Chapter 5 - Dominic’s Father Had Destroyed Both Our Families Because He Believed the Original Ledger Belonged to MeWe returned to Chicago with more questions than answers.
Dominic's father had been dead for seven years.
Yet the network still operated.
That meant someone had inherited Vesper.
Who?
The ledger might tell us.
My grandmother had left me one box when she died.
I had never opened it.
I had assumed it contained photographs.
It contained something else.
A small metal case.
Inside was a key.
The same Vesper symbol.
And one sentence:
When the Russo blood finds the Hayes blood, open the door.
Dominic stared.
"What door?"
I remembered something from childhood.
A house outside the city.
My grandmother's old summer home.
We drove there that night.
The house had been abandoned for years.
Inside the fireplace was a hidden lock.
The key fit.
A wall opened.
Behind it was a room filled with old files.
The original ledger.
Dominic looked at me.
"You were the key."
"No."
"My father thought you were."
The ledger contained the truth.
Vesper had been created by Dominic's father.
But he hadn't built it alone.
My grandfather had helped.
My family and the Russo family had been partners.
Then my grandmother discovered the truth.
The network had begun trafficking information about vulnerable families.
They controlled debts.
Loans.
Medical records.
Judges.
Lawyers.
Businesses.
If someone threatened to leave, Vesper destroyed them.
My mother tried to escape.
Elena tried to expose them.
Both women vanished.
Dominic had been branded because his father wanted him to remember the price of betrayal.
And I had been kept poor because my father wanted me dependent.
It was all connected.
Then Dominic found the final page.
A list of heirs.
His name.
Mine.
And one handwritten note:
THE CHILD WILL UNITE THE LEDGER.
I stared.
"What child?"
Dominic looked at me.
Then at the date.
It was written twenty-eight years earlier.
The date of my birth.
My stomach dropped.
Someone had planned for our families to produce an heir.
Before Dominic and I had ever met.
Before we knew each other.
Before the marriage.
I looked at Dominic.
"They knew we'd be together."
"Apparently."
"And they wanted it."
"Apparently."
That frightened me more than anything.
Because it meant our marriage might not have been entirely our choice.
Maybe Dominic had needed a wife.
Maybe I had needed money.
But perhaps someone else had been waiting for us to meet.
Then we heard a noise.
A gunshot.
The wall behind us shattered.
Dominic pulled me down.
A sniper.
Another shot.
He grabbed the ledger.
"Run."
We escaped through the back door.
The car was already waiting.
But the driver was dead.
Someone had beaten us there.
Dominic looked at me.
"Vesper knows we found it."
I held the ledger.
"No."
May you like
I looked at the road.
"They knew before we did."
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