Chapter 7 - THE MAN WHO STOLE MARCO’S NAME
Marco handed me his gun.
Not because I asked.
Because he understood trust.
“Until we know,” he said.
I left it on the table.
“You’re not under arrest.”
“That isn’t what this is.”
“No.”
“It’s personal.”
“Yes.”
Emma watched from the doorway.
She had been discharged that afternoon under strict instructions to rest.
Naturally, she had refused to stay upstairs once voices rose.
“Could someone copy his credentials?” she asked.
Lucia nodded.
“With physical access to his security token.”
“Who has that?”
“Marco.”
“And?”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
“My locker.”
Security headquarters had individual lockers.
Camera footage showed no unauthorized entry.
Until we checked maintenance access.
At 3:12 the afternoon before Emma’s attack, a technician entered the corridor carrying tools.
His badge belonged to a man who had called in sick.
The face belonged to no employee.
But Emma recognized him.
Her hand tightened around the chair.
“That’s him.”
“Which one?”
“The second attacker.”
Not Anton.
The other man.
He had walked into my security headquarters six hours before beating Emma.
That was not street-level intimidation.
That was planning.
Facial recognition gave us a name.
Nikolai Petrov.
Former Kolov security.
Reported dead eighteen months earlier after a car explosion in Brooklyn.
Another dead man who was not dead.
I was beginning to dislike the pattern.
Marco traced the fake maintenance credentials to Raymond Bellini’s office printer.
But the messages to “K” remained unresolved.
Then Emma remembered something.
“When they were hitting me…”
She stopped.
I waited.
“One of them said, ‘Raymond promised Castellano would fold.’”
Marco looked at me.
“And?”
“The other one laughed.”
“What did he say?”
Emma shut her eyes.
“He said, ‘Raymond doesn’t know Dominic anymore.’”
That mattered.
Whoever K was understood me better than Raymond did.
Possibly someone who had watched me change.
Someone who knew the man I used to be.
Lucia went pale.
“Dominic.”
I already knew what she was thinking.
There was one person close enough to know all versions of me.
My cousin Adrian.
Vincenzo Castellano’s son.
Adrian grew up beside us.
He knew every family secret.
He also disappeared after his father’s death.
We had been told he moved to Europe.
Marco began searching.
Nothing.
No recent passport activity.
No tax records.
No apartment.
No death certificate.
Then a bank alert arrived.
One of the accounts listed in Thomas’s ledger had moved money that morning.
Three million dollars.
Recipient:
AC Holdings.
Lucia whispered:
“Adrian Castellano.”
Not K.
But connected.
We followed the transfer through two shell companies.
The final destination was registered to a private trust.
Trustee:
Katarina Volkov.
I knew that name.
Viktor Kolov’s only daughter.
Officially living in Moscow.
Unofficially?
No one knew.
Marco stared at the screen.
“Adrian is working with Kolov’s daughter.”
I shook my head.
“Maybe.”
Emma looked at me.
“What else could it mean?”
I thought of my uncle.
Vincenzo pushing me toward narcotics.
Pushing war.
Calling my father weak.
Maybe Thomas had been wrong about one thing.
Vincenzo might have been greedy.
But perhaps he had also been laying groundwork for his son.
Then another message arrived on Raymond’s burner.
K:
BRING THE CARTER GIRL ALIVE THIS TIME.
The room went silent.
Emma’s face drained.
Marco looked at me.
“They’re coming back.”
I looked at Emma.
“No.”
May you like
I took the phone.
“This time, we go to them.”
