Chapter 7 - THE MAN BESIDE MY FATHER
Dominic did not deny knowing about the cellar room.
That was the second time in forty-eight hours he disappointed me by being honest too late.
“Noah used it twice,” he said.
“Why?”
“Emergency shelter.”
“Who built it?”
“Your father.”
“Why does Noah think you’re dangerous?”
Dominic looked genuinely confused.
“I don’t know.”
I placed the child’s message on the desk.
UNCLE MARCO SAYS DON’T TRUST DOMINIC.
His face changed.
Not guilt.
Recognition.
“He’s here.”
“Marco?”
Dominic nodded slowly.
“That phrase.”
“What about it?”
“When we were boys, Marco used to write warnings like that during games. Always capital letters. Always no punctuation.”
My older brother had taught me chess.
Then disappeared before I was old enough to beat him.
If he had contacted Noah directly, he could have been inside Ravenwood without anyone noticing.
I pulled every camera record from the previous month.
No Marco.
Then Emma solved what forty-eight cameras could not.
She was coloring at the kitchen table when I showed Mara a photograph of Marco from ten years earlier.
Emma pointed.
“Library man.”
I crouched.
“What library man?”
“The man who fixes books.”
Ravenwood’s archive conservator.
A contractor had been restoring my father’s damaged first editions for three months.
His name was Michael Grant.
Gray beard.
Glasses.
Cap.
I had seen him twice.
Never looked closely.
Paolo pulled his identification file.
Fake.
We searched the archive room.
Empty.
On the desk lay one restored book.
My father’s copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Inside was a photograph.
My father.
Marco.
Dominic.
Victor.
Taken twenty years earlier.
On the back:
ONE OF THESE MEN SOLD THE FAMILY.
Beneath that, newer handwriting:
IT WASN’T VICTOR.
I looked at Dominic.
He stared at the photograph.
“If Marco wrote this…”
“Then he thinks you betrayed him.”
“No.”
His voice cracked.
“I helped him disappear.”
That was new.
Dominic admitted he arranged the boat explosion.
He created the false manifest.
Moved Marco through Canada.
My father knew.
Victor did not.
“Then why would Marco turn against you?”
“I don’t know.”
Julian looked at the photograph again.
Then noticed something.
A fifth reflection in the glass behind the men.
A woman.
My father’s executive secretary at the time.
Isabella Moretti.
My mother.
She had died when I was sixteen.
May you like
And on the bottom edge of the photograph, almost hidden beneath the frame, Marco had written one more line:
ASK DOMINIC WHO REALLY KILLED MOM.
