Chapter 2 - THE LAST PROMISE OF A DYING BROTHER
The last thing Eli Voss said before the bullets came was that Damon Kalas would make a terrible godfather.
“You’re too serious,” Eli had laughed, gripping the steering wheel as snow drifted across the highway. “That kid’s going to need somebody who knows how to smile.”
Damon had shaken his head.
“Your child is going to have you. That's enough trouble for one lifetime.”
Eli had laughed harder.
Three minutes later, he was dying in Damon's arms.
The first explosion threw their black SUV sideways.
The second shattered the windshield.
Damon remembered the smell of burning rubber, the screams over the security radio, and the terrible moment when Eli looked into the rearview mirror and understood what was happening.
“Down!”
Eli twisted the wheel.
A bullet tore through the driver's window.
Another struck the dashboard.
Damon reached for his gun, but Eli was already moving.
He pulled Damon toward the passenger-side door, shoved him behind the concrete barrier, and stepped into the gunfire wearing Damon's distinctive black overcoat.
The attackers saw the coat.
They fired.
Eli fell.
By the time Damon dragged him behind the vehicle, blood had soaked through his shirt.
“Stay with me,” Damon ordered.
Eli smiled weakly.
“Still giving orders?”
“Shut up. You're not dying.”
But Eli's breathing was already changing.
He caught Damon's sleeve with a bloody hand.
“Adriana.”
“I'll take care of her.”
“And the baby.”
“I swear.”
Eli's fingers tightened.
Then came the words Damon had spent six months trying to understand.
“Don't trust the people who know where she sleeps.”
His hand fell.
And the only brother Damon had ever loved was gone.
Now, six months later, Damon stood inside his own restaurant, staring at the pregnant widow he had failed to protect.
Adriana Voss was sitting in a private dining room, wrapped in a clean wool coat someone had brought from the manager's office.
A physician had examined her.
Her blood pressure was elevated, but the baby's heartbeat sounded reassuring. Because she was eight months pregnant and had fallen during the confrontation, the doctor recommended immediate evaluation at a hospital.
Adriana refused to leave.
Not until Damon answered one question.
“Did you send someone to my apartment?”
Damon went still.
“What?”
“Three weeks after Eli's funeral. Two men came to the building. They said you wanted me brought back to the house.”
“I never sent anyone.”
Adriana looked away.
“They knew everything. My address. My doctor's name. The date of my next appointment.”
Damon slowly sat opposite her.
“Why didn't you call me?”
Her expression changed.
“Because they had pictures.”
“Of what?”
She reached into the pocket of her worn uniform and pulled out an old photograph folded into quarters.
Damon opened it.
His stomach tightened.
The photograph showed Eli standing beside a black vehicle outside a warehouse.
Two men faced him.
One was Damon.
The other was a stranger whose face had been deliberately scratched away.
Across the bottom, someone had written:
ASK YOUR HUSBAND'S BROTHER WHO SOLD HIM OUT.
Damon studied the picture.
He recognized the warehouse.
He recognized the date stamped in the corner.
It had been taken four days before the ambush.
But he had not known anyone was watching.
“Who gave you this?”
“It was under my door.”
“Was there anything else?”
Adriana's eyes filled.
“A letter.”
“What did it say?”
She pressed both hands over her stomach.
“That Eli wasn't supposed to die. That you were.”
Damon felt the familiar weight of those words.
He had believed the same thing since the ambush.
But Adriana continued.
“It said Eli found out you were moving money through the Marquetti hotels. That he confronted you. And that you made a deal to keep him quiet.”
“Adriana—”
“I didn't believe it at first.”
Her voice cracked.
“I knew you loved him. I saw you cry at his funeral. But then somebody sent me a video.”
Damon stopped breathing for a moment.
“What video?”
“You standing beside Eli's body. Then walking away while he was still alive.”
The memory hit him like another bullet.
He had not walked away voluntarily.
His surviving security men had dragged him toward the second vehicle while he screamed for them to go back.
Eli was already dead.
But a carefully edited recording could make the scene appear different.
“Do you still have it?”
“No. My phone disappeared from my apartment two days later.”
Damon looked toward the door.
“Nico.”
His security chief entered immediately.
Nico Ferraro was forty-two, broad-shouldered, and had served Damon for eleven years.
“Find every camera that recorded the ambush,” Damon said. “Original footage. Not what the police gave us.”
Nico nodded.
“And the two men who visited her apartment?”
“Find them.”
When Nico left, Adriana studied Damon.
“You really didn't send them?”
“No.”
“Then how did they know so much?”
Damon remembered Eli's last warning.
Don't trust the people who know where she sleeps.
He had assumed his brother meant enemies outside their organization.
For the first time, he wondered whether Eli had meant someone much closer.
A sharp pain crossed Adriana's face.
She bent forward.
Damon immediately moved beside her.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Adriana.”
“Just a tightening. It happens sometimes.”
But her face was pale.
He knelt beside her chair.
“You're going to the hospital.”
“I can't afford it.”
The words hit harder than any accusation she had made.
Damon stared at her.
“Afford it?”
She looked embarrassed.
“My insurance doesn't cover everything. And if I miss tomorrow's shift, I'll lose the room I'm renting.”
For several seconds, Damon couldn't speak.
Eli had left money.
A great deal of it.
Damon himself had established a trust for Adriana and the baby immediately after the funeral.
Enough for them to live comfortably for decades.
“Adriana, the account I opened for you—”
“What account?”
Damon's blood turned cold.
“The trust. Eli's life insurance. The money from his share of the business.”
She stared.
“I never received anything.”
“That's impossible.”
“I received one letter saying his estate was under investigation and every account had been frozen.”
“Who signed the letter?”
She swallowed.
“Arthur Bell.”
Damon rose so abruptly that the chair behind him scraped across the floor.
Arthur Bell.
His chief financial officer.
A man who had managed the Kalas organization's legitimate accounts for nearly fifteen years.
A man Damon had trusted with financial details that even Nico wasn't permitted to see.
Arthur had personally assured Damon that Adriana's trust had been funded and transferred.
Damon took out his phone.
He called his private attorney, Margaret Shaw.
“Margaret. Pull every document connected to Eli Voss's estate.”
A pause.
“No, don't call Arthur.”
He looked at Adriana.
“And I want the original trust records. Tonight.”
After ending the call, Damon turned back.
“Somebody stole the money Eli left you.”
Adriana's face drained.
She touched the old watch beneath her coat.
“Eli said something strange before he left that last night.”
Damon waited.
“He said if anything happened, I should never sell this watch. Not even if we were starving.”
She opened her hand.
The scratched steel watch lay against her palm.
“He said you would understand.”
Damon took it carefully.
He turned it over.
The familiar engraving was still there.
BROTHERS BY CHOICE. FAMILY FOR LIFE. D & E.
But something else caught his attention.
One tiny scratch beside the final letter.
It had not been there when Damon gave Eli the watch.
The scratch looked deliberate.
A small arrow pointing toward the edge of the steel backing.
Before Damon could examine it further, Nico returned.
His expression was grim.
“We checked the restaurant's employee records.”
Damon looked up.
“And?”
“Adriana was hired four months ago under the name Anna Reed.”
“I know.”
“Someone bypassed the background checks. Her employment file carries an executive authorization.”
“Whose?”
Nico hesitated.
“Yours.”
Damon's expression hardened.
“I never authorized it.”
“That's what I thought.”
Nico handed him a printed document.
Damon studied the signature.
It looked exactly like his.
But below it was a small electronic approval code.
A code used by only three people in his organization.
Damon.
Margaret Shaw.
And Arthur Bell.
Then Nico placed a second document on the table.
It was an internal payment record.
A monthly transfer to an outside surveillance company.
The account paying the invoices belonged to the same holding company responsible for Adriana's supposedly frozen trust.
Damon read the recipient's name.
MARQUETTI SECURITY CONSULTING.
Adriana gripped the table.
“That's the family of the woman who slapped me.”
Damon nodded slowly.
The room became terribly quiet.
A moment later, his phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
One message.
YOU FOUND THE WIDOW. GOOD. NOW ASK HER WHAT ELI HID INSIDE THE WATCH.
Attached was a photograph.
Adriana leaving her apartment that morning.
Taken from directly behind her.
And standing only a few feet away was a man wearing a wide silver ring with a black stone.
Damon enlarged the image.
He recognized the ring.
He had seen it on the hand of a man sitting beside Arthur Bell at Eli's funeral.
Suddenly, Adriana screamed.
She clutched her stomach and doubled over.
Damon caught her before she fell.
“Adriana!”
Her breathing came in sharp gasps.
Then she looked down.
A small dark stain was spreading across the fabric of her uniform.
“Damon,” she whispered.
May you like
Her frightened amber eyes met his.
“Something's wrong with my baby.”
