Chapter 2 - The House Behind the Iron Gates
Emma did not want to go with Dominic.
She said it three times.
Then someone fired a bullet through her kitchen window.
The glass shattered above Lily’s coloring table.
Dominic moved before Emma even screamed.
He threw himself over Lily, shielding the little girl with his entire body while his security men dragged Emma behind the wall.
The bullet buried itself inside the refrigerator.
Lily started crying.
Dominic lifted her into his arms.
“Look at me,” he said gently.
She clung to his neck.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Your mommy?”
Lily looked at Emma.
Emma nodded quickly.
“I’m okay.”
Dominic’s gaze turned toward the broken window.
The softness vanished.
“We leave now.”
This time Emma did not argue.
Twenty-five minutes later, the SUVs passed through iron gates surrounding an estate north of the city.
Lily pressed her face to the tinted window.
“Is that a castle?”
Dominic’s mansion rose beyond the trees, all pale stone, dark windows, and sweeping terraces.
Emma felt her old fear return.
Gabriel had once described this house.
He had grown up here.
He had hated the ballroom.
Loved the library.
Broken his arm jumping from the stable roof when he was thirteen.
Now his daughter was arriving without him.
Dominic watched Emma from across the back seat.
“You can leave whenever you want after the threat is handled.”
“I’m not staying longer than necessary.”
“I assumed you’d say that.”
“You don’t get to decide what happens to us.”
“No.”
His answer surprised her.
“I get to make sure you live long enough to decide for yourself.”
At the mansion, Lily immediately discovered a golden retriever named Bruno and forgot to be afraid for almost ten minutes.
Emma was shown to a guest suite with a bedroom for Lily connected by an interior door.
Fresh clothes in Emma’s size hung in the closet.
Children’s pajamas, books, crayons, and a stuffed rabbit waited on Lily’s bed.
Emma stared at Dominic.
“You arranged all this?”
“On the drive.”
“You have people who can buy an entire child’s wardrobe in twenty minutes?”
“I have people who are afraid to tell me it can’t be done.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
Dominic looked startled.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, what?”
“You say things like that as if they’re normal.”
“In my life, they are.”
“That’s the problem.”
The smile disappeared from his face.
“You’re right.”
That answer silenced her.
Later, after Lily fell asleep, Dominic brought Emma to his private study.
Photographs covered one wall.
Gabriel.
Victor Raines.
Shipping manifests.
Construction companies.
A grainy image of a man entering a warehouse.
Dominic handed Emma a folder.
“My investigators traced the men from your apartment. Both worked for a private security firm owned through three shell companies.”
“Owned by Victor?”
“Ultimately, yes.”
Emma felt sick.
“Why would he care about Lily?”
“Because Gabriel hid something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Dominic opened an old evidence file.
“After Gabriel disappeared, his apartment had been searched. So had his car. His bank accounts were drained. But there was one strange thing.”
He showed her a photograph of a small safe.
“They opened this and left twenty thousand dollars in cash untouched.”
Emma frowned.
“They weren’t looking for money.”
“No.”
Dominic leaned against the desk.
“They were looking for evidence.”
Emma thought about the dented blue box.
“Gabriel left letters.”
“I read them.”
“Not all of them.”
She went still.
“What do you mean?”
“Some are written in code.”
Dominic brought out the letters she had surrendered when they left the apartment.
Under a desk lamp, several lines appeared ordinary.
But Dominic pointed to the first letter of each paragraph.
E.
L.
L.
I.
S.
Emma frowned.
“Ellis?”
Dominic opened another.
B.
R.
I.
D.
G.
E.
“Ellis Bridge.”
Emma stared.
“That’s a place?”
“An abandoned rail bridge outside Joliet.”
Gabriel had hidden clues inside love letters.
Emma felt tears prick her eyes.
All these years she had believed the letters were only memories.
Dominic touched the paper carefully.
“He trusted you with the map.”
“No. He trusted the person he thought I would become.”
The next morning they drove to Ellis Bridge with eight armed security men.
Emma stayed in the armored SUV until Dominic confirmed the area was clear.
Beneath the rusted eastern support, they found a metal cylinder sealed inside a drainage pipe.
Inside was a flash drive.
And a photograph.
Dominic wiped dirt from the image.
His entire body stiffened.
Gabriel stood beside a man Emma did not recognize.
Dominic did.
“That’s Marco Bellini.”
“Who?”
“My father’s former consigliere.”
“Former?”
“He died five years ago.”
Dominic turned the photograph over.
Gabriel had written:
If I disappear, Marco knows who betrayed us.
Emma stared at the dead man’s face.
“Then we’re too late.”
Dominic shook his head.
“Maybe not.”
He zoomed in on the background of the photograph.
A hospital sign.
Saint Catherine’s Rehabilitation Center.
Emma frowned.
“That center closed years ago.”
“Publicly.”
Dominic called one of his men.
Within an hour, they learned Marco Bellini had not died.
A body had been buried under his name after a private plane crash.
The real Marco had been living under another identity in a long-term neurological care facility in Wisconsin.
Dominic looked at Emma.
“Gabriel kept him alive.”
“Why?”
“Because Marco saw something.”
That night, Emma found Dominic alone on the balcony.
He was holding Gabriel’s photograph.
“You blame yourself,” she said.
He did not turn.
“I was twenty-four when he vanished. I wanted control of the organization. We argued constantly. The last thing I said to him was that maybe the family would be stronger without him interfering.”
Emma’s chest tightened.
“You didn’t mean he should die.”
“Words don’t care what you meant once they become the last words.”
She stood beside him.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Dominic said, “Lily asked me if she can call me Uncle Dominic.”
Emma smiled faintly.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I’d have to earn it.”
Emma looked at him.
“You jumped in front of a bullet for her.”
“That was easy.”
“How is that easy?”
“Dying for family is easy.”
He finally met her eyes.
“Living in a way that deserves them is harder.”
Something shifted between them.
Not love.
May you like
Not yet.
But trust had taken its first dangerous step.
