Chapter 4 - THE TRAITOR BEHIND HIS WIFE’S MURDER
She reached into the pocket of her sleep shirt and pulled out a small, encrypted micro-drive, holding it out between us on the flat of her palm.
"And if you had bothered to look past your own paranoia and check the security logs of your primary vault instead of hiding in your office, you would have found the rest of the puzzle," Emma whispered, her voice dropping to a chilling register. \*\*"Because the man who wired the explosive under your wife’s car wasn't a rival mobster... he’s currently sitting on your payroll as your head of security."
A deafening silence slammed into the room.
I didn't look at Emma. Slowly, agonizingly, my head turned toward the doorway.
Dominic Shaw stood frozen in the threshold, his face entirely drained of color, his hand already sliding down toward the grip of his concealed firearm.
The air in Noah’s bedroom turned instantly toxic, thick with the suffocating weight of betrayal. Every muscle in my body coiled like a spring. My eyes locked onto Dominic Shaw, my most trusted friend, the man who had pulled me out of the burning wreckage fourteen months ago, the man who had stood beside me through every turf war, every bloodbath, and every sleepless night.
"Dominic," I said, my voice dangerously low, stripped of all human warmth. "Tell me she's lying."
Dominic didn't flinch. The panic in his eyes vanished in a fraction of a second, replaced by a cold, calculating stillness that I had seen a thousand times before in men who had already made peace with their death. His hand smoothly cleared leather, the barrel of his Glock snapping up with terrifying speed, leveling directly at my chest.
The two guards behind him scrambled to react, but Dominic’s weapon was already cocked. "Don't move an inch!" Dominic roared, his voice echoing off the bedroom walls. "Drop your weapons, both of you! Drop them now or I swear to God I'll put a bullet through the kid's head right through the mattress!"
My heart stopped. My hand hovered inches from my shoulder holster, frozen by the immediate, lethal threat to my son. On the bed, Noah stirred, letting out a confused, frightened whimper in his sleep, completely unaware that a gun was pointed barely feet from his pillow.
"You traitorous bastard," I hissed, a murderous rage surging through my veins that dwarfed anything I had ever felt in my life. "You were like a brother to me."
"Business is business, Vincent," Dominic sneered, his eyes darting frantically toward the hallway exit while keeping the gun rock-steady on my chest. "You got soft after you married Caroline. You started asking questions about government contracts, international shipping routes, auditors looking at the books. The agency wanted you neutralized. Taking out your wife was just the opening message. The kid was supposed to go too, but luck wasn't on our side that day."
Every word hit me like a physical blow, ripping open the raw, festering wounds of the past fourteen months and dousing them in salt. All my paranoia, all my fortress walls, all my locked doors—and the monster had been standing right beside me the entire time, whispering counsel into my ear.
May you like
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emma moving.
While Dominic’s attention was locked entirely on me, his threat holding us in check, Emma didn't panic. Instead of cowering behind the bed, she slowly lowered herself toward the floor, her hand sliding quietly beneath the heavy wooden frame of Noah’s orthopedic bed where a small, emergency panic button was wired directly to the estate’s security grid.
