Chapter 3 - The Brother Who Knew Too Much
Emily reached Hawthorne before the police.
Dante reached it before her.
She jumped from the car and found him standing beneath the entrance canopy with six armed men.
“You brought an army to a psychiatric facility?”
“My army arrived faster than the police.”
Emily pushed past him.
Leo’s room was empty.
The bed remained perfectly made.
His favorite astronomy book lay open.
His headphones were beside it.
Emily touched them.
Leo never went anywhere without those headphones.
“He didn’t leave voluntarily.”
The attending nurse agreed.
“He became frightened around noon.”
“Why?”
“He said someone had come to see him.”
“Who?”
The nurse hesitated.
“He called her the dead lady.”
Dante’s gaze sharpened.
Emily felt cold.
“What dead lady?”
“He showed us a photograph.”
The nurse opened a drawer.
Clara Marino stared back at them.
Dante took the picture.
On the reverse, written in Leonard Davies’s handwriting, were four words.
SHE FOUND IT FIRST.
Dante looked at Emily.
“Found what?”
Emily suddenly remembered her childhood.
Her father hiding documents inside ordinary objects because he feared burglars.
Once, when Emily was seventeen, he had told her:
People search safes. They don’t search memories.
“Leo knows something.”
They checked security footage.
At 12:18 p.m., Leo walked calmly through a service exit.
Alone.
Thirty seconds later, a black sedan followed.
Marco traced it.
Stolen plates.
No usable facial image.
But Leo had left something behind.
A drawing.
A black tower.
A lake.
A red door.
And beneath it:
THE PLACE DAD TOOK US WHEN THE SKY BURNED.
Emily remembered.
A lake house in Wisconsin.
Her father had taken them there once.
November 17.
The day Clara died.
Dante stared at her.
“You were with Leonard that night?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I thought it was a family trip.”
It had never made sense.
Their father arrived home terrified, packed two bags, drove north, and kept checking the mirror.
At midnight, he burned papers behind the cabin.
Emily had forgotten one detail.
Leo had watched him hide something beneath the floorboards.
They drove through the night.
The cabin was abandoned.
The red door hung crooked.
Inside, dust covered everything.
Emily found the loose board.
Underneath sat an old cassette recorder and a leather ledger.
Dante opened it.
Names.
Payments.
Politicians.
Police.
Judges.
Marino captains.
Then one name appeared repeatedly.
Sal Genevesi.
Beside it were payments marked C.M.
Clara.
Dante’s jaw tightened.
Emily pressed play on the recorder.
Static.
Then Leonard’s voice.
“If Dante Marino hears this, Clara was right.”
Dante stopped breathing.
“She discovered Sal was selling Marino routes to the Bellandi organization. She intended to tell Dante. Sal found out.”
Emily covered her mouth.
Leonard continued.
“The bomb was not intended for Dante.”
Dante closed his eyes.
“It was meant to silence Clara.”
The recording crackled.
“I helped her collect proof. That makes my children targets. If I die, protect Emily and Leo.”
Then another voice entered the recording.
A woman.
Clara.
“Dante will blame himself.”
Dante’s composure cracked.
Clara sounded alive.
Warm.
Close.
“I know my husband. He’ll turn grief into punishment because anger is easier for him than pain. If you survive, tell him something for me.”
Static swallowed several seconds.
Then Clara’s voice returned.
“Tell him I knew he loved me.”
Dante turned away.
Emily had never seen grief physically strike a man before.
His shoulders lowered.
Nine years collapsed onto him.
Then headlights swept across the cabin.
Marco reached for his gun.
Too late.
Glass exploded.
Everyone dropped.
Gunfire ripped through the walls.
Dante dragged Emily behind the fireplace.
“Stay down.”
“Leo might be out there!”
“That is exactly why you stay down.”
A voice came from outside.
“Give us the ledger!”
Dante looked at Emily.
She understood.
Whoever had Leo wanted the evidence.
Dante fired through the broken window.
Marco’s men returned fire.
A vehicle roared away.
Silence followed.
Then Emily heard something upstairs.
A creak.
She ran before Dante could stop her.
“Emily!”
She reached the second floor.
The closet door moved.
Emily pulled it open.
Leo crouched inside.
“Leo!”
She fell to her knees and hugged him.
He trembled.
“I knew you’d remember.”
Emily cried into his shoulder.
Dante appeared behind them.
Leo looked at him.
His expression changed.
“You’re Dante.”
Dante nodded.
Leo reached into his coat.
He produced a sealed envelope.
“Dad told me never to give this to anybody unless Clara’s husband came himself.”
Dante accepted it.
Inside was a photograph.
Clara stood beside Sal.
But there was another man with them.
Dante stared.
Impossible.
Emily whispered, “Who is that?”
Dante’s face hardened.
“My brother.”
The man in the photograph was Vincent Marino.
Dante’s older brother.
The brother supposedly murdered twelve years earlier.
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And according to the date printed on the photograph—
Vincent had been alive three days before Clara died.
