Chapter 3 - My Father Left Me A Secret That Could Start A War
The next morning, Dominic showed me the full ledger.
My father's handwriting filled dozens of pages.
Accounts.
Payments.
Names.
Dates.
I understood none of it.
Until I saw one line.
Lydia Bennett — Protected Asset.
I stared.
"What does that mean?"
Dominic didn't answer.
"What does protected asset mean?"
"I don't know."
"You're lying."
"Not about this."
He placed another file on the desk.
My birth certificate.
Everything was normal.
Except a handwritten note on the back.
DO NOT LET THE CASTELLANOS FIND HER.
My hands began shaking.
"Who wrote that?"
"My father."
"Why would he protect me?"
"I don't know."
"Then who does?"
Dominic looked at me.
"Maybe your father."
A knock interrupted us.
Leo entered.
"We have a problem."
"What?"
"Someone accessed the old Russo archives."
Dominic stood.
"When?"
"Last night."
"Who?"
"Your father's security code was used."
Dominic went still.
"My father has been retired for two years."
Leo looked at me.
"Then someone has his code."
We went to the family archives.
It was an underground vault beneath a Russo-owned building.
Dominic opened a hidden drawer.
Several files were missing.
One was labeled Bennett.
He looked at me.
"My father's records on your family are gone."
I swallowed.
"What was in them?"
"I don't know."
"Then we find out."
For the next twelve hours, we searched every warehouse, office and storage facility connected to the Russo organization.
Nothing.
Then I remembered something.
"My father used to keep receipts inside the piano."
Dominic looked at me.
"The piano?"
"When I was little. He said it was safer than a bank."
We found the piano in his old apartment.
The building had been vacant for months.
The inside was dusty.
Dominic opened the bottom panel.
A small envelope was taped beneath the strings.
My name was written on it.
Lydia.
My hands trembled as I opened it.
Inside was a key.
And a note.
Trust the man who notices the silence.
I stared at Dominic.
"What does that mean?"
He looked at the key.
"I don't know."
I did.
The man who noticed my silence.
Dominic had.
At the Onyx Room, everyone had been watching the obvious.
I was watching the spaces between things.
And somehow my father knew the same instinct would save me.
The key belonged to a locker at Grand Central.
Dominic wanted to send Leo.
I refused.
"It's for me."
"You don't know what's inside."
"My father left it to me."
"I'll come with you."
"I knew you would."
We arrived after midnight.
The locker contained a small tape recorder.
A passport.
And another ledger.
I opened the passport.
My father's photograph.
Different name.
Different country.
My stomach dropped.
"He wasn't Michael Bennett."
Dominic looked over my shoulder.
"His real name was Daniel Bellamy."
"Who is Daniel Bellamy?"
"An accountant who disappeared seventeen years ago."
"Why?"
Dominic stared at the ledger.
"Because he worked for both Russo and Castellano."
I opened it.
The ledger documented payments between the two families.
But one name appeared in every major transfer.
A third family.
The Moretti family.
Leo's family.
My father had secretly been tracking them.
At the bottom of the last page was a note.
The war is manufactured.
The poison is the beginning.
The debt is the bait.
Lydia is the key.
I looked at Dominic.
"What does that mean?"
He was silent.
Then his face changed.
"Your father wasn't the one who stole the ledger."
"Who was?"
"The Morettis."
Leo's face appeared in the doorway.
He looked at the ledger.
Then at me.
And for the first time since I had met him, the smile disappeared entirely.
"My God."
Dominic looked at him.
"What?"
Leo stepped closer.
"That's my father's handwriting."
Silence.
Dominic stared at him.
"Your father was dead."
"He was supposed to be."
Leo looked at me.
"Your father and mine worked together."
I felt dizzy.
"Then why did mine disappear?"
Leo answered quietly.
"Because he discovered what mine was planning."
Dominic stepped between us.
"And what was he planning?"
Leo swallowed.
"A war that would put him in control of all three families."
Everything clicked.
My father didn't owe one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
He had stolen the money to hide evidence.
The debt was fake.
The Castellanos had been manipulated into believing I was the one who owed it.
The poison was meant to kill Dominic.
The chaos afterward would trigger a war.
Then the Morettis would take control of what remained.
I looked at Dominic.
"What do we do?"
His eyes met mine.
"We survive."
Then the lights in Grand Central went out.
A gunshot echoed.
Dominic grabbed my waist and pulled me behind him.
Leo reached for his weapon.
A voice came over the intercom.
"Bring Lydia Bennett to the old church by sunrise, or Dominic Russo dies next."
The voice was distorted.
But I recognized one word.
The name my father had whispered when I was a child.
Bellamy.
May you like
My father wasn't dead.
He was calling us.
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