Chapter 2 - THE MAN OUTSIDE THE GATE
The first SUV stopped hard enough to rock on its suspension.
My hand was already beneath my jacket.
“Stay behind me,” I said.
Elena didn't move.
Neither did the boys.
That irritated me until I looked at their faces.
They weren't disobeying.
They were frozen.
Four little children staring toward the windows as if they had practiced being afraid.
That changed something in me.
I pressed the security button beside the dining-room door.
“Marco.”
My head guard answered immediately.
“Boss.”
“Nobody enters.”
A pause.
Then, “You need to see who's here.”
“I said nobody enters.”
“It’s Dominic.”
My cousin.
Dominic Moretti had grown up three houses from me. His father, Victor, was my father's younger brother and the closest thing I had left to a parent.
Dominic handled finances for half my legitimate companies.
He also knew every guard schedule, every property and every private weakness I had.
I looked at Elena.
She had gone even paler.
“Why is Dominic here?”
“I don't know.”
I grabbed the photograph from the table.
“You knew somebody was coming.”
“I knew somebody had found where the boys lived.”
That was not the same answer.
“Elena.”
Her jaw trembled.
“I brought them here because I thought this was the last place anyone would try to take them.”
My anger sharpened.
“You used my house as a hiding place without telling me?”
“I was going to tell you tonight.”
“You were going to tell me I have four sons tonight?”
Mateo looked up.
“What's sons?”
Silence swallowed the room.
Elena closed her eyes.
I crouched before him.
“It means... children who have a father.”
He considered that seriously.
Then he pointed at me.
“You?”
I couldn't answer.
Not yet.
Through the window, Dominic stepped from the SUV.
He wore no coat despite the September wind.
No weapon visible.
His hands remained where my guards could see them.
Then he looked directly at the dining-room window.
At me.
And raised something in his right hand.
A silver watch.
My lungs stopped working.
Sofia's watch.
I had bought it for our fifth anniversary.
There was a tiny scratch beside the number seven where she'd dropped it on our marble bathroom floor.
It had vanished the night she died.
I crossed the room so quickly Elena caught my sleeve.
“Alejandro, don't.”
“How does he have that?”
She stared at the watch.
“I don't know.”
“That answer is getting old.”
Dominic called from the courtyard.
“I came alone, Alejandro.”
He gestured toward the SUVs.
The men remained beside them.
“Those are my father's security teams. You know them.”
I did.
That made it worse.
“Why are you here?”
Dominic looked toward the boys.
“Because Elena brought something into your house that Victor has spent five years trying to keep buried.”
Elena stepped beside me.
“You followed us.”
“Yes.”
One of the boys whimpered.
Dominic heard it.
His expression changed.
Not triumph.
Shame.
“I wasn't following them until yesterday.”
“That's supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
He held up Sofia's watch.
“This belonged to her.”
“I know exactly who it belonged to.”
“I took it off her wrist after the crash.”
The world seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
I walked outside.
Every guard around us became motionless.
Dominic placed the watch on the stone wall between us rather than handing it to me.
“Don't come closer,” I warned.
He didn't.
“You told me Sofia died instantly.”
“I didn't tell you that.”
“My uncle did.”
“Yes.”
The word landed hard.
Dominic looked twenty years older than the cousin I remembered drinking bourbon with at my wedding.
“She was alive when I reached the car.”
Behind me, Elena gasped.
I turned.
“You knew?”
She shook her head.
“I knew she survived the crash long enough to reach the hospital. I didn't know Dominic was there.”
I looked back at him.
“What happened?”
Dominic's face tightened.
“Not here.”
“Everything happens here now.”
He glanced toward the windows.
Four small faces watched us.
“I was following Sofia that night.”
Elena whispered a curse.
“Why?”
Dominic looked at me.
“Because your uncle told me to bring her back.”
Victor.
The man who had raised me after my father died.
The man who stood beside me at Sofia's funeral.
“He told me she'd taken something that belonged to the family,” Dominic continued. “I thought he meant financial records.”
“What did she take?”
“I never found out.”
Elena gave a bitter laugh.
“Yes, you did.”
Dominic turned.
“What?”
“The rosary.”
Something changed in his eyes.
He recovered quickly, but not quickly enough.
“What rosary?”
Elena stared at him.
“Sofia's silver rosary.”
Dominic said nothing.
I stepped closer.
“You know about it.”
“I know my father spent years looking for it.”
That was the first moment I believed Dominic might actually be frightened.
Not of me.
Of Victor.
I looked down at Sofia's watch.
Its face was cracked.
The hands had stopped at 2:17.
My fingers remembered fastening it around Sofia's wrist the morning of our anniversary dinner.
I'd complained she was taking too long to get ready.
She'd smiled and told me powerful men needed patience.
I picked it up.
Cold metal.
Five missing years.
Then Noah, the quietest of the boys, came through the doorway.
Elena hurried after him.
“Noah, sweetheart—”
He wasn't looking at me.
He was looking at Dominic.
More specifically, at Dominic's right hand.
Dominic wore a heavy silver ring bearing the Moretti lion.
Noah lifted one tiny finger.
“That ring.”
Dominic went still.
Elena crouched.
“What about it?”
Noah swallowed.
“The man in our kitchen had that.”
Every guard in the courtyard shifted.
Dominic slowly looked at his hand.
“Noah,” Elena said carefully, “are you sure?”
The boy nodded.
“He opened our red box.”
Dominic's face changed completely.
“I've never been inside their house.”
“You expect me to believe a four-year-old invented your ring?”
“No.”
Dominic pulled the ring from his finger.
“My father gave me this when I turned twenty-one.”
He placed it beside Sofia's watch.
Then he looked directly at me.
“But he had two made.”
A cold feeling crawled up my spine.
“Who has the other one?”
Dominic answered without hesitation.
“My father.”
And before anyone could speak, headlights appeared beyond the gate.
A black sedan stopped behind the SUVs.
The rear door opened.
Dominic's voice dropped.
“Alejandro.”
My uncle Victor stepped out.
May you like
Dominic didn't take his eyes off him.
“Whatever you do, don't let him near those boys.”
