Chapter 3 - THE CHILD IN THE RED COAT
Dominic stared at the photograph.
Julian looked seven years old.
Red winter coat.
Dark hair.
One mitten missing.
His small hand rested inside Gabriel’s.
Madeline’s father, Thomas Cross, stood on the other side.
Behind them was a brick building Dominic recognized.
An abandoned Moretti warehouse near the Hudson.
The photograph had been taken eight years ago.
When Julian had been twenty-four.
Not seven.
Dominic looked again.
“That isn’t Julian.”
His mother answered quietly.
“Yes, it is.”
Julian flinched.
Gabriel watched him.
Dominic felt anger rise.
Not the explosive kind.
The dangerous kind.
“Explain.”
Julian stepped forward.
Gabriel caught his arm.
Dominic’s eyes dropped to Gabriel’s hand.
“Take your hand off my brother.”
Gabriel smiled without humor.
“He came with me voluntarily.”
Julian pulled free.
“I did.”
Dominic looked at the blood on his sleeve.
“That doesn’t look voluntary.”
“It isn’t mine.”
Anthony moved nearer.
“Whose?”
“One of Gabriel’s men.”
Gabriel sighed.
“He panicked.”
“You brought armed men into my home.”
“I brought insurance.”
“You brought violence to a room full of guests.”
“And you built your life on the same thing.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
Hannah stepped closer to Madeline.
“What does the picture mean?”
Madeline looked exhausted.
For the first time that evening, the perfect fiancée was gone.
Her lipstick had faded.
Her engagement hairstyle was coming loose.
There was a bruise forming along her wrist.
“I was trying to keep this from happening.”
Dominic looked at her.
“You framed Hannah.”
Madeline’s face tightened.
“I tried to make you fire her.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She saw Gabriel.”
“So you threatened her brother?”
“No.”
Hannah’s head snapped toward her.
Madeline looked genuinely shocked.
“What brother?”
Hannah pulled out her phone.
She showed the photograph.
Madeline read the message.
KEEP QUIET. FINISH YOUR JOB.
Her face changed.
“That wasn’t me.”
“Then who?”
Madeline looked toward Gabriel.
For the first time, Gabriel’s expression hardened.
“I didn’t send it either.”
Dominic gave a cold laugh.
“How comforting. Apparently everybody in my house is innocent.”
Julian pointed toward the photograph.
“Look at the date.”
Dominic turned it over.
November 18.
Eight years earlier.
Three days before Gabriel’s accident.
“What am I looking for?”
“My birthday.”
Dominic frowned.
Julian’s birthday was in March.
Julian met his eyes.
“That photograph isn’t showing me at seven.”
His voice shook.
“It’s showing another boy.”
Dominic looked at his mother.
She was crying now.
“His name was Elias.”
Julian closed his eyes.
Hannah stared at them.
“Who was Elias?”
Dominic’s mother sat slowly.
“My son.”
Nobody spoke.
Dominic felt the hallway shift beneath his feet.
“What?”
“Before Dominic,” she whispered. “Before Julian. There was another baby.”
Dominic stared at her.
“You never told us.”
“He lived six years.”
Julian looked sick.
Dominic looked at the photograph again.
The child resembled Julian enough to be his twin.
Except he couldn’t have been.
“He died?”
His mother covered her mouth.
“That is what your father told me.”
Gabriel’s voice softened.
“That is what Vincent Moretti told everyone.”
Dominic turned on him.
“You knew?”
“I found Elias alive twenty years later.”
The words landed like a physical blow.
Gabriel pointed at the warehouse in the photograph.
“Thomas Cross found him first.”
Madeline whispered, “My father spent years investigating the Morettis. Not because he wanted your family’s money.”
Dominic looked at her.
“He wanted what?”
“He wanted to know why his sister disappeared.”
Hannah frowned.
Madeline looked at Dominic.
“Her name was Claire Cross.”
Dominic had never heard it.
Gabriel did not look away.
“Claire was Elias’s nurse.”
Dominic’s mother made a broken sound.
“She loved him.”
Gabriel nodded.
“And when Vincent decided Elias had become a liability, Claire took the boy and ran.”
Dominic’s voice sharpened.
“A six-year-old liability?”
Gabriel’s gaze shifted to Julian.
“Because Elias had seen something.”
Julian whispered, “The warehouse.”
Dominic looked at him.
Julian’s face had drained of color.
“I’ve been dreaming about it for months.”
Their mother stood.
“No.”
“I see a red coat. A metal chair. A man screaming.”
“No, Julian.”
“And Dad.”
Dominic turned toward her.
“You know what he’s talking about.”
She shook her head desperately.
Julian stepped closer.
“I thought they were dreams.”
Gabriel said, “They are memories.”
Dominic moved so fast Anthony had to step between them.
“You stay away from him.”
Gabriel didn’t flinch.
“I’m not the one who put those memories inside him.”
“What does that mean?”
Gabriel looked at Dominic’s mother.
She said nothing.
Madeline answered instead.
“Julian wasn’t the boy in the photograph.”
Dominic stared at her.
“We established that.”
“No.”
Madeline shook her head.
“You don’t understand.”
She placed the photograph under the study lamp.
Then she pointed at the child’s wrist.
A braided leather bracelet.
Julian instinctively touched his own wrist.
He wore an identical bracelet.
Old.
Cracked.
Something Dominic had seen on him for years.
Julian whispered, “Dad gave me this when I was little.”
Their mother began crying harder.
“No,” Gabriel said.
“He didn’t.”
Julian looked at him.
Gabriel continued.
“That bracelet belonged to Elias.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Dominic looked from the photograph to his brother.
The resemblance.
The nightmares.
The bracelet.
His mother’s terror.
“No.”
She closed her eyes.
Dominic stepped toward her.
“Tell me Julian is my brother.”
She looked at him.
“He is.”
Gabriel laughed bitterly.
“That depends which brother you mean.”
Anthony muttered, “Jesus Christ.”
Dominic turned.
Gabriel pointed at Julian.
“Eight years ago, Thomas and I found Elias. We photographed him with us because we needed proof.”
“But that child is six.”
“He wasn’t.”
Gabriel’s voice became quiet.
“He was twenty-eight.”
Hannah’s face went blank.
Dominic stared.
“That’s impossible.”
“Unless the photograph isn’t eight years old.”
Madeline turned it over again.
The date had been written by hand.
Gabriel rubbed his scar.
“Your father changed the date.”
“Why?”
“To hide when we really found him.”
Gabriel looked directly at Julian.
“Three months ago, Julian came to me because he started remembering a warehouse he had never visited.”
Julian’s breathing grew shallow.
Gabriel continued.
“We compared his memories with Elias’s old medical records.”
Julian’s voice cracked.
“Stop.”
But Gabriel didn’t.
“The records described a scar beneath Elias’s left shoulder.”
Dominic looked at Julian.
Julian slowly unbuttoned the top of his shirt.
Beneath his left collarbone was a thin crescent scar.
Their mother whispered, “Please.”
Dominic could barely form the question.
“Who is he?”
She looked at Julian.
Then at Dominic.
And finally said the sentence she had been protecting for more than thirty years.
“His name isn’t Julian.”
Her voice broke.
May you like
“Julian died when he was four.”
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