Chapter 11 - THE WATCH
Dominic came to Clara’s apartment on Sunday afternoon.
With permission.
Toby was supposed to be doing homework.
Instead he was dismantling a cheap plastic robot.
Dominic looked over his shoulder.
“You know you’re supposed to put those screws back.”
“I know.”
“Do you know where they go?”
“No.”
“Then statistically, this ends badly.”
Toby ignored him.
Then noticed Dominic’s Omega.
“Your watch is broken.”
Dominic looked down.
“It works.”
“No.”
Toby pointed.
“That part.”
A tiny scratch crossed the repaired clasp.
Dominic’s expression changed.
Clara noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Dominic.”
He removed the watch.
Opened the clasp.
Inside, the leather backing had been replaced after the tracker was discovered.
Toby pointed again.
“There’s writing.”
Under bright light, three tiny characters were visible inside the metal.
N.R. 12
Nicholas Rossi.
Dominic became still.
“He engraved it?”
“Maybe.”
Clara photographed the marking.
The number corresponded to nothing obvious.
Until her audit team checked Nicholas’s old ledgers.
Account series twelve.
An internal designation used for transactions Nicholas considered “personally protected.”
Inside those records was something unexpected.
Not more theft.
Payments.
Regular.
Anonymous.
To:
SHAW FAMILY MEDICAL TRUST.
Clara’s breathing stopped.
“What?”
The payments began four years earlier.
After she supposedly died.
Clara stared at Dominic.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Then Nicholas did this?”
“Apparently.”
That made no sense.
Nicholas killed Daniel.
Threatened Toby.
Why send money into a trust associated with her old surname?
The trust had never paid Clara directly.
It had funded obscure medical charities and anonymous pediatric grants.
One payment date matched Toby’s first hospitalization.
Another his fifth birthday admission.
Clara felt cold.
“Nicholas knew where we were before the diner.”
Dominic’s face hardened.
“He may have known for years.”
“But he didn’t come.”
“Why?”
Nobody knew.
Then investigators found an internal memo attached to the first payment.
One sentence.
KEEP THE BOY ALIVE UNTIL THE KEY SURFACES.
Clara’s stomach turned.
Toby had never been protected.
He had been preserved.
Nicholas believed Clara would eventually resurface if her son’s condition became desperate enough.
The hospital deposit had not been random pressure.
It had been the endpoint of a trap years in the making.
And Dominic’s intervention at Northwestern had triggered it early.
Clara sat down.
For the first time since Nicholas’s arrest—
she was afraid again.
May you like
Not of him.
Of how long he had been watching.
