Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED
“He said the picture came from inside your house.”
Emma Carter's words were barely audible, but they changed everything.
I looked at my sister.
Lucia stood beside the staircase, her face drained of color.
“Dominic,” she whispered. “I can explain.”
“Then explain.”
The doctor was already preparing Emma for transport. She had a concussion, two broken ribs, and injuries that could become life-threatening if we wasted another minute.
But Emma had just told me something more dangerous than the identity of her attackers.
Someone inside my home had helped them.
“I took that photograph,” Lucia admitted.
The room went silent.
“What photograph?”
“Emma's mother. Helen Carter. I visited her at St. Catherine's Memorial last Thursday.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
“Why?”
“Because she's been getting worse. Emma wouldn't accept money, so I was trying to arrange financial assistance through the family foundation.”
“Did Emma know?”
Lucia shook her head.
“I didn't want to embarrass her.”
I looked down at the young woman lying on my marble floor.
She had worked herself nearly to death rather than ask for help.
And now someone had turned her mother's suffering into a weapon.
“Where did you keep the picture?”
“In your office. I printed it with the medical assistance application.”
“Who had access?”
Lucia hesitated.
“Samuel.”
Samuel Bell had managed my family's financial affairs for twenty-six years. He was sixty-two, meticulous, and so familiar with the mansion that nobody questioned his presence.
He had served my father before me.
“He handles the foundation accounts,” Lucia continued. “I asked him to prepare the paperwork.”
Marco looked at me.
Neither of us spoke.
The doctor's voice interrupted.
“Mr. Castellano, we need to move her.”
I bent beside Emma.
“You're going to the hospital. I'll make sure your family is safe.”
Her swollen eye opened slightly.
“Don't let them move my mother.”
“What?”
“The man with the snake tattoo. He said she'd be somewhere I couldn't find her.”
Then her eyes closed.
I turned to Marco.
“Get two vehicles to St. Catherine's. Find Helen Carter before anyone else does.”
He was already moving.
Twenty minutes later, I stood outside the emergency department while surgeons examined Emma.
Lucia remained beside me.
“You think I betrayed her,” she said.
“I think someone used information you gave them.”
“I was trying to help.”
“Good intentions don't protect people, Lucia.”
She flinched.
I regretted my tone, but not the words.
My sister had always believed generosity could repair anything. She organized charity dinners, paid school tuition for children she barely knew, and visited hospital patients who had no family.
But she had never understood how easily kindness could be exploited by men like Kolov.
“Samuel wouldn't do this,” she insisted.
“Maybe not.”
“Dad trusted him.”
I looked away.
“My father trusted plenty of people who didn't deserve it.”
Before she could answer, Marco approached with a hospital security officer.
“We found Helen Carter,” he said.
“Is she safe?”
“For now. But somebody entered an emergency transfer order for her at eleven forty tonight.”
Lucia stared at him.
“That can't be right.”
“Transfer to where?” I asked.
“An extended-care facility in New Jersey. No address listed. Just a transport authorization.”
“Who signed it?”
Marco handed me a printed record.
The signature at the bottom belonged to Lucia Castellano.
She stumbled backward.
“I never signed that.”
The security officer looked uncomfortable.
“The authorization came through your foundation's medical assistance account, ma'am.”
I examined the signature.
Every curve looked authentic.
Even the small upward stroke Lucia added to the last letter of her surname was there.
Somebody had studied her handwriting.
And they had access to the foundation.
“Cancel the transfer,” I ordered.
The officer hesitated.
“Mr. Castellano, only the attending physician can—”
“Then find the physician.”
Marco leaned close.
“There's something else.”
He showed me a photograph taken from the hospital's security camera.
A man in blue medical scrubs stood beside Helen Carter's room, holding a transport clipboard.
His face was partially turned away.
But his left wrist was visible.
A black snake curled beneath his watch.
I felt something cold settle in my chest.
The men who attacked Emma hadn't finished their work.
They had simply moved to their next target.
Helen Carter was lying beneath a thin hospital blanket when I entered her room.
She looked older than her fifty-eight years.
Cancer had taken most of her hair, leaving a soft gray covering beneath her knitted cap. Her wrists were painfully thin.
But her eyes were alert.
“Where's Emma?”
Her first words were for her daughter.
“She's being treated downstairs.”
Helen tried to sit up.
“What happened?”
I pulled a chair beside her bed.
“Some men hurt her.”
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh, God. Please, no.”
“She made it here alive. The doctors are helping her.”
Helen began crying.
Not loudly.
Just silent tears slipping into the lines around her face.
“She promised me she'd be careful.”
I didn't know what to say.
Because Emma had been careful.
She had simply trusted that walking to work was safe.
A young man appeared in the doorway.
“Mom?”
He stopped when he saw me.
Benjamin Carter was nineteen, with Emma's dark eyes and a sharp, guarded expression. His wheelchair was fitted with worn gloves hanging from the armrest.
He looked from his mother to me.
“Where's my sister?”
I stood.
“Ben, I'm Dominic Castellano.”
“I know who you are.”
His voice hardened.
“Your family crest is the reason somebody beat my sister half to death.”
I accepted the accusation.
He deserved to say it.
“I'm going to help her.”
“She's been helping everybody for years.”
Ben wheeled closer.
“She pays Mom's bills. She helps me with tuition. She worked through pneumonia last winter because she couldn't afford to miss three shifts.”
His voice cracked.
“And now she's lying downstairs because somebody wanted to send you a message.”
“Ben,” Helen whispered.
“No, Mom. He needs to hear it.”
I looked directly at him.
“Every word.”
Something in his expression shifted.
Not forgiveness.
But surprise.
Then he reached beneath his mother's pillow and removed a folded hospital document.
“A transport driver came here yesterday,” he said. “Said a private foundation had arranged everything.”
He handed me the form.
It carried the Castellano family crest.
And beneath it, in small print, was an account number I recognized.
Our foundation's emergency medical fund.
The account Samuel Bell controlled.
Before I could speak, Helen seized my wrist.
“Dominic.”
I turned.
Her eyes were fixed on my face.
“You look so much like your father.”
I froze.
“You knew him?”
She laughed once, bitterly.
“Oh, I knew Enzo Castellano.”
Ben looked startled.
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
Helen's grip tightened.
“For eighteen years, I've kept my mouth shut because your father promised my children would be safe.”
“What promise?”
She stared toward the closed hospital door.
“Pier Nine. The fire that killed four people.”
I remembered the fire.
I had been twenty-three.
My father had come home that night with ash on his coat and blood on his cuffs.
He never explained either.
Helen started trembling.
“Your father gave me money afterward. He told me to forget what I'd seen.”
I leaned forward.
“What did you see?”
She looked directly into my eyes.
“Proof that someone paid to start that fire.”
May you like
Then she whispered something that made my stomach turn.
“And Dominic, the payment carried your father's signature.”
