THE MAFIA BOSS HAD FINALLY FOUND A CHANCE FOR PEACE—BUT HIS WIFE WAS ENDURING EXCRUCIATING PAIN IN SILENCE BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T WANT TO DESTROY EVERYTHING HE'D WORKED FOR!

Dominic did not reach for his gun.

That was the first choice that surprised Clara.

His right hand had moved halfway toward the drawer beside the bed before he remembered the promise he had made. Instead he turned off the bedroom lamps, keeping only the dim light from the bathroom, and crossed to the door without making a sound.

“Who is it?” he called.

A voice answered from the corridor. “Mr. Carretti? It's Anton. The photographer.”

Clara gripped the edge of the mattress.

Dominic glanced back at her. The phone still showed the hallway feed, but the screen had gone black.

“Why are you upstairs, Anton?”

“I was told you wanted the original files. Mr. Mercer said to bring them directly.”

A brief pause.

“Please, sir. I don't think I'm supposed to be here.”

Dominic opened the door only as far as the security chain allowed. Anton stood outside holding a slim camera case. His collar was crooked. Behind him, the passage appeared empty.

“Who brought you up?” Dominic asked.

“One of the guards. I didn't get his name.”

“Describe him.”

“Tall. Dark hair. A scar under his ear.”

Dominic recognized the description of a temporary guard assigned to the west gate that morning. A man Leo had approved.

He unlatched the chain and pulled Anton inside. “Leave the case. Sit down.”

The photographer looked at Clara's bare cast and winced as though he had stumbled into a family tragedy. Then he saw the open document on the desk, and his expression changed.

“I was told not to speak to you,” Anton blurted.

“By whom?”

“Mr. Mercer. He said you'd misunderstand the pictures. Said my business would disappear if I mentioned the garage.”

Dominic felt the last clean piece of the night give way.

“What pictures?”

Anton placed the camera case on the bed with trembling hands. “I was at the Halcyon that afternoon. An executive portrait for the Port Authority. I was taking photographs near the loading entrance when the garage alarm went off. A man came around the corner carrying a piece of metal. I shot without thinking.”

“Did you see my wife?”

Anton glanced at Clara. “Only in the pictures. I didn't realize it was her.”

He opened the case and produced a memory card wrapped in tissue. “I copied everything before deleting the originals. Mercer knew I'd been there. I thought the sensible thing was to keep quiet.”

“Why come tonight?” Clara asked.

Anton looked at her cast again. “Because when you smiled in that ballroom, you looked exactly like my sister when she came home with a broken rib and told everyone she'd fallen.”

His voice cracked. “I kept quiet then, too. I don't think I can do it twice.”

Dominic took the card and slid it into a laptop. Twelve files appeared.

The first showed an anonymous gray vehicle near the garage ramp. The next caught a blurry figure moving behind a pillar. In the third, a steel bar hung above a woman's raised forearm. Dominic's stomach lurched.

The fourth photograph showed Clara stumbling backward. The attacker was half out of frame, but his left cuff carried a small gold embroidered anchor.

“Security insignia,” Dominic murmured.

“Not ours,” Clara said. “Mariner Trust.”

Dominic enlarged the image. A pale scar crossed the man's jaw. He could not see enough of the face to identify him, but he could see a port access badge clipped to his belt.

The fifth photograph was clearer. It showed the second figure on the ramp, holding a silver lighter beside a parked black sedan. The face was hidden beneath the brim of a cap.

Clara leaned close. “That's the one.”

Dominic magnified the car's side window. In the glass, reflected backward, was part of a license plate.

“Can you read it?” Anton asked.

“Not yet.”

He copied the files to an encrypted drive, then closed the laptop. He had enough evidence to blow the house apart with accusations. He did not have enough to know which accusation was true.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

“Dominic?” Leo Navarro called. “We've got a security issue.”

The four words might have been ordinary on any other night.

Dominic looked at Clara. She gave the smallest shake of her head.

“Wait downstairs,” he called.

“Sir, I'd rather—”

“Downstairs, Leo.”

Footsteps retreated.

Anton exhaled. “He was at the Halcyon. The man who took my cameras for inspection said he worked for Mr. Navarro.”

Dominic closed his eyes briefly.

He had met Leo at nineteen. They had slept in adjoining hospital chairs after a fire killed Leo's father. There were debts between them that money could not measure. The idea that Leo had opened the door to this danger was almost harder to comprehend than Clara's injury.

Almost.

“Anton, I need you to do something difficult,” he said. “Call your wife. Tell her to take your children to her mother's tonight. Then stay in the guest apartment over the old stable. No one sees you leave with me.”

Anton nodded. “And the pictures?”

“They stay in three places. If one disappears, the others survive.”

When Anton left by the servants' staircase, Dominic turned to Clara.

“You knew there were pictures?”

“No. I only saw the man on the ramp for a second.”

“Did anyone else see your arm?”

“Elise. Owen, before they took him. And a nurse at the clinic.”

“What's the nurse's name?”

“Mara Quinn. She knows how to keep secrets.”

Dominic nearly smiled. “Apparently everyone in this city does.”

The smile faded when Clara tried to lift the laptop with her injured arm. He caught it before she could.

“Don't,” he said gently.

“I hate feeling useless.”

“You're the reason I'm standing here.”

She looked down. “I didn't do it so you'd owe me.”

“I know. That's what frightens me.”

Dominic called the one physician he trusted outside his organization's payroll. Dr. Elise Moreno answered on the first ring.

“She needs rest,” Elise said when he explained. “And a follow-up scan in three days. This is not a minor sprain, Dominic. Her ulna is fractured. Whoever struck her used serious force.”

“Could she have lost the use of her hand?”

“Yes. She was fortunate. But pain is not the only thing she needs care for.”

Elise let the silence hold until he heard the warning beneath it.

“I understand,” he said.

“Do you? Because she was more terrified of your reaction than of the cast.”

He looked at Clara, who pretended to be occupied with her phone.

“No,” he admitted. “I'm beginning to.”

After the call, Dominic walked downstairs alone.

Leo waited outside the study with two guards. His jacket was wet, his expression watchful.

“We found an unauthorized camera transmitter on the upstairs router,” Leo said. “I'm having the system swept.”

“Who approved the temporary west-gate team?”

“I did. Why?”

“Because one of them escorted a guest into my wife's private hallway.”

Leo's face hardened. “Name?”

“A scar under the ear.”

Leo looked to the guards. “Find Rafe Donnelly. Quietly.”

Neither man moved until Dominic nodded. Then they hurried away.

“What's going on?” Leo asked.

“I'm not sure. That concerns me more than if I were sure.”

Leo studied him. “You think there's a leak.”

“I know there is.”

“Then let me help.”

Dominic almost told him about Clara. Years of habit pressed the truth toward his tongue. But the photograph of the silver lighter remained in his mind, and he made a second choice he disliked.

“Find Donnelly,” he said. “And tell Silas I want to see him at seven.”

Leo nodded once. “I'll handle it.”

Dominic turned away before his friend could read his face.

At midnight, he returned upstairs to find Clara waiting at the bedroom window. The rain had eased into a silver mist. She held the folded glove against her chest like an object left behind by a stranger.

“I heard you talking to Leo,” she said.

“He's searching for the guard.”

“Do you trust him?”

Dominic stood beside her. “I trusted him this morning.”

It was the most truthful answer he had.

She leaned her forehead against his shoulder, careful not to touch him with the cast. He wrapped an arm around her.

“Tell me what you were afraid I'd do,” he said.

“Start a war.”

“And if I had?”

“Owen would die. People at the clinic would suffer. And one day you'd look at what you'd done for me, and I'd become the reason.”

Dominic turned her toward him. “You are not responsible for the choices I make.”

“Then make one I can live with.”