Chapter 5 - Seventeen Dead Men
Dominic did not open the door immediately.
That offended Nathan Cross.
“Vescari, I drove across Chicago in freezing rain because your phone went dark. If you make me stand on this porch much longer, I’m billing you for pneumonia.”
Dominic looked through the peephole.
Cross stood alone.
Fifty-eight.
Close-cropped gray hair.
Camel coat.
No hat.
Annoyed enough to be himself.
A dark sedan waited at the curb with the engine running.
The black SUV was gone.
Dominic unlocked the deadbolt.
Cross stepped inside and immediately noticed Elena holding Lily in the hallway.
He also noticed the dark house.
“Power?”
“Cut.”
“Phones?”
“Jammed or dead.”
Cross swore under his breath.
“I brought a satellite unit.”
He held up a hard-sided case.
Dominic closed the door.
“How did you find this place?”
“I didn’t.”
Dominic stared at him.
Cross unbuttoned his coat.
“A woman called me forty minutes ago and gave me the address.”
“What woman?”
“She didn’t give a name.”
“What did she say?”
“That if I wanted to understand the companies, I should come here before Cole did.”
Elena stepped closer.
“What did she sound like?”
Cross looked at her.
“Educated. Maybe forties. Calm.”
“Dana?” Elena whispered.
Dominic turned.
“Pierce?”
Elena nodded.
Cross looked between them.
“Who is Dana Pierce?”
“Former counsel,” Dominic said. “Connected to Tomas.”
“Then we may have just found your ghost.”
He opened the case and set a compact communications unit on the dining table.
The battery indicator glowed green.
Within three minutes he had a secure connection.
Dominic watched him work.
“Seventeen companies.”
Cross nodded.
“All created using identities of people tied to your organization who were already dead by the incorporation date.”
“Names.”
Cross opened a file.
“Matteo Rossi. Anthony Vescari. Luis Barrera. Frank Delaney. Curtis Hall. Paolo Bianchi.”
Dominic’s expression tightened with every name.
Some were old employees.
Some were associates.
One was his uncle.
Two had died before Dominic took over the businesses they were supposedly invoicing.
Cross continued.
“Together, the companies received just under twenty-three million dollars over seven years.”
Elena inhaled sharply.
Dominic remained still.
“From where?”
“Everywhere. Housing. Logistics. Construction. Restaurant supply. Health benefits. A scholarship fund.”
Dominic looked up.
“The scholarship fund?”
“Yeah.”
That bothered him more than the amount.
“You’re sure?”
“I don’t bring you guesses at midnight.”
Cross rotated the laptop.
The payment map looked like a spiderweb.
Arrows moved from legitimate Vescari entities to vendors, then from vendors to consulting companies, then to trusts and accounts Cross had not yet identified.
“Who signed?” Dominic asked.
“Different people.”
“Vincent?”
“Sometimes.”
“Who else?”
“Your CFO. Two property managers. One nonprofit director. A procurement officer who died last year.”
“Meaning a network.”
“Or forged approvals.”
Dominic looked at Elena.
She said nothing.
Cross tapped the screen.
“Here’s the strange part. The system was designed to look messy enough that no single person appears central.”
“That’s not strange.”
“No. This is.”
Cross opened another page.
“Some money came back.”
“To where?”
“Your companies.”
Dominic frowned.
“In what form?”
“Loans. Emergency capital. Anonymous debt purchases. One insurance settlement.”
Elena said, “So someone stole money from Dominic and then gave some back?”
Cross nodded.
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
Dominic answered first.
“To make me dependent without knowing I was dependent.”
Cross pointed at him.
“That.”
Elena stared.
Cross continued.
“Three times in seven years, one of your legal businesses had a cash crisis. Each time, money from this network arrived through an apparently unrelated source.”
Dominic remembered all three.
A construction strike.
A warehouse fire.
A restaurant expansion that nearly drowned in debt.
Vincent had always found a solution.
Dominic slowly sat down.
For twenty-two years Vincent had made himself useful.
Maybe indispensable.
Perhaps that had been the point.
“What’s the endgame?” Elena asked.
Cross shrugged.
“Control. Leverage. A retirement fund. Maybe all three.”
Dominic’s gaze remained on the screen.
“Not retirement.”
“How do you know?”
“Vincent doesn’t want to leave.”
Cross leaned back.
“You sound certain.”
“I know him.”
Elena’s voice was quiet.
“Do you?”
Dominic looked at her.
She did not flinch.
He turned back to Cross.
“The woman who called. Can you trace it?”
“Already trying.”
“Anything?”
“Burner routed through a voice service.”
“So no.”
“So not yet.”
Lily tugged Elena’s sleeve.
“Mommy, I’m thirsty.”
The adults stopped.
Elena looked embarrassed by how quickly their world had forgotten there was a child inside it.
“I’ll get you water.”
The tap still worked.
Lily sat at the table beside Cross.
She stared at the screen.
“What’s that?”
Cross smiled faintly.
“A mess.”
“Can you clean it?”
“That’s the job.”
She considered him seriously.
“Mr. Dominic says jobs need deals.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
Cross looked delighted.
“What does he owe you?”
“Two soups and groceries.”
“What did you give him?”
“Two drawings.”
Cross nodded.
“Fair market value.”
Lily looked pleased.
Elena handed her water.
“Back to bed.”
“I’m not sleepy.”
“You’re six. That has never stopped me before.”
Lily sighed dramatically and shuffled away.
At the hallway she turned.
“Mr. Dominic?”
“Yes?”
“The black car was here before.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“What black car?”
“The one outside.”
“When?”
“At our apartment.”
Elena froze.
“When, baby?”
“Lots.”
“What do you mean lots?”
“When Mommy took me to school. When we came home. Sometimes at night.”
Elena looked sick.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it was somebody’s car.”
Cross asked gently, “Did you ever see who was inside?”
Lily nodded.
“Sometimes a lady.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“What lady?”
“Brown hair. Glasses.”
Elena’s face changed.
“Dana wore glasses.”
Lily frowned.
“Who’s Dana?”
Elena pulled out her phone, then remembered there was no service.
Dominic opened a photo archive on the secure laptop.
It took several searches before an old staff photograph appeared.
Harbor Logistics legal and compliance team.
Tomas Morales stood near the back.
Beside him was a woman with shoulder-length brown hair and dark-framed glasses.
Dana Pierce.
Dominic turned the screen.
“Lily, look carefully. Have you seen this woman?”
Elena stiffened.
“Dominic, don’t pressure her.”
“I’m not.”
Lily looked.
Her eyes widened.
“That’s her.”
Cross and Dominic exchanged a look.
Elena sat down hard.
“Dana’s been watching us?”
“Maybe watching over you,” Cross said.
“Then why didn’t she talk to me?”
Nobody had an answer.
Dominic enlarged the photograph.
Something else caught his eye.
A man at the far edge.
Partially hidden.
Young.
Suit.
Badge clipped at the belt.
Dominic tapped the screen.
“Who’s that?”
Cross zoomed in.
The employee list identified him.
Daniel Cole.
Elena looked at Dominic.
“Related?”
Dominic’s face hardened.
“Vincent’s son.”
Cross whistled.
“You never mentioned a son.”
“Because he doesn’t have one.”
Elena frowned.
“The picture says he does.”
“No.”
Dominic stared at the young man.
“Vincent told me Daniel died at seventeen.”
Cross checked the archive date.
“This was taken nine years ago.”
Dominic felt the room tilt.
Vincent had told him about the accident twenty years earlier.
Drunk driver.
Late at night.
Closed casket.
Dominic had paid for the funeral.
He had stood beside Vincent at the cemetery.
He had watched his oldest friend shake with grief.
A false grief, apparently.
Or grief for something else.
Cross searched Daniel Cole.
Employment records.
Tax identifiers.
Public databases.
The trail stopped four years ago.
The same year Tomas Morales died.
Elena whispered, “Maybe Daniel is one of the men who attacked me.”
Dominic looked at Lily.
“Did you see anyone else that night?”
Lily nodded slowly.
“A younger man.”
“Did he look like this?”
She leaned toward the photograph.
Then shook her head.
“No.”
Dominic exhaled.
Lily pointed at another part of the picture.
“But he did.”
Everyone looked.
She was pointing not at Daniel.
At Tomas.
Elena’s face went blank.
“What?”
Lily touched the image of her dead father.
“The other man looked like Daddy.”
Elena grabbed the table.
Cross asked, “Lily, are you saying you saw your father the night your mom got hurt?”
Elena snapped, “No. She was two when Tomas died. She barely remembers him.”
Lily looked frightened.
“I know Daddy’s picture.”
Elena pulled her close.
“It’s okay.”
Dominic studied the staff photo.
Tomas had a brother.
Maybe a cousin.
Maybe Lily had seen someone similar.
He turned to Elena.
“Did Tomas have family in Chicago?”
“No.”
“Brothers?”
Elena hesitated.
“One.”
Dominic waited.
“Gabriel.”
“Where is he?”
Her face became pale.
“I don’t know.”
“When did you last see him?”
“The day after Tomas’s funeral.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“What happened?”
Elena looked at Lily.
Then at Cross.
Then at Dominic.
“Gabriel told me Tomas wasn’t dead.”
Before anyone spoke again, the lights snapped back on.
The kitchen looked ordinary under electricity, which somehow made the discoveries on the table worse.
Cross gathered the printed records into separate stacks.
Dominic watched him.
“Who else has seen these?”
“My analyst.”
“Name?”
“No.”
Dominic’s eyes hardened.
Cross did not care.
“You hired me because I am not one of your men. That means you do not get to turn my people into names on a board.”
Elena looked between them.
“For once, I agree with him.”
Dominic leaned back.
“That is becoming a habit.”
“It is becoming a good night.”
Nobody laughed.
Cross tapped the photograph of Daniel Cole.
“If Vincent fabricated a son’s death, then this is bigger than money. You hide a person for twenty years because the person is useful, dangerous, or both.”
Dominic looked at Daniel’s teenage face.
“Vincent never did anything for only one reason.”
Elena’s voice was quiet.
“Neither did my father.”
Dominic glanced at her.
For the first time, they were not talking about Matteo as saint or victim.
They were talking about him as a man.
Complicated.
Secretive.
May you like
Capable of love and terrible judgment in the same week.
That frightened Dominic more than mythology ever had.
