Chapter 2 - The Bride Who Knew Too Much
The hidden passage was barely wide enough for two people.
Cold air moved through it, smelling of stone, dust and old wood.
Dominic walked first.
Gabriel brought up the rear.
I was in the middle, trying not to think about how absurd my life had become.
Twenty-four hours ago, I had been an accountant worried about leaving work on time.
Now I was hiding inside a secret passage beneath the home of Chicago’s most feared man while his future wife searched for me.
“Where does this lead?” I whispered.
“To the old carriage house.”
“You have secret tunnels.”
“We have several.”
I stared at him.
He glanced back.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re judging me.”
“I’m an accountant. I judge everyone’s structural inefficiencies.”
A tiny smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
It vanished almost immediately.
We reached the carriage house.
Gabriel opened a reinforced side door and led us into a dark office filled with monitors.
Every screen showed a different part of the estate.
Dominic removed his cuff links.
“Show me.”
I walked to the desk.
“Show you what?”
“How they got the biometric authorization.”
I sat.
My fingers moved over the keyboard.
Within minutes, I found the access trail.
My stomach tightened.
“Dominic.”
“What?”
“The authorization didn’t happen tomorrow.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
He moved beside me.
“Impossible.”
“No.”
I pointed.
“The system was altered seventy-two days ago. Someone created a temporary administrator profile.”
“Whose name?”
I clicked.
The screen displayed:
BEATRICE GALLAGHER.
My blood ran cold.
“I didn’t create that.”
“I believe you.”
I looked up.
“You believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if you were stealing twelve million dollars, you wouldn’t warn me.”
I almost laughed.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Gabriel studied the monitor.
“There’s another issue.”
He touched the screen.
The administrator profile had been created from an office terminal.
Mine.
But the access timestamp showed 2:13 a.m.
I had been at home.
I never worked nights.
“I have cameras in my apartment,” I said.
Dominic looked at me.
“You think someone entered?”
“I think someone wanted it to look as though I did it.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Then we find the person.”
We spent the next hour pulling records.
Three things became clear.
First, someone had copied my work credentials.
Second, someone had used them to alter Pierce financial files.
Third, the same person had accessed a secure archive containing documents related to Dominic’s late father.
I frowned.
“Why access old records?”
Dominic became very still.
“What old records?”
I opened the file.
It was an incident report from fifteen years earlier.
The Marlow-Pierce war.
The night Dominic’s father, Richard Pierce, had been killed.
I looked at him.
“You told the police your father was murdered in a warehouse explosion.”
“That’s what happened.”
“According to this file, there was one survivor.”
Dominic stared at the page.
“Who?”
The name was blacked out.
“Redacted.”
Gabriel cursed.
“Can you restore it?”
“Not directly.”
I examined the metadata.
Then froze.
“This was digitally redacted.”
“So?”
“So digital redactions are often reversible.”
I exported the file.
Removed the masking layer.
A name appeared.
Miriam Vale.
Dominic’s face changed.
“Who is that?”
“I don’t know.”
Gabriel did.
His expression hardened.
“Miriam Vale was your mother’s private nurse.”
I looked between them.
“Why would a nurse be the sole survivor of your father’s murder?”
Nobody answered.
Then a phone rang.
Gabriel checked his screen.
“My team at the cathedral.”
Dominic answered.
“What happened?”
A pause.
Then Gabriel’s face went pale.
“Sir, one of the altar storage rooms was broken into.”
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
“What was stolen?”
Gabriel looked at me.
“The old marriage register.”
Dominic closed his eyes for one second.
“What’s significant about that?”
I asked.
Dominic opened them.
“My father’s marriage certificate is in it.”
“Why steal that?”
“Because the woman listed as my mother may not have been my mother.”
The silence that followed was unbearable.
“You think someone changed your family records?” I asked.
Dominic nodded.
“Not someone.”
His eyes settled on the recovered name.
“Miriam Vale knew something.”
We returned to the house through a different passage.
Vivienne was still upstairs.
Nobody knew where she had gone.
Dominic ordered a full lockdown without letting the guests know.
At midnight, the party continued.
Music.
Champagne.
Laughter.
Meanwhile, beneath the house, we found evidence that someone had been moving through the service corridors.
A broken camera.
A shoe print.
And a bloodstained white glove.
I crouched beside it.
“What happened here?”
Dominic looked at the glove.
“Someone was injured.”
Gabriel touched his earpiece.
“We found one of the fake caterers.”
“Alive?”
“Barely.”
Dominic walked toward the kitchen.
I followed.
A young man lay behind a stack of crates.
He was maybe twenty-five.
His shirt was soaked in blood.
Dominic knelt.
“Who sent you?”
The man coughed.
“I don’t know his name.”
“What do you know?”
“He said the bride would make sure you never saw Sunday.”
My stomach dropped.
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” I said.
The man looked at me.
“No.”
He shook his head.
“The wedding is tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow.”
“No.”
His lips trembled.
“They told us the real operation starts Sunday.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“What operation?”
The man looked terrified.
“The Chicago Exchange.”
Gabriel’s expression changed.
The Chicago Exchange was not a building.
It was the city’s unofficial financial network.
A group of bankers, politicians, industrialists and criminals who secretly controlled which businesses survived and which ones disappeared.
Dominic had spent years refusing to become part of it.
Someone had decided that marriage would change that.
The dying man grabbed Dominic’s sleeve.
“Your bride isn’t marrying you.”
Dominic leaned closer.
“She’s marrying your name.”
Then the man passed out.
We sent him to a private clinic.
By three in the morning, Dominic and I were alone in the office.
He poured two glasses of water.
Not whiskey.
Water.
“You don’t drink?” I asked.
“I drink when I need to forget.”
“And tonight?”
“I need to remember everything.”
He handed me a glass.
I accepted it.
He sat across from me.
“Tell me the whole story.”
“What story?”
“How you found all this.”
I stared at the glass.
“My father.”
Dominic waited.
“He died seven years ago.”
“I remember.”
“You went to the funeral.”
“I did.”
“My father told me never to trust numbers that ended in sixes.”
Dominic frowned.
“What?”
“He said people use round numbers to hide guilt, but sixes hide fear.”
I smiled sadly.
“I didn’t understand him then.”
“Do you now?”
“Yes.”
I placed my glass down.
“Every suspicious transfer ended in six.”
Dominic sat upright.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because I wasn’t sure.”
“About Vivienne?”
“About you.”
He stared at me.
“I knew she was suspicious. I didn’t know whether you were involved.”
His eyes hardened.
“So you investigated me.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“You’re not clean.”
He almost smiled.
“I assumed you’d say that.”
“But you’re not what they think you are.”
“What do they think I am?”
“A monster.”
He leaned back.
“What do you think?”
“I think you became one because somebody convinced you there was no other way to protect your family.”
His expression went blank.
“That sounds dangerously close to sympathy.”
“It’s not sympathy.”
“What is it?”
“An accountant’s professional assessment.”
He laughed.
It was the first real laugh I had ever heard from him.
Then the lights went out.
Every screen died.
Gabriel drew his gun.
A red emergency light blinked on.
From somewhere upstairs came a scream.
Dominic stood.
“Stay here.”
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“I know the house systems better than you.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It is for me.”
He stared at me.
Then the sound of an alarm exploded through the house.
Gabriel ran toward the stairs.
Dominic followed.
I was right behind them.
We reached the ballroom.
Guests were screaming.
Tables had overturned.
Candles had gone out.
And at the center of the room stood Vivienne Beaumont.
Her white dress was perfectly clean.
Her face was calm.
In her hand was a black envelope.
She looked directly at Dominic.
Then at me.
And smiled.
May you like
“Congratulations,” she said.
“You just passed the first test.”
