.”
Dominic looked at him.
Nicholas stood and approached Lucy carefully.
“Can I see your bear’s foot?”
Lucy frowned. “Why?”
“Because I think your grandma was smarter than all of us.”
Lucy considered this, then held Benny out.
Nicholas turned the bear over.
On the bottom of the right foot was a faded patch shaped like a flower.
Marisol stared.
“My mother added that when I was a teenager.”
Nicholas touched the stitching.
“It isn’t a flower.”
He rotated the bear.
The faded petals became letters.
A. V.
Alessandra Vega.
No.
Dominic looked closer.
A.V. could mean something else.
Anthony whispered the answer.
“Anna Vittoria.”
Dominic looked at him.
“Victor’s mother.”
Lucy hugged the bear tighter.
Nicholas looked toward Marisol.
“Your mother didn’t hide the ledger somewhere.”
May you like
His eyes moved back to Benny.
“She hid it in him.”
