Chapter 3
For the next two days, Dante behaved as though nothing had happened.
That was how he survived.
He attended meetings.
Signed invoices.
Ate dinner with people he did not trust.
He even joked with Julian once.
Meanwhile, one private camera watched the service entrance.
On Tuesday night at 11:17, Emma appeared.
She wore a coat over pajamas.
A man waited beyond the gate.
Broad shoulders.
Dark cap.
Face partly concealed.
Emma handed him an envelope.
Wednesday, another envelope.
Thursday, photographs.
Friday, a flash drive.
Dante compared the times with Julian’s schedule.
Every meeting happened while Julian was officially off duty.
Then his accountant found payments to Emma.
Twenty-four thousand dollars over three months, routed through three shell companies.
The final company was registered to Julian’s estranged cousin.
It was too much.
Too clean.
Too perfect.
Dante’s father had taught him one useful thing before dying.
When every clue points in one direction, look behind you.
So Dante did something his younger self would never have done.
He waited.
At two in the morning Saturday, he found Emma trying to leave.
She stood in the service hall with a canvas bag in one hand and Lily sleeping against her shoulder.
Dante stepped from the darkness.
Emma froze.
“I’m leaving,” she whispered.
“I can see that.”
“My sister is sick.”
“You don’t have a sister.”
Her eyes filled immediately.
Dante had checked.
He hated himself slightly for it.
“Put the bag down, Emma.”
“I can’t.”
“No one will hurt you.”
She gave a small laugh so empty it unsettled him more than tears.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I just did.”
“You don’t know who’s in your own house.”
The sentence struck him harder than an accusation.
Lily stirred.
Her eyes opened.
She looked at Dante sleepily.
“Did you get your muscles ready?”
Emma clapped one hand over her daughter’s mouth.
“Lily!”
But Dante had heard enough.
He lowered his voice.
“Who threatened her?”
Emma’s face collapsed.
Not dramatically.
Quietly.
Like someone who had spent too long holding a heavy object and finally lost strength in her arms.
“He said he could take Lily while she slept.”
“Who?”
“He said your cameras belonged to him. Your guards belonged to him. He said if I told you, you’d never see her again.”
“What did he make you steal?”
“Shipping records. Account numbers. Meeting schedules.”
Dante felt fury rise.
Then he forced it down.
“Did you give them to him?”
Emma began crying.
“Some.”
He stared at her.
“I copied old schedules. Old routes. I changed numbers where I could.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
She looked at him as though the answer should have been obvious.
“Because you’re you.”
That silenced him.
Emma wiped her face angrily.
“You think people like me look at this place and see safety?”
She gestured at the marble, the cameras, the locked doors.
“We see men with guns. We see staff who never say what they hear. We see people lowering their voices when you enter. I didn’t know if you would save my daughter or decide she was inconvenient.”
It was the first truly honest thing anyone had said to Dante in years.
He deserved every word.
“Go back to your room,” he said.
“I told you I’m leaving.”
“If you leave tonight, whoever is watching expects you to run. Stay until morning.”
She hesitated.
“Why should I trust you?”
Dante looked toward Lily.
“You shouldn’t. Not yet.”
That answer changed something.
Emma went back.
The next afternoon, Dante brought Lily hot chocolate.
He sat on the floor beside her rather than making her sit across his desk.
“Can I show you someone?”
He opened Julian’s photograph.
“Is this the man?”
Lily barely looked before shaking her head.
“No.”
Dante’s entire body went still.
“No?”
“Mr. Julian gives me strawberry candy.”
She pointed.
“The bad man is older.”
“What about the red mark?”
“His is here.”
She pressed directly beneath the center of her chin.
Then she added, “And he smells funny.”
“How?”
“Like those brown sticks in your library.”
Dante knew immediately.
Only one person smoked the imported cedar cigars kept in the carved box behind his desk.
Raymond Valenti.
His uncle.
The man who had raised Dante after his parents died.
The man who attended every school conference.
Who taught him to drive.
Who stood behind him at seventeen and corrected his grip on a pistol.
Who had held fourteen-year-old Dante in a cemetery while rain struck two coffins.
Dante suddenly remembered something else.
Raymond had recommended Emma for the housekeeping job.
Through a charitable employment program he controlled.
Dante returned to his study and summoned Emma.
This time she spoke.
Once she began, she could not stop.
Raymond had approached her before she ever started working in the penthouse.
He knew she was behind on rent.
He knew Lily’s preschool.
He knew her husband had died without life insurance.
He offered money.
When she refused, the offer changed.
The first threat came with a photograph of Lily asleep in the back seat of Emma’s car.
Then Raymond had given her instructions.
Emma removed a tiny flash drive sewn inside the hem of her uniform.
“I copied everything he asked me to steal,” she said. “And everything he gave me.”
Dante opened it.
Photographs.
Transfers.
Altered schedules.
Instructions for bribed guards.
Documents implicating Julian.
And then a photograph taken inside a restaurant.
Raymond sat across from Celeste Armand, leader of a rival criminal group Dante’s father had spent years fighting.
May you like
Dante stared at his uncle’s face.
“Why frame Julian?”
