Chapter 3 - THE SECOND DEAD MAN
Grant stared at the photograph until his hand began to shake.
Amara had never seen that happen.
He was Sebastian’s security chief, the man who could watch three entrances while answering a phone call and notice a stranger’s hand moving beneath a coat from forty feet away.
But now he looked like a boy.
“That’s not possible.”
Sebastian handed him the phone.
“You said that about my father too.”
Grant looked at Vittorio.
Vittorio’s expression held no surprise.
That bothered Sebastian immediately.
“You know him.”
Vittorio exhaled.
“Elias Holloway.”
Grant’s head snapped up.
“You know my father?”
“Yes.”
“You knew he was alive?”
Vittorio did not answer fast enough.
Grant crossed the hallway in two steps and shoved him against the wall.
Sebastian let him.
For three seconds.
Then he said, “Grant.”
Grant released Vittorio.
Barely.
“You have five seconds.”
Vittorio adjusted his coat.
“Your father worked for me.”
Grant laughed bitterly.
“No. My father was an accountant.”
“He was both.”
The hallway seemed to narrow around them.
Vittorio continued.
“Elias handled internal audits for the Romano Foundation. When we discovered money disappearing, he helped trace it.”
Grant’s eyes hardened.
“He died in a car accident.”
“That was the story.”
“You let me bury him too?”
Vittorio looked away.
Grant stepped forward again.
Sebastian blocked him.
“Not now.”
Grant stared at him.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“No,” Sebastian said quietly. “It isn’t.”
That stopped him.
For one moment, the two men understood each other perfectly.
Two sons.
Two funerals.
Two coffins.
Two fathers who had chosen disappearance over truth.
Amara held the ledger tighter.
“Why fake both deaths?”
Vittorio looked toward her.
“Because Dominic found out we were investigating him.”
Sebastian frowned.
“Dominic was stealing from the Foundation?”
“Dominic was moving money through it.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The money wasn’t for him.”
That answer was worse.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.
“Who was it for?”
Before Vittorio could answer, footsteps echoed from the lower level.
Grant checked the staircase.
“We need to move.”
Sebastian nodded.
They entered the library again.
Vittorio crossed to a bookcase, pulled a volume halfway out, and pressed something behind it.
A panel opened.
Sebastian stared.
“You knew about that?”
“I built it.”
“Of course you did.”
The passage beyond smelled like dust and old wood.
Grant went first.
Amara followed with the ledger.
Sebastian motioned for Vittorio to enter.
His father stopped.
“Celeste and Brooke—”
“We’re not abandoning them.”
Vittorio studied his son.
For the first time, pride broke through the fear.
“Good.”
Sebastian shut the panel behind them.
The narrow passage descended between the walls.
Amara’s shoulder throbbed where Celeste had grabbed her earlier.
Sebastian noticed.
“You all right?”
“I’ve been better.”
“You should have told me she hurt you.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of Celeste?”
Amara looked at him.
“Of what you’d believe.”
The words landed harder than she intended.
Sebastian’s face tightened.
“I should have known what kind of woman I was bringing into this house.”
“You stopped her from having me thrown out.”
“After thirteen months.”
“You’re not responsible for everything people do around you.”
He gave her a strange look.
“That may be the first time anyone has said that to me.”
Amara almost smiled.
Then Grant stopped ahead.
“Quiet.”
Voices drifted through the wall.
Dominic.
And Celeste.
“You said he’d bring it.”
“He will.”
“You sound confident.”
“I know Sebastian.”
Dominic laughed.
“No, sweetheart. You know the version of Sebastian he allowed you to marry.”
Amara felt Sebastian tense behind her.
Celeste said, “Brooke has nothing to do with this.”
“She became involved the moment you used her.”
“I never agreed to hurt her.”
“No. You only agreed to steal access credentials from the man you planned to marry.”
Silence.
Sebastian closed his eyes.
There it was.
Not innocence.
Not completely.
Celeste had lied.
Just not about everything.
Dominic continued.
“You changed the safe code. You copied his signature. You gave me access to the Foundation server.”
Celeste’s voice dropped.
“You said it was to prove Vittorio stole from the family.”
“And you believed me.”
“My father spent twenty years telling us Vittorio destroyed ours.”
Vittorio flinched in the darkness.
Amara looked at him.
So Celeste’s involvement went deeper than money.
Family history.
Old resentment.
Dominic said, “All I need is the ledger.”
“And then you let Brooke go.”
“Of course.”
Nobody in the passage believed him.
Then another voice spoke.
Elias Holloway.
“He won’t let her go.”
Grant’s breathing changed.
His father sounded older, rougher than Grant remembered.
But it was him.
Celeste said, “Then why are you helping him?”
Elias answered, “Because my son is in this house.”
Grant’s eyes closed.
Dominic laughed.
“How touching.”
The conversation moved farther away.
Grant pressed his forehead briefly against the wall.
Sebastian touched his shoulder.
“Later.”
Grant nodded.
They continued downward until the passage opened into an old wine cellar.
Vittorio locked the panel.
Sebastian turned immediately.
“Start talking.”
Vittorio looked exhausted.
“Dominic didn’t create the theft network. He inherited it.”
“From whom?”
“Your grandfather.”
Sebastian stared.
Amara knew enough Romano history to understand the implication.
Salvatore Romano had built the family fortune.
To Sebastian, he had been nearly mythic.
Disciplined.
Brutal.
Loyal to blood.
Vittorio continued.
“Your grandfather used charitable organizations to move money for politicians, contractors, judges, anyone who needed funds to disappear.”
Sebastian’s expression hardened.
“You knew?”
“Not until after he died.”
“And Dominic?”
“He found the accounts first.”
Grant asked, “Why didn’t you shut it down?”
“I tried.”
Vittorio looked at Sebastian.
“That is why I disappeared.”
Sebastian gave a cold laugh.
“You keep calling it disappearing as if you missed a train.”
“I was supposed to die for real.”
Silence.
Vittorio lifted his shirt.
A long scar crossed his abdomen.
“Dominic arranged the car bombing.”
Sebastian’s anger faltered.
“Your funeral happened because the men who saved me understood that if Dominic knew I survived, he would finish the job.”
Grant looked at him.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
Vittorio nodded.
“Elias pulled me from the car.”
Sebastian looked down at the ledger.
“So you both vanished.”
“We began collecting evidence.”
“For six years?”
“We weren’t only tracking money. We were tracking people.”
Vittorio opened the ledger to the last section.
Pages had been cut out.
Sebastian noticed immediately.
“Where are the missing pages?”
Vittorio’s face changed.
“Those are what Dominic wants.”
“I thought he wanted the ledger.”
“He thinks the pages are still inside it.”
“What’s on them?”
“Names.”
“Whose?”
“Everyone who helped him.”
Amara frowned.
“If the pages are missing, where are they?”
Vittorio looked directly at her.
“In a place Dominic cannot access.”
Sebastian noticed the look.
Again.
“You recognized Amara’s name upstairs.”
Vittorio said nothing.
Sebastian stepped closer.
“Why?”
Vittorio turned to Amara.
“What was your mother’s name?”
Amara’s grip tightened around the ledger.
“Why?”
“Please.”
She hesitated.
“Evelyn Cole.”
Vittorio sat down slowly on a wine crate.
Grant looked between them.
Sebastian said, “What?”
Vittorio stared at Amara as if seeing a ghost.
“Your mother worked for the Foundation.”
Amara shook her head.
“No. She was a medical billing clerk.”
“At St. Catherine’s Hospital?”
“Yes.”
“She found duplicate payments routed through patient assistance accounts.”
Amara’s face lost color.
Her mother had died twelve years earlier.
A supposed hit-and-run.
Police never found the driver.
Vittorio continued carefully.
“She contacted me.”
“No.”
“Amara—”
“No. My mother had nothing to do with your family.”
“She was the first outsider who gave us proof.”
Amara stepped backward.
Sebastian moved beside her but did not touch her.
Vittorio’s voice softened.
“She copied the missing pages.”
Amara stared at him.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said they were somewhere Dominic couldn’t access.”
“Because Evelyn told me that before she died.”
Amara’s eyes filled.
“You knew she was in danger?”
“Yes.”
“And you let her die?”
Vittorio looked devastated.
“I tried to move her.”
“You tried?”
“She refused to leave you.”
Amara stopped.
“What?”
“She said disappearing would destroy her daughter’s life.”
Amara’s breath caught.
Vittorio reached inside his coat.
Sebastian immediately tensed.
His father slowly removed an envelope.
Old.
Yellowed.
The name AMARA was written across the front.
Amara recognized the handwriting before he said anything.
Her mother’s.
Her knees almost gave out.
Sebastian caught her elbow.
Vittorio held out the envelope.
“Evelyn gave this to me three days before she died.”
Amara did not take it.
For twelve years she had kept only three things written by her mother.
A birthday card.
A grocery list.
A note tucked into a school lunch.
Now another piece of her mother was waiting in a dead man’s hand.
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because she told me not to unless Dominic came looking for the pages.”
Amara finally took it.
Her fingers trembled as she opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet.
My sweet Amara,
If you ever receive this, it means the thing I was afraid of has finally found you.
I am sorry.
There is something hidden in the house where we lived before your father left.
Not money.
Not jewelry.
The truth.
Do not trust anyone who says they are helping because of the Romano name.
Trust the man who remembers the blue birds.
Amara stopped reading.
Sebastian looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
Her heart began pounding.
Blue birds.
A memory came back.
Her childhood bedroom.
Her mother standing on a chair.
Wallpaper with tiny blue birds.
A loose baseboard beneath the window.
Then Amara remembered something else.
Something she had forgotten for twenty years.
A man had visited their house when she was seven.
A man her mother introduced as “Mr. Holloway.”
He had helped repair that exact wall.
Amara slowly turned toward Grant.
Grant’s face went pale.
“My father.”
Before anyone could speak, the cellar door opened.
Elias Holloway stood there.
A weapon hung at his side.
Grant stopped breathing.
“Dad?”
Elias looked at his son.
For one heartbeat, his face broke.
Then he raised the gun.
Not at Grant.
May you like
At Vittorio.
“Give me Evelyn Cole’s letter.”
