Chapter 3 - The Secret Daughter
The woman called herself Elena Moretti.
She claimed to be Dominic's aunt.
She also claimed to know why Sadi had been hunted.
Dominic did not believe her.
Not at first.
“You expect me to trust a woman who walks into my house after midnight carrying a photograph from my childhood?”
Elena folded her hands.
“No.”
“Good.”
“You should trust evidence instead.”
She pushed the birth certificate forward.
Dominic looked at it.
The names were unmistakable.
His father.
His mother.
A second daughter.
Elena.
Born four years before Dominic.
His mother had apparently given birth to a girl named Elena Russo.
Dominic had never heard the name.
He looked at Matteo.
His brother avoided his eyes.
That told Dominic more than anything.
“You knew.”
Matteo remained silent.
Dominic stepped closer.
“Did you know?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“For years.”
Dominic's voice dropped.
“How many secrets have you been keeping from me?”
Matteo looked exhausted.
“Too many.”
Sadi watched him.
“You should start talking.”
Matteo laughed bitterly.
“You still command rooms like you own them.”
“I used to.”
“You always did.”
Dominic slammed his hand onto the table.
“Enough.”
Elena opened another file.
“Three years ago, your father’s hidden ledger disappeared.”
Dominic stared.
“The ledger contained payments made to judges, police officials, port authorities, and politicians.”
Sadi nodded.
“And one final payment.”
Elena looked at Dominic.
“Five million dollars.”
“For what?”
“To make Dominic Russo disappear.”
Dominic frowned.
“What?”
Elena continued.
“Someone paid your father's old allies to eliminate you.”
Matteo finally spoke.
“They wanted the entire empire.”
Dominic stared at him.
“You wanted the empire.”
Matteo's eyes filled with anger.
“I wanted to keep it from people worse than us.”
Sadi stepped forward.
“Then why did you order me killed?”
Matteo looked at her.
“I didn't.”
Her face hardened.
“You were photographed giving the order.”
“I gave an order to move you.”
“Your men chased me to the bridge.”
“I sent them to protect you.”
Sadi laughed.
“They shot at my car.”
Matteo's voice cracked.
“They were not my men.”
Dominic froze.
Matteo pulled out his phone.
He showed them a recording.
A conversation from three years earlier.
Matteo's voice could be heard saying:
“Get Sadi out of the city tonight. No one touches her.”
Another voice answered:
“What if she refuses?”
Matteo said:
“Then scare her.”
Sadi's face changed.
A second voice laughed.
It sounded exactly like Dominic.
But Dominic had never said those words.
Sadi looked at him.
“You know that voice.”
Dominic swallowed.
“My father.”
The room went silent.
His father had been dead for nine years.
Yet the recording was from three years ago.
Elena explained.
“Your father had a twin.”
Dominic stared.
“What?”
His entire understanding of his family began collapsing.
Elena whispered:
“Anton Russo survived the warehouse fire.”
Dominic took a step backward.
The warehouse fire had supposedly killed his father's twin decades earlier.
Anton had been declared dead.
But according to Elena, he had been alive.
And he had been controlling the family from the shadows.
“Where is he?”
Elena shook her head.
“We don't know.”
Sadi looked at the recording.
“Then he is behind this.”
“No,” Elena said.
Everyone turned.
“He used to be.”
Dominic's voice hardened.
“Used to be?”
Elena nodded.
“He was betrayed.”
“By whom?”
Elena looked at Matteo.
Matteo whispered:
“Me.”
Dominic stared at his brother.
Matteo finally broke.
“I discovered what Anton was doing. He had been siphoning money from our operations and building his own network.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I knew what you'd do.”
“What would I do?”
“Kill him.”
Dominic said nothing.
Matteo continued.
“I tried to remove him quietly.”
Sadi asked:
“And failed.”
Matteo nodded.
“And then Anton realized I was the only person who could expose him.”
Dominic looked at Sadi.
“And you became collateral.”
Matteo looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
Sadi's voice trembled.
“Three years.”
Matteo closed his eyes.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I almost was.”
He could not answer.
Elena stepped between them.
“There is one more problem.”
Dominic looked at her.
“Anton is not the person threatening us now.”
“Then who is?”
She handed him another photograph.
It showed a young man.
Dominic stared.
He knew him.
The man had worked at the docks.
A quiet accountant named Nathan Hale.
Dominic remembered firing him six months earlier.
“He's behind everything?”
“He has been cleaning money through your companies for years.”
Dominic frowned.
“Why would an accountant want a crime empire?”
Elena looked at Sadi.
“He doesn't.”
Sadi's expression changed.
“He wants the ledger.”
Dominic understood.
The ledger wasn't just about money.
It contained proof of every alliance, every betrayal, every secret deal.
Whoever controlled it could blackmail half the city.
And Sadi had seen it.
“You read the ledger.”
She nodded.
“Before I disappeared.”
Dominic's eyes narrowed.
“What did you see?”
“A name.”
“Whose?”
Sadi looked at Elena.
Then at Matteo.
Then at Dominic.
“Your mother's.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
“My mother died naturally.”
“That is what you were told.”
Sadi's voice was quiet.
“She was poisoned.”
Dominic's face hardened.
“By whom?”
“No one knows.”
Elena answered.
“But the ledger includes the payment.”
Dominic grabbed it.
Before he could open the page, every light in the mansion went out.
A single gunshot came from upstairs.
Then another.
Matteo pulled a weapon.
Dominic shoved Sadi behind the table.
Ray shouted from the hallway.
“Boss!”
A body fell down the staircase.
It was one of the guards.
Dominic ran upward.
Sadi followed.
At the end of the hallway stood Nathan Hale.
He held a black pistol.
He smiled.
“Finally.”
Dominic raised his weapon.
“Drop it.”
Nathan laughed.
“You still don't understand.”
He fired.
Dominic ducked.
The bullet shattered the mirror behind him.
Nathan ran through the window.
Dominic rushed after him but stopped when Sadi screamed.
She was staring at the wall.
Blood was dripping from behind a painting.
Dominic pulled it away.
A hidden compartment had been broken open.
Inside was a single black ledger.
And beneath it was a handwritten note.
Dominic read it aloud.
“If Sadi ever comes back, tell her the man she trusted most is not the man who betrayed her.”
Sadi whispered:
“What does that mean?”
Dominic turned the note over.
On the back was another sentence.
“Ask Dominic who was in his bedroom the night she disappeared.”
Sadi looked at him.
Dominic felt the blood leave his face.
Because he remembered.
Three years ago.
The night before her supposed death.
He had woken at 3 a.m.
Someone had been standing in his bedroom.
May you like
He had assumed it was Matteo.
But he had never seen the person's face.
