Chapter 3 - The Blood on Her Name
By sunrise, Riley Hayes had become the easiest murder suspect in Chicago.
Tony Valente had been found in a private recovery suite at St. Catherine’s Hospital at 11:48 p.m.
No forced entry.
No missing valuables.
One fatal wound across the throat.
A boning knife lay on the floor beside his bed.
The manufacturer?
Hayes Cutlery Supply.
The same knives Riley used every day.
Dominic listened to Marco deliver the details from the opposite side of the library in his Lake Forest estate.
Riley stood at the windows wearing borrowed sweatpants and one of the housekeeper’s sweaters.
She had refused the guest bedroom.
Refused breakfast.
Refused a doctor until Dominic threatened to have one brought in whether she liked it or not.
That had earned him a look promising another knife incident.
Now six stitches closed the cut on her arm.
She stared at Lake Michigan.
“Police?” Dominic asked.
“Already looking for her.”
Riley turned.
“Then I should go.”
Dominic laughed softly.
She glared.
“What’s funny?”
“You.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Walking into a police station twelve hours after publicly breaking the victim’s kneecap would be unusually stupid.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Dominic leaned back.
“You had me at knifepoint when Tony was murdered.”
Marco checked his phone.
“Estimated time of death overlaps by about nine minutes.”
Riley blinked.
Dominic smiled faintly.
“Congratulations. I’m your alibi.”
“You’re a crime boss.”
“Yes.”
“That might be the worst alibi in Illinois.”
“Probably.”
Riley almost smiled.
Almost.
Then Marco placed photographs on the table.
Security footage showed a hooded figure entering the hospital service elevator.
The figure’s build was similar to Riley’s.
Dominic studied the timestamp.
“Too convenient.”
Marco nodded.
“And there’s more. Somebody emailed police photographs of Tony’s injuries from two nights ago. Witness statement says Riley threatened him.”
“I told him if he touched me again, I’d feed his hand through the grinder.”
Dominic looked up.
“Charming.”
“He grabbed me.”
“I’m beginning to understand why.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Dominic corrected himself.
“Why you threatened him.”
“Better.”
Marco wisely looked away.
Riley opened her father’s ledger again.
“Whoever killed Tony wants me blamed.”
“Yes.”
“And whoever shot at the shop wanted me dead.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if two people want different things.”
That silenced the room.
Dominic approached the table.
“One group wants whatever your father knew erased. Another wants you alive long enough to take the blame.”
Riley stared at him.
“How many enemies did my father have?”
“Maybe none.”
“Then why—”
“Because this may not have started with your father.”
Dominic opened a locked drawer and removed an old photograph.
He placed it beside the ledger.
Five men stood outside Hayes Prime Cuts twenty-four years earlier.
Riley recognized her father immediately.
Thomas Hayes.
Beside him was a younger man with Dominic’s eyes.
“My father,” Dominic said.
Riley looked at him.
“Your father knew mine?”
“Apparently.”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
The photograph had come from Dominic’s private archive that morning after he ordered his staff to search for Thomas Hayes.
On the back were four handwritten words.
The Five Keep Quiet.
Riley studied the other three men.
She recognized one.
“Dr. Valente.”
Dominic nodded.
Another was Carlo Benedetti, a former city contractor who had died in a boating accident.
The fifth was Alderman Victor Crane.
Alive.
Powerful.
And currently preparing a campaign for mayor.
Riley touched her father’s face in the photograph.
“He never talked about any of them.”
“Neither did mine.”
Dominic’s father, Lorenzo Castelli, had been murdered fifteen years earlier.
The official story blamed a rival family.
Dominic had believed it since he was nineteen.
Now he wasn’t sure.
“What did the five know?” Riley asked.
“That’s what someone is killing people to protect.”
Marco entered a password into his laptop.
“I pulled property records around the butcher shop.”
He rotated the screen.
Hayes Prime Cuts sat at the center of a six-block redevelopment project worth nearly $900 million.
Every neighboring property had been purchased through shell corporations.
Every property except Riley’s.
“Tony wanted my building.”
“Probably,” Dominic said.
“But why burn it after trying to force me out?”
“Because forcing you out failed.”
Riley’s jaw tightened.
“My father refused offers for years.”
Dominic looked again at the old photograph.
“Maybe the building matters for something other than land.”
That afternoon, they returned secretly.
The fire had destroyed most of the front shop, but the rear structure remained intact.
Riley stepped through blackened debris without speaking.
Dominic stayed behind her.
She stopped beside the old mechanical scale.
Heat had warped one side.
She touched it.
“My dad bought this when he was twenty-three.”
Dominic didn’t tell her it was replaceable.
Some things weren’t.
Riley knelt.
Then frowned.
“The floor.”
“What?”
“That tile.”
One tile beneath the scale was newer than the others.
Dominic helped move the heavy base.
Underneath was a steel plate.
Riley stared.
“My father never told me.”
Dominic pried it open.
Inside lay a sealed metal box.
No money.
No weapons.
Only a VHS tape, several photographs, and a brass key.
One photograph showed Dominic’s father standing beside Thomas Hayes.
Another showed Alderman Crane receiving a thick envelope from a man Dominic recognized immediately.
Salvatore DeLuca.
His father’s former adviser.
The man Dominic had trusted since childhood.
The man currently managing half the Castelli organization.
On the back of the photograph Thomas Hayes had written a date.
Three days before Lorenzo Castelli was murdered.
Riley looked at Dominic.
“You know him.”
Dominic’s expression became unreadable.
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
Before Dominic could answer, a floorboard creaked upstairs.
Both froze.
Dominic drew his pistol.
Riley grabbed the nearest intact knife.
Footsteps moved overhead.
Someone was inside the burned building.
Dominic gestured for Riley to remain behind him.
Naturally, she ignored him.
They climbed together.
At the top, Dominic kicked open the apartment door.
A figure lunged through the bedroom window onto the fire escape.
Dominic pursued.
Riley ran toward the bedroom.
Then stopped.
Written across the wall in black paint were seven words.
YOUR FATHER SHOULD HAVE KEPT HIS PROMISE.
Beneath them was another photograph.
Riley picked it up.
Her breath stopped.
It showed Thomas Hayes outside a school.
Holding the hand of a little girl.
Riley.
On the back was yesterday’s date.
And beneath it:
WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING HER FOR YEARS.
Dominic returned through the window.
The intruder had escaped.
Then he saw Riley’s face.
He took the photograph from her.
Something changed inside him.
The threat was no longer historical.
No longer business.
No longer about territory.
Someone had watched Riley since childhood.
Dominic reached for his phone.
“Marco.”
Riley looked at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Closing every entrance to the city they might use.”
“You can’t close Chicago.”
“No.”
Dominic stared at the photograph.
“But I can make it very uncomfortable.”
“Dominic—”
He looked at her.
It was the first time she had used his first name.
Neither of them missed it.
“What?”
Riley swallowed.
“What promise did my father break?”
Dominic looked again at the five men in the old photograph.
“I think he promised to keep something buried.”
“And?”
May you like
Dominic’s eyes moved to the brass key.
“And I think before he died, he decided not to.”
