Chapter 3 - The Man in Lily’s Drawing
No one moved.
Lily’s red mitten remained pointed at Vincent.
The room seemed to contract around that tiny finger.
Dominic looked at the child.
Then at Vincent.
Then at Elena.
Vincent was the first to speak.
“Kid’s confused.”
Lily lowered her hand.
“I’m not.”
His eyes flicked toward her.
It was only a glance.
But Dominic saw something in it he had never seen Vincent direct at a child.
Calculation.
Not anger.
Not kindness.
Assessment.
Dominic stepped between them.
The movement was quiet enough that Lily probably did not understand it.
Vincent did.
“Take your hand out of your coat,” Dominic said.
Vincent stared at him.
“My hand isn’t in my coat.”
“Then keep it that way.”
A long silence.
Elena reached for Lily.
The little girl climbed beside her on the mattress.
Dominic did not take his eyes off Vincent.
“Leave.”
Vincent’s mouth twitched.
“You’re throwing me out because of a six-year-old’s drawing?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I told you to leave.”
The old chain of command reappeared in the words.
For a second, Dominic expected the familiar nod.
Understood, boss.
That was how Vincent had answered for twenty-two years.
Instead, he looked toward Elena.
“You’re making a mistake.”
Dominic almost laughed.
“Which part?”
“Trusting someone who hated you before her husband died.”
Elena flinched.
Dominic caught it.
“What does that mean?”
Vincent’s expression changed again.
He had said too much.
“Nothing.”
“You just said she hated me before Tomas died.”
“I’m assuming.”
“You don’t assume.”
“Everyone knows how she felt after Matteo.”
“Elena left town. You said you barely knew her.”
Vincent sighed.
“You want to interrogate me in a room where a kid can hear us?”
Dominic looked at Lily.
She was pressed against Elena’s side, wide-eyed.
He hated that Vincent was right.
Not because of what he had said.
Because he had forced Dominic to notice what anger had made him forget.
“This conversation ends now,” Dominic said.
Vincent nodded once.
Then he walked to the door.
Before he left, he looked back.
“Don’t stay here tonight.”
Dominic’s face revealed nothing.
“Is that advice?”
“Yes.”
“Or a warning?”
Vincent met his eyes.
“You’ll decide whatever you’ve already decided.”
He left.
The door clicked shut.
Elena immediately said, “We need to go.”
Dominic turned.
“So now you want to leave?”
“With you? No.”
“Then where?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“You have a fever of one hundred and two.”
“One hundred and one point eight,” Dr. Heller corrected from the kitchenette.
Dominic glanced at him.
Heller raised both hands.
“You dragged me here. I’m finishing the fluids.”
Elena swung her legs off the mattress.
She nearly collapsed.
Dominic caught her under the elbow.
She pulled away.
“I can stand.”
“Apparently.”
“Do not start.”
“Then stop pretending your body is making the same argument you are.”
Elena glared at him.
It was so much like Matteo that Dominic almost looked away.
Almost.
“Lily,” Elena said, “pack your backpack.”
The little girl slid down.
“What do I bring?”
“Pajamas. Socks. Your toothbrush. Mr. Bear.”
“And crayons?”
“Yes.”
Lily hurried to a plastic crate near the table.
Dominic lowered his voice.
“You’re coming with me.”
“No.”
“You think Vincent was here two weeks ago.”
“I know he was.”
“And you think he sent men after Tomas’s ledger.”
“I don’t think. I know what they asked for.”
“Then every place you would choose is a place he may already know.”
Elena said nothing.
“Mine are not.”
“Vincent has managed your security for twenty-two years.”
Dominic looked at the closed door.
“Not all of it.”
That was the first useful decision his paranoia had produced in a decade.
He had properties even Vincent did not know about.
Not because Dominic expected betrayal from him.
Because Dominic expected betrayal from everyone.
There were two apartments, a lake house held through an attorney in Wisconsin, and a modest brick bungalow on the Northwest Side bought under his mother’s maiden name.
The bungalow had no staff.
No cameras linked to Vescari systems.
No regular driver knew the address.
Only Dominic and one retired attorney knew it existed.
Elena watched him.
“You have somewhere.”
“Yes.”
“No guards.”
“One outside.”
“No.”
“One outside.”
“Dominic.”
“Elena.”
She stared at him.
He stared back.
Dr. Heller coughed into his fist.
“Wonderful. You both inherited Matteo’s worst trait.”
Elena turned.
“You knew my father?”
“For thirty years.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked.”
Heller zipped his medical bag.
“And because your father made me promise not to tell you how many times he ignored medical advice. He feared your judgment more than bullets.”
Elena’s expression softened despite herself.
Only for a second.
Lily returned wearing a purple backpack shaped like a cat.
“Ready.”
Dominic looked at the bag.
“That holds everything?”
Lily nodded.
That hurt worse than the apartment.
A child’s whole portable life fit inside a cat backpack.
They left through the rear stairwell.
Dominic did not use his own car.
He called Heller’s driver, switched vehicles in an underground garage five blocks away, and sent his sedan west with one of his men inside wearing Dominic’s coat.
Elena noticed.
“You really don’t trust him.”
Dominic watched the street through tinted glass.
“I don’t know what I trust.”
Lily sat between them in the back seat eating crackers.
“Do bad guys know when people don’t trust them?”
Dominic looked at her.
“Usually.”
“Then won’t he know?”
Elena closed her eyes.
Dominic almost smiled.
“I think he already does.”
The bungalow sat on a quiet street lined with bare trees and brick homes built before either of them was born.
It had green shutters, a narrow porch, and a detached garage.
Nothing about it suggested Dominic Vescari.
That was the point.
Lily climbed out of the car and stared.
“Is this your house?”
“One of them.”
“How many houses do you have?”
Elena said, “Lily.”
“What?”
“It’s rude.”
Dominic locked the car.
“Too many.”
Lily considered that.
“Then why don’t you give one to somebody?”
Elena looked away.
Dominic opened the front door.
“That’s a fair question.”
Inside, the house was clean but impersonal.
A couch.
Two bedrooms.
A kitchen stocked with emergency food.
No family photographs.
No art.
No signs of regular life.
Lily walked through it slowly.
“Do you get lonely here?”
“I don’t live here.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Elena made a sound suspiciously close to a laugh.
Dominic looked at her.
She stopped.
But for the first time, the room did not feel entirely hostile.
Heller arrived twenty minutes later with more medicine and a portable oxygen monitor. Elena slept through most of the afternoon.
Lily drew at the kitchen table.
Dominic made calls from the den.
Not to Vincent.
To people outside Vincent’s network.
His accountant.
His private attorney.
A former federal investigator named Nathan Cross who now made very good money asking unpleasant questions for rich clients.
Dominic gave him six company names.
“Quietly,” he said.
Cross said, “Quiet is more expensive.”
“I didn’t ask the price.”
“You never do.”
“I want every payment tied to Harbor Logistics, Garrison Holdings, Vescari Community Housing, and any vendor controlled by Vincent Cole or his relatives.”
There was a pause.
“That is not a small request.”
“Start with the last seven years.”
“Do you think Cole is stealing from you?”
Dominic looked through the open doorway at Lily coloring a blue sun because, as she had explained, yellow was “too normal.”
“I think I have been asking the wrong question.”
“What’s the right one?”
“How many people got hurt while I was busy assuming the money was mine?”
Cross did not answer for a moment.
Then he said, “I’ll call when I have something.”
Dominic ended the call.
When he returned to the kitchen, Lily held up a drawing.
It showed the bungalow.
Three figures stood outside.
Lily.
Elena.
Dominic.
No Vincent.
Dominic pointed to himself.
“Why am I purple?”
“I ran out of black.”
“Comforting.”
She grinned.
Then her face changed.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“The bad man said something when Mommy got hurt.”
Dominic sat down across from her.
Elena was sleeping down the hall.
He kept his voice even.
“What did he say?”
“I didn’t hear all of it.”
“That’s okay.”
“He was mad because Mommy wouldn’t tell him where something was.”
“The ledger?”
Lily shrugged.
“He said a word like that.”
“What else?”
She chewed the end of a crayon wrapper.
Dominic gently pulled it away.
“Not food.”
She rolled her eyes.
Elena’s daughter.
“What else did Vincent say?”
Lily looked toward the hallway.
“Mommy told me not to listen.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything that scares you.”
Lily looked back at him.
“But you can help?”
“I can try.”
She thought for a long time.
Then she whispered:
“He said Mr. Dominic would never believe her.”
Dominic felt something in his chest become hard.
“What exactly did he say?”
Lily repeated it carefully, as children do when they remember a sentence because of how it sounded rather than what it meant.
“He said, ‘Dominic buried your father. He’ll bury the truth with him.’”
Dominic did not move.
The hallway floor creaked.
Elena stood in the doorway.
Pale.
Barefoot.
Listening.
“Lily,” she said softly, “go wash your hands.”
The little girl slid off the chair.
“But I’m drawing.”
“Please.”
Something in Elena’s voice made her obey.
When the bathroom door closed, Dominic stood.
“What did Vincent mean?”
Elena’s eyes were wet now.
“He meant my father did not die protecting you.”
Dominic stared at her.
“That’s exactly how he died.”
“No.”
“I was there.”
“You were there after the shot.”
He went still.
Elena took one breath.
Then another.
“My father called me forty minutes before he died.”
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“And?”
“He said he had found proof someone inside your organization was selling information about you.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t say on the phone.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because after he died, Vincent came to me before you did.”
Dominic’s face changed.
Elena continued.
“He told me Dad had named you.”
Silence.
“He told me my father had discovered you were the one betraying your own people, and that Dad confronted you.”
Dominic stared at her as though the floor had shifted.
“You believed that?”
“For years.”
“And now?”
Elena looked toward Lily.
“Now I know Vincent lied about Tomas.”
Her eyes came back to Dominic.
“So I have to ask myself what else he lied about.”
Dominic’s phone rang.
Nathan Cross.
Too soon.
Dominic answered.
“What?”
Cross did not waste time.
“I found the first thing.”
Dominic listened.
His face emptied.
Elena watched him.
“What is it?” she asked.
Dominic lowered the phone slowly.
The information did not make sense.
Which meant it probably mattered.
Cross had found a vendor that received nearly two million dollars from Vescari Community Housing over four years.
A vendor supposedly providing security services to low-income properties.
Its registered owner was dead.
Its mailing address was a post office box.
And the emergency contact on the original incorporation papers was someone Dominic knew very well.
May you like
Matteo Rossi.
Elena’s dead father.
