Chapter 10 - THE FILE INSIDE THE WALL
My father had hidden the Moretti contingency file somewhere.
The only question was where.
Then I remembered something he used to say.
“Never hide valuables where people look for valuables.”
Dominic frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“My father thought safes were stupid.”
Twenty minutes later, we were standing inside his old workshop.
The business had closed after he died.
Dust covered everything.
His workbench remained exactly where I'd left it.
I searched drawers.
Cabinets.
Old conduit bins.
Nothing.
Then I noticed one outlet mounted slightly crooked.
My father hated crooked outlets.
I removed the cover.
Behind it was a plastic pouch.
Inside were twenty-three pages.
Bank accounts.
Photographs.
Names.
Payments.
Police report numbers.
And records connecting Vincent to Anthony's murder, bribery, extortion, and the illegal operations Dominic thought he'd dismantled.
There was also a payment made four years earlier.
To a man named Raymond Pike.
The date was the day before my father's death.
I searched the name.
Pike had been arrested twice for vehicular assault.
He disappeared from Illinois one week after my father's hit-and-run.
My hands went numb.
Dominic read the page.
“Penny.”
“Don't.”
He stopped.
“I already know what it means.”
My father wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He had been murdered.
I sat on the workshop floor.
Dominic sat beside me.
Neither of us spoke.
Eventually, I said, “If you kill Vincent, I walk away.”
His head turned.
“I mean it.”
“He murdered your father.”
“And your brother.”
“Yes.”
“So we're both angry enough to make stupid decisions.”
His mouth tightened.
“You're asking me to trust the law?”
“I'm asking you to stop letting men like Vincent decide what kind of man you are.”
Silence.
Then Dominic reached for his phone.
“I know someone.”
The person who arrived an hour later wasn't mafia.
She was Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Shaw.
I stared at Dominic.
“You're working with federal prosecutors?”
“Quietly.”
“For how long?”
“Eleven months.”
That explained more than I expected.
Dominic had been gathering evidence to dismantle the illegal network without leaving hundreds of legitimate employees unemployed.
Anthony had wanted out.
Dominic intended to finish what his brother started.
Shaw reviewed the documents.
“This is enough to open doors.”
“Can you arrest Vincent?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because we'd rather arrest him while he's using those doors.”
Dominic's phone buzzed.
The family council meeting had been moved.
Not nine o'clock.
Seven.
Location changed.
An abandoned freight warehouse on the river.
Shaw looked at Dominic.
“It's a trap.”
Dominic nodded.
“Of course it is.”
Then my phone lit up.
Unknown number.
One photograph.
My wrecked van.
Under it, a message.
May you like
BRING THE ELECTRICIAN TOO.
SHE HAS SOMETHING THAT BELONGS TO US.
