Chapter 7 - THE DEAD MAN'S TOOLBOX
That night, I went home for the first time in twenty hours.
Dominic sent three guards.
I told him I didn't need three guards.
He sent four.
My apartment looked exactly as I'd left it.
Which somehow made everything feel stranger.
I pulled my father's old toolbox from the hall closet.
For four years, I hadn't opened it.
I already carried his wrench.
That had been enough.
Now I dumped everything onto the kitchen floor.
Voltage testers.
Old wire nuts.
A cracked flashlight.
Receipts.
Nothing.
Then I noticed the bottom wasn't sitting flat.
My father had built the box himself.
I pried up the thin metal liner.
Underneath was a flash drive wrapped in electrical tape.
My hands began shaking.
Dominic was sitting across the room.
“Want me to leave?”
“No.”
I inserted the drive into an old laptop.
Three files appeared.
Photographs.
Electrical diagrams.
And one audio recording.
My father's voice filled the room.
“If Penny ever hears this, I'm probably in more trouble than I thought.”
I covered my mouth.
Dominic looked away, giving me privacy without leaving.
My father continued.
“I was hired to inspect a flashing courtyard fixture at the Moretti property. The light isn't defective. It has an external control module tied to security.”
My eyes burned.
“I told Mercer I was disconnecting it. He told me I'd misunderstood the job.”
The recording crackled.
“Then a doctor named Hall arrived. He told Mercer the timing needed adjustment because Moretti wasn't reacting strongly enough.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
My father had heard them.
He had proof.
Then another voice appeared in the recording.
Faint.
But clear enough.
“Walter, take the money and forget what you saw.”
Dominic sat upright.
He knew that voice.
“Vincent.”
My father answered.
“No.”
Then Vincent said:
“You have a daughter, don't you?”
I stopped breathing.
The recording ended thirty seconds later.
No more voices.
No explanation.
Just my father saying:
“If something happens to me, it wasn't because I was careless.”
I cried then.
Not quietly.
Not elegantly.
Four years of grief broke open on my kitchen floor.
Dominic didn't touch me until I reached for his hand.
Then he sat beside me.
“I'll make this right.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
His face hardened.
“Penny—”
“You don't make my father's death right by putting another body in the ground.”
He stared at me.
“Then what do you want?”
I looked at the flash drive.
“The truth.”
There was one more file.
A photograph taken three days before my father died.
Mercer and Vincent stood beside a black SUV.
Between them was Dominic's younger brother, Anthony.
Dominic stared.
“That's impossible.”
Anthony Moretti had been murdered four years ago.
May you like
Two days before Dominic's first seizure.
And according to the date on my father's photograph, Anthony had met privately with the two men now trying to destroy Dominic.
