Chapter 4 - THE SECOND LION
Victor looked at his empty hand for three long seconds.
Then he reached into his coat.
Every guard moved.
“Easy,” he said.
He removed a handkerchief.
Inside it lay the second lion ring.
Bent.
Scratched.
And stained with something dark around the edge.
Elena stared.
“Where did you get that?”
Victor placed it on the table.
“My study.”
Dominic laughed once.
“You expect us to believe that?”
“I haven't worn it in two years.”
Noah leaned against Elena.
“That one's wrong.”
I looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“The kitchen one was shiny.”
Victor's ring looked old enough to have been dragged beneath a truck.
Dominic picked up his own.
Polished silver.
Identical lion.
Noah pointed immediately.
“Like that.”
Dominic's face hardened.
“I wasn't there.”
Julian spoke for the first time.
“You had black shoes.”
Dominic glanced down.
Black leather.
“So do half the men in Chicago.”
Julian frowned.
“You smelled like oranges.”
Dominic looked confused.
Elena wasn't.
She turned toward the doorway.
“Luca.”
My security chief wasn't in the dining room.
But I understood.
Luca Ferraro used an orange-scented hand cleaner obsessively because he hated the smell of gun oil.
He'd worked for my family for seventeen years.
Dominic looked at me.
“He has access to everything.”
Including duplicate insignia.
Including guard schedules.
Including my house.
Including Sofia's garage the night she left.
Victor sat slowly.
“This changes things.”
“No,” Elena said. “It confirms them.”
I looked at her.
“What aren't you saying?”
She hesitated.
“Yesterday, someone entered the boys' apartment while they were with my sister downstairs.”
“Your sister?”
“Rosa. She has helped raise them.”
Another person who knew my sons when I did not.
I swallowed the anger.
“Go on.”
“The man didn't take money. Didn't take the television. Didn't hurt anyone. He opened the red keepsake box.”
“The rosary.”
“Yes.”
Dominic leaned back.
“If Luca took it, he took it for someone.”
His eyes went to Victor.
Victor's went to Dominic.
Father and son accusing each other without words.
I was finished watching.
“Marco.”
My guard entered.
“Find Luca.”
“He's downstairs.”
“Don't alarm him. Keep him there.”
Marco nodded and left.
Then Mateo tugged Elena's sleeve.
“Can we go home?”
The question destroyed the atmosphere more efficiently than a gunshot.
Elena knelt.
“Not yet, sweetheart.”
“I want my dinosaur blanket.”
Leo nodded quickly.
“Me too.”
Julian asked, “Can Dad get it?”
The room went silent.
He had said Dad as casually as asking for water.
Then he seemed to realize what he'd done.
He looked at me uncertainly.
“Are you?”
I stared at four faces that were somehow Sofia and me together.
I didn't need a laboratory to tell me what my eyes, Sofia's handwriting and an entire room of terrified adults already knew.
But I also understood something else.
Being their father was not a fact I got to announce because blood gave me permission.
I crouched beside them.
“I think I am.”
Mateo frowned.
“You think?”
Elena almost smiled.
I corrected myself.
“I am.”
Noah looked at me.
“Where were you?”
There are questions powerful men can answer with money.
That wasn't one.
“I didn't know about you.”
“Why?”
“Because grown-ups made bad decisions.”
Victor's jaw tightened.
Including me, I thought.
Especially me.
Mateo studied my face.
“Do you have dinosaurs?”
“No.”
He looked disappointed.
“I can fix that.”
That earned the smallest smile.
Then Dominic spoke.
“The blue case.”
Everyone looked at him.
“If Sofia hid evidence, that's why Luca searched the apartment. He wanted the key.”
I stood.
The boys remained downstairs with Elena while Victor, Dominic and two guards followed me upstairs.
I had not entered Sofia's bedroom in months.
Nothing had changed.
Her cream coat still hung behind the door.
A bottle of perfume sat on the vanity.
The bed was made.
And beside the mirror sat the blue enamel case.
I picked it up.
Locked.
Dominic examined the tiny keyhole.
“No way to open it without damaging the mechanism.”
“We can break it.”
Victor stopped me.
“Sofia bought that case in Florence. It has a spring compartment beneath the tray. Force the lid and the bottom locks permanently.”
I looked at him.
“You know a lot about my wife's jewelry.”
His face tightened.
“She showed me once.”
I did not believe him.
Not entirely.
Elena entered behind us.
I hadn't heard her follow.
“The boys are with Rosa on video downstairs,” she said. “Marco is watching them.”
She stared at Sofia's coat.
Then walked to it.
“What?”
“Sofia gave me that coat the afternoon before she left.”
“You left it here.”
“She took it back.”
Elena slid her fingers into the lining.
There was a tear inside one pocket.
She pulled out a folded piece of paper I had never seen.
A hospital invoice.
St. Catherine's.
Four neonatal incubators reserved under false names.
Victor closed his eyes.
Dominic whispered, “She planned it.”
Elena nodded.
“She knew the boys might come early.”
On the back was another notation.
A North Star Logistics vehicle number.
I recognized it.
Truck 417.
“What is that?” Elena asked.
Dominic looked sick.
“That truck wasn't carrying freight.”
Victor moved toward him.
“Careful.”
Dominic ignored him.
“Truck 417 was the vehicle Nico used the night he died.”
My younger brother.
Twelve years earlier.
Killed in an ambush that had started the bloodiest period of my life.
I stared at the number.
“Sofia wasn't investigating only her own escape.”
“No,” Dominic said.
“She was investigating Nico.”
Victor's voice hardened.
“Nico's death has nothing to do with this.”
I looked at him.
For the first time, I saw fear.
Real fear.
I unfolded the invoice completely.
Sofia had written one line beneath the truck number.
ASK VICTOR WHY THE ROUTE CHANGED.
Nobody breathed.
Then Elena whispered:
“Oh, Sofia.”
A second line appeared beneath the fold.
May you like
Only three words.
DOMINIC WAS THERE.
