Chapter 2 - THE LITTLE GIRL WHO REMEMBERED TOO MUCH
Rose was asleep when Dominic arrived at the safe apartment the next morning.
Emily opened the door and immediately folded her arms.
“No.”
He blinked.
“I haven’t asked anything.”
“You’re here at six-thirty in the morning.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“About Rose?”
“Yes.”
“Then the answer is still no.”
He almost smiled.
Emily Bennett was one of the few people who spoke to him as though his reputation meant nothing.
Maybe because grief had already taught her that powerful men were still just men.
“I’m not asking her to investigate.”
“Good.”
“I’m asking what she remembers.”
“That is investigating with smaller vocabulary.”
Dominic exhaled.
“Emily.”
She studied him.
Then stepped aside.
Rose woke twenty minutes later wearing pink pajamas covered in rabbits.
She saw Dominic and smiled.
“Uncle Dominic!”
His expression softened despite himself.
Emily noticed.
That worried her more than she wanted to admit.
Rose climbed onto the sofa.
Dominic placed her notebook on the table.
“Rose, remember the pretty lady near the piano?”
“Miss Serena.”
“Yes.”
“Did she ever say anything about Marco’s father?”
Rose frowned.
“No.”
“Did she say Antonio?”
“No.”
Emily interrupted.
“That’s enough.”
Rose suddenly looked excited.
“But she said Mr. Marco had to find the blue book before the bad man did.”
Dominic froze.
“What blue book?”
Rose shrugged.
“She said it was Grandma Maria’s.”
Dominic stared.
His mother had owned one blue leather music journal.
He remembered it because she wrote notes inside whenever she practiced piano.
After her death, the journal disappeared.
“Where did Serena say it was?”
Rose looked thoughtful.
“Under the angel.”
Emily’s stomach tightened.
“What angel?”
Rose pointed at Dominic.
“The crying one.”
Dominic knew immediately.
The Vitali family mausoleum had a marble angel over his mother’s grave.
He stood.
Emily caught his sleeve.
“Dominic.”
He looked down.
“You are not taking my daughter anywhere.”
“I know.”
“No dangerous men.”
“I know.”
“No graveyards.”
His mouth almost moved.
“Understood.”
Rose whispered:
“I like graveyards.”
Emily stared.
“Of course you do.”
That afternoon, Dominic and Luca opened Maria Vitali’s mausoleum.
Beneath the marble angel was a sealed recess.
Inside sat the blue leather journal.
Dominic opened it carefully.
The first pages were music notes.
Then names.
Dates.
License plates.
Payments.
His mother had been documenting something.
On the final page, written one week before her death:
Antonio believes Enzo is protecting us. He is wrong.
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
Then another sentence.
Marco knows more than his father thinks.
Marco had been seventeen.
Dominic turned the page.
A photograph fell out.
Two boys.
Dominic at nine.
Marco at seventeen.
Behind them stood Antonio.
And someone else.
Emily’s late husband.
Daniel Bennett.
Dominic stared.
“What the hell?”
Luca went pale.
“You know him?”
Dominic looked at the man Emily believed died in a highway accident.
“Not personally.”
Then he turned over the photograph.
May you like
Maria’s handwriting:
Daniel Bennett must never know what Antonio discovered about his father.
