Chapter 6 - The Brother Who Came to the Funeral
Dominic had learned early that every family carried at least one story nobody wanted examined too closely.
A missing uncle.
A sudden inheritance.
A marriage that ended without explanation.
A cousin who moved away and became a subject instead of a person.
The Morales family, it turned out, had Gabriel.
Elena put Lily back to bed before she explained.
This time the child did not argue.
Maybe she could feel the adults had crossed into a part of the night children should not have to understand.
When Elena returned, she closed the hallway door behind her.
“Tomas and Gabriel were identical twins.”
Cross stared at her.
“You left that out.”
“I left out a lot because I didn’t think it mattered.”
Dominic’s voice was careful.
“Identical?”
“Yes.”
“That explains Lily.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean maybe?”
Elena sat down.
“Gabriel was trouble.”
Cross raised an eyebrow.
“Define trouble.”
“Not your kind.” She looked at Dominic. “Regular trouble.”
Dominic almost smiled.
Elena continued.
“Gambling. Bad jobs. Worse friends. He loved Tomas, but he resented him too. Tomas was the one their mother trusted. Tomas finished college. Tomas got married. Tomas had Lily.”
“And Gabriel?”
“He drifted.”
“When did you last see him before the funeral?”
“Almost a year earlier.”
“What did he say after Tomas died?”
Elena folded her arms.
“He showed up at my house the morning after the funeral. He looked terrible. Hadn’t slept. Kept checking the street.”
“Sounds familiar,” Dominic said.
She ignored him.
“He said the body in Tomas’s casket wasn’t Tomas.”
Cross leaned forward.
“Did you see the body?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Closed casket.”
Dominic and Cross looked at each other.
Elena saw it.
“Do not.”
“Do not what?” Dominic asked.
“Turn this into some fantasy where Tomas has been alive for four years and chose not to come home.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You thought it.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes flashed.
“If he were alive, he would have come for Lily.”
Dominic did not argue.
That certainty belonged to her.
Cross asked, “What happened to Gabriel after he told you?”
“I told him to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because I had buried my husband the day before, and his twin brother came into my kitchen smelling like whiskey and told me the funeral was fake.”
“Reasonable.”
“He said Tomas had called him three nights before the murder and told him if anything happened, he should not trust the police, Harbor, or anyone named Cole.”
Dominic’s face hardened.
“What else?”
“That was it.”
“No.”
Elena glared.
“What?”
“That was not it. Men like Gabriel don’t come to a grieving widow with half a warning unless they want something.”
Elena’s eyes dropped.
Cross looked at her.
“What did he want?”
She exhaled.
“Money.”
“How much?”
“Five thousand.”
“For what?”
“He said he had to leave Chicago.”
“Did you give it to him?”
“I didn’t have five thousand dollars.”
“Did Vincent?” Dominic asked.
Elena froze.
There it was.
A connection she had not made until that second.
“Vincent came later that day.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“With the ten thousand.”
“Yes.”
“Did Gabriel come back?”
“No.”
Cross said, “Maybe he got the money somewhere else.”
“Or maybe Vincent gave it to him,” Dominic said.
Elena looked sick.
“To disappear?”
“Maybe.”
Cross opened another database.
“Full name?”
“Gabriel Tomas Morales.”
“Middle name same as his brother?”
“Family thing.”
“Date of birth?”
Elena gave it.
Cross searched.
Nothing recent.
No current address.
No active driver’s license in Illinois.
No tax filings under that identity in five years.
No death record either.
Cross tapped the keyboard.
“Here.”
A misdemeanor arrest in Indiana three years earlier under the name Gabriel Morrow.
Photograph attached.
Elena covered her mouth.
“Gabriel.”
Dominic studied the face.
Tomas’s face.
Older.
Harder.
Scar near the eyebrow.
Same man Lily might easily mistake for her father.
“Where is he now?”
Cross scrolled.
“Charges dismissed. Address was a motel outside Gary. Trail ends there.”
Dominic looked at Elena.
“He’s alive.”
“Yes.”
“And he was in the region.”
“Yes.”
Elena’s hands began to shake.
Dominic noticed.
“You’re thinking about Lily.”
“I’m thinking about the night I got hurt.”
“What exactly happened?”
“I told you.”
“You told me two men came in.”
“I don’t remember every minute.”
“Try.”
She looked toward the hallway.
Dominic softened his tone.
“Not for me. For her.”
Elena closed her eyes.
“They came after midnight.”
“Door forced?”
“No.”
That surprised both men.
“You opened it?” Cross asked.
“No. Someone used a key.”
Dominic’s attention sharpened.
“Who had keys?”
“Me. Building management.”
“Vincent?”
“I don’t know.”
“The locks were supposedly replaced under a fake security invoice,” Cross reminded them.
Elena continued.
“I heard the door. I got out of bed. Vincent was inside.”
“Alone?”
“At first.”
“What did he say?”
“That we needed to talk.”
“About?”
“He asked where Tomas’s notebook was.”
“The ledger.”
“Yes.”
“I told him I burned everything.”
“Did he believe you?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“He smiled.”
Elena shivered.
“That was always the worst thing about Vincent. He smiled when he already knew the answer.”
Dominic knew exactly what she meant.
“Then?”
“Another man came in.”
“Gabriel?”
“I didn’t see his face clearly. Hood. Baseball cap. I thought he was one of Vincent’s men.”
“What happened?”
“They argued.”
Dominic and Cross both stopped.
“With each other?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. The second man told Vincent he had promised nobody would touch me or Lily.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“That doesn’t sound like an employee.”
“No.”
“Then why did you think Vincent sent him?”
“Because they came in together.”
“Or arrived for the same reason.”
Elena stared at him.
“What are you saying?”
“That Gabriel may be working with Vincent.”
Cross shook his head.
“Or against him.”
Dominic looked at him.
Cross continued.
“Maybe Gabriel led Vincent there thinking he could control the situation. Maybe he had been feeding him information for years. Maybe he wanted money. Maybe he wanted the ledger for himself.”
Elena’s voice was barely audible.
“Then how did I get hurt?”
She knew, of course.
But memory sometimes asked permission before returning.
She stared at the table.
“I tried to get to Lily’s room.”
Her breathing changed.
Dominic recognized panic before she did.
He lowered his voice.
“Elena. Look at me.”
She did not.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes lifted.
“You’re here.”
Her jaw tightened.
“This house. Kitchen. Me. Cross. Lily is asleep down the hall.”
She breathed.
“Again.”
She inhaled slowly.
The panic receded.
Dominic waited.
“I tried to get to Lily,” she said. “Vincent grabbed my arm. I hit him. The other man pulled him off me.”
“Then?”
“I slipped. Hit the edge of the table. That’s the bruising.”
“So Vincent didn’t beat you.”
“No.”
Dominic absorbed that.
Important.
Not because it made Vincent innocent.
Because truth mattered more now than a story that fit.
“What did Gabriel say?”
Elena’s face went blank.
“I remember one thing.”
“What?”
“He called Vincent Uncle Vin.”
Silence.
Dominic stared at her.
Cross sat back slowly.
“Uncle?”
“Yes.”
Dominic stood.
“That makes no sense.”
Elena looked at him.
“Maybe it wasn’t Gabriel.”
Dominic’s eyes moved toward the laptop.
Daniel Cole.
Vincent’s supposedly dead son.
Tomas Morales’s identical twin.
Two young men of roughly similar age.
A thought formed.
Ugly.
Impossible.
Then less impossible.
“Cross,” Dominic said.
“Already there.”
Cross began pulling records.
Birth certificates.
School records.
Old addresses.
Names of mothers.
Daniel Cole’s birth record was sealed.
That alone was strange.
Vincent had always said Daniel’s mother died when the boy was a baby.
No photographs.
No stories.
No grave visits Dominic remembered.
Cross found an archived high school yearbook from a suburban school.
Daniel Cole appeared in tenth grade.
Then vanished.
Two years later, a death notice had been published.
Short.
No photograph.
Private services.
Elena stared at the screen.
“He looks like Tomas.”
Dominic turned.
“What?”
She leaned closer.
The old yearbook image was grainy.
Teenage face.
Dark eyes.
Straight nose.
A familiar shape to the mouth.
Not identical.
But close.
Cross pulled up Gabriel’s arrest photo beside Daniel’s school picture.
The resemblance was undeniable.
Elena whispered, “Oh my God.”
Dominic said, “Maybe cousins.”
Cross searched maternal records.
It took twenty minutes.
The answer appeared in a scanned county filing from 1988.
Vincent Cole had petitioned for guardianship of a two-year-old boy named Daniel Morales.
The child’s mother was listed as deceased.
The father section was blank.
The petition was withdrawn three months later.
A handwritten notation referenced a private adoption.
Elena stood so quickly her chair fell.
“Morales?”
Dominic read the page again.
Daniel Morales.
Not Cole.
Cross pulled another family record.
The deceased mother’s name:
Carmen Morales.
Elena covered her mouth.
“Tomas’s aunt.”
Dominic looked at her.
“You knew her?”
“No. She died before I met Tomas. But his mother talked about her.”
“What did she say?”
“That Carmen got involved with a married man in Chicago. Had a baby. Family scandal. Then she died.”
Cross slowly turned toward Dominic.
“Married man.”
Dominic’s stomach tightened.
Vincent had been married in 1986.
His wife left him in 1989.
The dates fit.
Elena stared at Daniel’s photograph.
“Vincent’s son is a Morales.”
“And related to Tomas and Gabriel,” Cross said.
Dominic’s phone on the table suddenly buzzed.
The jammer had stopped.
Signal returned.
Three missed calls appeared.
All from Vincent.
Then a text arrived.
DOMINIC, DO NOT TRUST CROSS.
A second message followed.
DANA PIERCE IS ALIVE.
A third.
SHE IS THE ONE WHO BUILT THE COMPANIES.
Cross watched Dominic’s face.
“What?”
Dominic did not answer.
Then the final message came.
ASK ELENA WHERE TOMAS REALLY GOT THE LEDGER.
Dominic looked up.
Elena had read his expression.
“What did he say?”
Dominic turned the screen toward her.
She read the messages.
Her face lost all color.
Cross looked at her.
“Elena?”
She whispered, “I never told Vincent that Tomas called it a ledger.”
Dominic’s eyes became cold.
Elena looked toward the bedroom where Lily slept.
Then back at the men.
“And there’s something else I never told either of you.”
Dominic waited.
She swallowed.
“The ledger wasn’t Tomas’s.”
“Whose was it?”
May you like
Elena’s answer changed the shape of the entire investigation.
“My father’s.”
