Chapter 4 - THE FIRST WIFE
They left Pier Two before the police arrived.
Damian’s men wanted to return to the marine safe house.
Clara refused.
“If Elena found it once, so can whoever fired at us.”
Damian did not argue.
That frightened her more than if he had.
They moved Margaret into a private ambulance, switched vehicles beneath an interstate overpass, then drove north in a convoy that kept changing shape. Clara sat beside her mother while Damian remained in the front seat, speaking in short, controlled sentences to men whose names Clara did not know.
Margaret held Clara’s hand.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve inherited my worst habit.”
“What?”
“Lying badly.”
Clara looked at her mother.
Margaret’s face was tired, but there was still irritation in it.
That was reassuring.
“Tell me about the woman,” Clara said.
“The blonde?”
“Yes.”
Margaret closed her eyes for a moment.
“She came in wearing scrubs. I thought she was a nurse until she locked the door.”
“Did she threaten you?”
“No.”
“Touch you?”
“She checked my monitor, disconnected the leads properly, put a blanket around me, and told me we had thirty seconds before bad men reached the room.”
Clara stared.
“That doesn’t sound like a kidnapping.”
“I objected strongly.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“She told me Clara would understand later.”
Damian turned slightly in the front seat.
“What exact words?”
Margaret looked at him.
“You listen to everything, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“She said, ‘Your daughter is the only honest person left in his house. If I can keep you alive, she may keep the children alive.’”
Damian’s face went unreadable.
Clara felt a chill.
“Why take you to the pier?”
“She didn’t.”
Everyone in the vehicle went quiet.
Margaret continued.
“The blonde woman left me in a van with another woman. Older. Dark hair. She said we were going somewhere safe.”
“What happened?”
“The van stopped. The dark-haired woman got a phone call. Then two men opened the doors.”
“You were taken from Elena?” Damian asked.
“I suppose so.”
“Did you see the men?”
“One had a tattoo behind his ear. Small crown.”
Damian cursed softly.
Clara leaned forward.
“What does that mean?”
“Carlo.”
“Who is Carlo?”
“My uncle.”
There was something in the way he said it that made the vehicle feel colder.
Margaret looked between them.
“I assume he is not the uncle who sends Christmas cards.”
Damian’s mouth tightened.
“He sends flowers to funerals.”
Clara stared at him.
“That is the most mafia sentence you have said all night.”
Margaret actually laughed.
Damian looked offended for half a second.
Then the moment vanished.
“Carlo Costello ran the organization before me,” he said. “He retired twelve years ago.”
“No one in your family retires,” Clara said.
“No.”
“Then where is he?”
“Officially? Sicily.”
“And unofficially?”
“I’m beginning to think much closer.”
Clara looked out the window at the highway lights moving through rain.
“Was he involved with Elena?”
Damian did not answer.
She waited.
Finally he said, “Yes.”
Two hours later they reached a house in western Massachusetts that belonged, according to Damian, to a company owned by a company that rented equipment to another company.
Clara did not bother asking how many layers that made.
The house sat beside a frozen reservoir, surrounded by bare trees and stone walls. It was old, plain, and warm. No obvious cameras. No visible guards.
That meant the guards were hidden.
The twins were already there with Briggs, the nurse, and two security men.
When Clara walked inside, Oliver heard her voice and began kicking in his carrier.
Owen smiled.
Margaret saw it.
Her eyes filled.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Clara lifted both boys, one at a time, letting her mother touch their cheeks.
“These are the children?” Margaret asked.
“Yes.”
“The ones you ran into a burning house for?”
Clara nodded.
Margaret looked at Damian.
“And their mother left them?”
Damian stood in the doorway.
“Yes.”
Margaret’s expression hardened with the moral certainty of a woman who had spent forty years cleaning rooms after rich people and had learned money did not improve character.
“Then she doesn’t deserve the name.”
Damian looked down.
Clara wondered if the words hurt because they were true.
After Margaret was settled, Clara found Damian alone in the kitchen.
He had removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves again. A glass of whiskey sat untouched beside him.
“You still haven’t told me about Elena.”
“No.”
“I’m not asking anymore.”
He looked at her.
“You think that works on me?”
“It worked at the pier.”
“That was your mother.”
“This is about the people trying to kill your sons.”
Damian stared at the whiskey.
“Elena Ward was twenty-four when I met her.”
Clara sat across from him.
“She was a prosecutor’s daughter.”
Clara blinked.
“You married a prosecutor’s daughter?”
“I was younger.”
“That is not an explanation.”
“It is the only one I have.”
He picked up the glass but did not drink.
“She knew my family had businesses. She did not know what kind.”
“When did she find out?”
“After we were married.”
“And?”
“She wanted me out.”
“Did you leave?”
“No.”
The answer came with no defense.
“I told myself I could control the worst parts if I stayed. That if I walked away, Carlo would take everything and become more violent.”
“Was that true?”
“Partly.”
“And partly?”
“I liked power.”
Clara did not expect the honesty.
Damian continued.
“Elena discovered Carlo was using Costello shipping routes for things I had forbidden.”
“What things?”
“People. Weapons. Anything profitable enough that he thought morality was a luxury.”
Clara’s stomach tightened.
“What did you do?”
“I confronted him.”
“And Elena?”
“She disappeared three days later.”
Damian’s hand closed around the glass.
“Her car went off a bridge. Divers found blood, part of her coat, personal effects. No body.”
“You believed she died.”
“I believed Carlo killed her.”
“Did you kill Carlo?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he had half the captains with him. A war would have killed dozens, maybe hundreds.”
“So you made peace.”
“I forced him out. Took control. Shut down the routes. He disappeared.”
Clara’s voice became cold.
“And you stayed in the same world that killed your wife.”
Damian met her eyes.
“Yes.”
She understood something then.
His guilt was not that Elena died.
His guilt was that her death had not been enough to make him leave.
“Victoria knows all of this?” Clara asked.
“Some.”
“Enough to use Elena’s name.”
“Yes.”
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Briggs stood in the doorway.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We received something through the emergency fax line.”
Clara almost laughed.
“Fax?”
Briggs shrugged.
“Harder to trace if you use the right relay.”
He placed a single sheet of paper on the table.
Three words were printed in the center.
SHE SAVED THEM.
Below it was a phone number.
Damian stared at the page.
“Who?” Clara asked.
He already knew.
“Elena.”
They called from a secure line.
A woman answered on the second ring.
“Damian.”
He stopped breathing.
Twelve years disappeared from his face in one second.
“Elena?”
“Don’t say my name again.”
His knuckles whitened.
“You’re alive.”
“Obviously.”
“Where are you?”
“Still asking the wrong questions.”
Clara watched him fight between anger and disbelief.
“You took Margaret.”
“I removed her from a compromised building.”
“You could have called me.”
“And told whoever inside your security team is selling your coordinates?”
Damian looked at Briggs.
Briggs stiffened.
Elena continued.
“I had six minutes before Vale’s people arrived. I got Margaret out. Carlo’s men intercepted my van.”
“Carlo is here?”
“He never left.”
The room went still.
“He has been operating through Vale for years,” Elena said. “Victoria joined them eighteen months ago.”
Damian’s voice lowered.
“Why?”
“Money. Freedom. Maybe hatred. Pick one.”
“She agreed to kill her sons.”
A pause.
When Elena answered, her voice had changed.
“I don’t know if she knew that part.”
Clara stepped closer to the phone.
“She asked if the nursery was done.”
“Who is that?” Elena asked.
“Clara Hayes.”
Silence.
Then, “The maid.”
Clara hated the word in her mouth.
“The woman who saved his children.”
Another pause.
“You have more courage than most of his soldiers.”
“I’m not interested in praise. Did Victoria know?”
“I think she knew there would be an attack. I think she was told Damian would be killed in Boston and the boys taken, not burned.”
Damian’s face hardened.
“That does not excuse leaving them.”
“No,” Elena said. “It doesn’t.”
Clara heard no sympathy in her voice.
“Why are you helping us?”
Elena laughed once, without humor.
“I’m not helping Damian.”
Damian flinched as if struck.
“I’m helping two children who never chose their name.”
“Then what do you want?” Clara asked.
“Carlo has something called the Ledger. Accounts, names, payments, police, judges, port officials. Every person he owns.”
“Where?” Damian asked.
“Vale has the access key. Victoria has the physical drive.”
“And Carlo?”
“Carlo has the gun pointed at all of them.”
Damian leaned over the table.
“Tell me where Victoria is.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll kill her before she tells you where the drive is.”
“I don’t need you deciding what I’ll do.”
“You never did.”
Old pain moved between them through the speaker.
Clara suddenly felt like an intruder.
Then Elena said, “Listen carefully. Your sons are not the target anymore.”
Damian’s eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean?”
“Carlo knows the attack failed. He knows the twins survived. He knows Clara survived.”
Clara felt cold.
Elena’s next words were quieter.
“He wants her alive.”
“Why?” Damian asked.
“Because Victoria’s story only works if the maid confesses to kidnapping the children.”
Clara stared at the phone.
“And if I don’t?”
“Then he makes you disappear and writes the confession himself.”
The line went dead.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Damian picked up the whiskey and poured it into the sink.
“What are you doing?” Clara asked.
“Changing the plan.”
“What plan?”
“The one where I hide you.”
Her pulse quickened.
“And the new one?”
Damian looked at her.
“The one where we make you impossible to erase.”
“How?”
“We tell the truth first.”
Clara stared.
“You mean the police?”
“No.”
“The press?”
“Eventually.”
He took the diamond earring from his pocket and placed it on the table.
“First, we make Victoria come to us.”
Clara felt the danger before he explained it.
“How?”
Damian’s face became cold again.
“By announcing that you remember her giving the order to kill the twins.”
“But I never heard that.”
“I know.”
Clara stood.
“So your plan is to lie publicly and make a desperate woman think I can put her in prison?”
“Yes.”
“That makes me bait.”
“Yes.”
She stared at him.
Damian held her gaze.
Then, very quietly, he added, “Only if you choose it.”
That changed everything.
Clara looked toward the room where the twins slept.
Toward the room where her mother rested.
Toward the man who, for once, had placed the decision in her hands.
She sat back down.
“Then we do it my way.”
Damian raised an eyebrow.
“What is your way?”
Clara picked up Victoria’s diamond earring.
“We stop acting like she’s only your enemy.”
She closed her fingers around it.
“She left those babies with me.”
May you like
Her eyes lifted to his.
“Now she gets to answer to me.”
