Chapter 2 - THE SECRET BEFORE THE BULLETS
The Rossi estate had dozens of rooms.
I stopped feeling safe in any of them.
After Dominic's silence in the rain, every small detail rearranged itself inside my mind.
The way he had said Emma in the hospital.
The way he watched me at the ballroom.
The way his expression changed whenever my mother was mentioned.
And, most of all, the impossible speed with which he had arranged her transfer.
That wasn't kindness.
Not entirely.
It was familiarity.
I waited until midnight.
Dominic's office stood at the end of the west corridor.
A security camera turned slightly as I approached.
I stared directly into it.
“If you're watching me, this is your opportunity to stop me.”
Nothing happened.
I opened the door.
The office smelled like leather, cedar and strong coffee.
His desk was almost unnervingly neat.
No family photographs.
No sentimental objects.
Just files.
I started opening drawers.
The first contained business documents.
The second held a gun.
I closed it.
The third was locked.
Of course.
I found a letter opener and spent several embarrassing minutes discovering I had no talent for burglary.
“You're holding it backward.”
I froze.
Dominic stood in the doorway.
No jacket.
White shirt.
Sleeves rolled up.
“You could knock.”
“It's my office.”
“And apparently my life.”
He entered slowly.
“You shouldn't be out of bed.”
“You shouldn't marry unconscious women.”
“Fair.”
“Open the drawer.”
“No.”
“Then tell me how you knew me.”
He said nothing.
I held the letter opener tighter.
Dominic looked at it.
“If you're planning to threaten me, use the sharp end.”
“I liked you better when I thought you were just arrogant.”
“That was an easier version.”
“Open it.”
His eyes met mine.
Then he crossed the room.
He took a key from his pocket.
Turned the lock.
Opened the drawer.
Inside was a thin brown folder.
My name was written across the tab.
EMMA HAYES.
My lungs stopped working properly.
I touched it.
“What is this?”
Dominic didn't answer.
I opened the folder.
The first page was a photograph of me leaving the Queens diner six months earlier.
The next showed my apartment building.
Another showed my mother outside the Cleveland clinic.
Another contained my work history.
Bank information.
School records.
Emergency contacts.
My throat closed.
“You've been watching me.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Eight months.”
I looked at him.
Eight months.
Long before the ballroom.
Long before the bullets.
“You're sick.”
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
Dominic stared at the folder.
When he finally spoke, his voice had changed.
“My father knew yours.”
I blinked.
“My father died when I was six.”
“I know.”
“What does he have to do with you?”
“His name wasn't Thomas Hayes.”
Cold spread through me.
“Yes, it was.”
“No.”
“Don't.”
“Emma—”
“My mother buried him.”
“No.”
“Stop saying no!”
I threw the folder onto the desk.
Papers scattered.
Dominic didn't move.
“My father died in a construction accident in Ohio.”
“That was the story your mother gave you.”
“Because it happened.”
Dominic's expression was almost unbearably gentle.
“Your father's name was Gabriel Moretti.”
The room tilted.
I laughed once.
A broken sound.
“No.”
“He worked for my father.”
“No.”
“He wasn't killed in Ohio.”
“Stop.”
“He was killed in Brooklyn.”
“Stop!”
My palm hit Dominic's chest before I realized I had crossed the space between us.
Pain tore through my ribs.
I doubled over.
Dominic caught me instinctively.
I shoved him away.
“Don't touch me.”
He released me.
I pressed one hand over my bandages.
“You're lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“Why would my mother lie?”
“To keep you alive.”
“From who?”
Dominic looked at me.
The answer was already there.
“From us.”
My mother arrived at the estate two days later.
She should have looked fragile.
She did.
But when Ellen Hayes entered Dominic's library in a wheelchair and saw him standing beside the fireplace, her entire face hardened with a hatred I had never seen before.
“You.”
Dominic lowered his head.
“Mrs. Hayes.”
“Don't call me that.”
I stood slowly.
“Mom?”
She looked at me.
Then at the ring.
Her face went white.
“No.”
“Mom.”
“No, no, no.”
She grabbed my hand.
“Take this off.”
I stared at her.
“You knew him.”
She closed her eyes.
“Mom.”
Dominic turned to leave.
She snapped, “Stay.”
He stopped.
My mother had spent my childhood apologizing to grocery clerks for using coupons.
Now she was ordering Dominic Rossi not to move.
And he obeyed.
I sat opposite her.
“Tell me who my father was.”
Tears gathered in her eyes.
“Your father loved you.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
“Emma.”
“Was his name Gabriel Moretti?”
My mother's silence destroyed twenty years of certainty.
I leaned back.
“Oh God.”
“He was a good man.”
“You told me he died falling from scaffolding.”
“I told you what kept you safe.”
“Safe from Dominic?”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“From Dominic's father.”
Dominic flinched.
I saw it.
My mother did too.
She continued anyway.
“Antonio Rossi found out Gabriel was stealing records from the organization.”
“Why?”
“Because people were dying.”
Her voice shook.
“Dockworkers. Drivers. Men being used and discarded. Gabriel wanted out. He had been collecting evidence for federal investigators.”
Dominic's face had gone completely still.
“He was an informant?” I asked.
My mother nodded.
“Your father was going to testify.”
“And Antonio killed him.”
She looked down.
“Antonio ordered it.”
The room disappeared.
I saw a man I barely remembered tying my shoes.
Burnt toast.
A deep laugh.
A blue jacket.
Then nothing.
“Did Dominic know?”
My mother looked at him.
“Ask him.”
I did.
He didn't lie.
“Yes.”
One syllable.
That was all it took.
“You knew.”
“I found the records after my father died.”
“When?”
“Eight months ago.”
Exactly when surveillance of me had begun.
I stood.
Dominic's hands remained at his sides.
“You found out your father murdered mine, so you started watching me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody else accessed the same archive.”
“Costa.”
“Yes.”
My mother inhaled sharply.
Dominic continued.
“Victor Costa learned Gabriel had a daughter.”
“Why would he care after thirty years?”
Dominic looked toward Ellen.
My mother closed her eyes.
There was another secret.
Of course there was.
“Mom?”
She began to cry.
Not softly.
Not politely.
She covered her mouth and broke.
I knelt beside her wheelchair.
“What?”
She touched my face.
“Your father didn't just steal records.”
“What did he steal?”
“A ledger.”
Dominic answered.
“A handwritten ledger belonging to my father. Payments. Judges. police commanders. murders. Businesses. Everything.”
My heart pounded.
“Where is it?”
Dominic's gaze stayed on my mother.
“That is what everyone wants to know.”
I slowly turned toward her.
“Mom.”
She shook her head.
“I don't know.”
Dominic spoke carefully.
“Gabriel disappeared for six hours before he died. Costa believes he gave it to Ellen.”
“He didn't,” she said.
“Then why were you hiding?”
“Because men don't need proof before they kill frightened women.”
Silence.
I looked between them.
“What does this have to do with the ballroom?”
Dominic's face darkened.
“The shooter wasn't targeting my mother.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“He waited until you were near her.”
The memory returned.
The man's eyes.
I had thought they were fixed on Isabella.
Maybe they had shifted.
Maybe I had seen what fear expected to see.
Dominic stepped closer.
“Emma, you were the target.”
The bullets hadn't found me because I was heroic.
They had found me because they were meant for me all along.
I sat down.
My legs no longer worked.
“But he kept firing after I covered Isabella.”
“Yes.”
“Seven times.”
Dominic's voice cracked.
“Yes.”
My mother's face twisted.
She reached for me.
I couldn't move.
Everything I had believed about that night collapsed.
The ballroom.
The stranger.
The rescue.
The marriage.
None of it began when I saw the gun.
It had begun thirty years earlier, when my father decided powerful men should be afraid of paper.
That night I found Dominic on the terrace.
Snow had begun falling.
I stood inside the doorway wrapped in one of Isabella's coats.
“You knew I was the target.”
He turned.
“Not until after.”
“You suspected danger.”
“Yes.”
“And you let me work that ballroom.”
Pain flashed across his face.
“I had men watching you.”
“They did a wonderful job.”
“I know.”
I almost left.
Then he said, “I was trying to find the ledger.”
I turned back.
“At least you admit it.”
“I thought if Costa contacted you, we'd follow him.”
“You used me as bait.”
“Yes.”
The honesty was brutal.
“I hated myself before the bullets stopped.”
I stared at him.
“You don't get forgiveness because you hate yourself.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
His voice hardened suddenly.
“What would you like me to say?”
“The truth!”
“You have it.”
“No. I have facts. Facts are easy for men like you. Give me the part you don't want to say.”
Snow gathered in his dark hair.
He looked away.
So I waited.
Finally Dominic whispered:
“I knew who you were before I walked up to you in that ballroom.”
My throat tightened.
“I know.”
“No. You don't.”
He stepped closer.
“I had seen photographs for months. Surveillance reports. Work schedules. Bank statements. I knew what time you caught the subway. I knew you gave half your diner tips to a homeless veteran named Leon even when your rent was late.”
“How?”
“My men told me.”
“That's disgusting.”
“Yes.”
“But that isn't the thing you're afraid to say.”
“No.”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“I was supposed to approach you eventually. Quietly. Ask questions. Find out whether your mother had ever given you anything from your father.”
He swallowed.
“But when I saw you in person…”
Silence.
The city glowed far beyond the trees.
“What?”
His voice dropped.
“You looked nothing like a secret.”
Something in my chest shifted.
“You looked tired. Angry. You almost dropped champagne because I startled you. Then you told me sarcasm wasn't a crime.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
Dominic continued.
“And for thirty minutes, I forgot why I was watching you.”
“Then somebody shot me.”
His eyes closed.
“Yes.”
I looked at the man who had destroyed my privacy.
The man whose father had murdered mine.
The man who had illegally married me to protect me from consequences partly created by his own choices.
I should have felt only hatred.
Instead, hatred had become tangled with something more dangerous.
Understanding.
I hated that most of all.
“Why haven't you kissed me?”
His eyes opened.
The question shocked both of us.
“What?”
“We're married. You've slept outside my hospital room. You pay my mother's bills. You control every guard who comes within fifty feet of me. You look at me like…”
I stopped.
“Like what?”
I looked away.
“Never mind.”
“No.”
He took one step closer.
“Finish.”
My pulse jumped.
“You look at me like you're starving.”
His expression changed.
Barely.
Enough.
“Then why haven't you touched me?”
Dominic looked at the ring on my hand.
“Because you never chose that.”
The answer hit harder than seduction would have.
After everything he had taken from me without permission, this was the one thing he refused to steal.
I stepped forward.
Our breath fogged between us.
“I'm choosing now.”
His jaw tightened.
“Emma.”
“Don't make me repeat myself.”
His hand lifted slowly.
He touched my cheek as though expecting me to disappear.
Then he kissed me.
It wasn't polished.
It wasn't careful.
It was two frightened people colliding beneath falling snow with thirty years of blood between their families.
And when he pulled away, his forehead remained against mine.
“For what it's worth,” he whispered, “this is the first unforgivable thing I've wanted entirely for myself.”
I almost answered.
Then glass shattered inside the house.
Dominic moved before the sound finished.
He shoved me behind the stone wall.
Gunfire erupted from the library.
Men shouted.
Security alarms screamed.
Dominic drew a pistol.
“Stay here.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Emma.”
“I've been shot enough this month.”
He almost laughed.
Then Enzo appeared in the doorway.
Blood ran from his shoulder.
“We've got a breach.”
“How?”
Enzo looked toward me.
“Someone opened the east gate from inside.”
Dominic froze.
There were only twelve people with internal access.
His mother.
His senior men.
His household staff.
And my mother.
Before any of us could speak, another sound came from inside.
My mother's scream.
I ran.
Dominic swore and followed.
We reached her suite.
The wheelchair was overturned.
The window stood open.
Snow blew across the carpet.
My mother was gone.
On the bed lay a single yellow envelope.
My name was written across it.
Inside was a photograph.
A photograph of my father.
Gabriel Moretti.
He was smiling.
Holding a newborn baby.
Holding me.
May you like
On the back, in handwriting I had never seen before, were six words:
THE LEDGER WAS NEVER ON PAPER.
