Chapter 4 - The Secret Her Mother Buried
Norah slapped Victor.
The sound cracked across the driveway.
Gabriel looked away.
Fineian stopped breathing.
Victor did not move.
Norah’s palm burned.
“My mother was a nurse.”
Victor slowly touched the inside of his cheek with his tongue.
“Apparently she was also an excellent accountant.”
“You’re lying.”
“You’ve already used that accusation once tonight.”
“And I’ll use it again.”
Victor stepped closer.
“Then prove me wrong.”
Back at the estate, Fineian slept under guard while a doctor treated his injuries.
Norah did not sleep.
At 4:10 a.m., she sat across from Victor in the library with her mother’s entire life scattered between them.
Victor’s people had retrieved the storage box Fineian mentioned.
Photographs.
Tax records.
A brass key.
And the ledger.
Norah recognized her mother’s handwriting immediately.
That hurt more than anything.
Evelyn had made grocery lists in those neat block letters.
Birthday cards.
Notes inside Norah’s school lunches.
Now the same handwriting documented payments to judges, police officers, dock supervisors, and corporations Norah had never heard of.
Victor turned pages slowly.
“This isn’t my father’s accounting.”
“How do you know?”
“He never wrote anything down.”
“Comforting.”
Victor ignored the sarcasm.
“These entries expose him.”
Norah looked up.
“What?”
“Bribes. Payoffs. Names.”
“So Mom wasn’t stealing from him.”
“No.”
Victor reached the final page.
A handwritten sentence waited at the bottom.
If anything happens to me, ask Vittorio why Daniel had to die.
Victor stared at it.
“Who’s Daniel?” Norah asked.
He closed the ledger.
“My older brother.”
Norah felt cold.
“How did he die?”
“Car accident.”
“And you believe that?”
“I was nineteen. I believed whatever my father told me.”
She studied him.
“Your father was Vittorio.”
“Yes.”
“And my mother thought he killed Daniel.”
Victor stood and walked toward the fireplace.
For years, he had believed his brother died because he drove too fast on wet roads.
Suddenly an old grief had acquired a new shape.
Norah watched the strongest man she had ever met struggle not to show it.
“What happened to your father?”
“Shot two months after Daniel died.”
“Who killed him?”
“No one knows.”
“And the ten million?”
“Vanished.”
Norah touched the ledger.
“Maybe that’s why my mother ran.”
Victor looked at her.
“Maybe.”
“Do you still think she stole it?”
“I think we know less than we did an hour ago.”
That was the first answer he had given her that felt entirely honest.
Dawn arrived pale and gray.
Norah found Victor later in the kitchen making coffee himself.
She leaned against the doorway.
“You have staff.”
“I can operate a coffee machine.”
“Your criminal empire must be very proud.”
He handed her a cup.
She took it.
Their fingers touched.
Neither moved immediately.
Victor’s gaze dropped to her mouth.
Norah felt the moment change.
Then Gabriel entered.
“Terrible timing?”
“Yes,” Victor said.
Norah nearly choked on her coffee.
Gabriel smiled.
“We traced Mercer.”
Victor became business again.
“Where?”
“Vale’s campaign office.”
By noon, Councilman Vale was missing.
His office had been emptied overnight.
But one security server remained.
The footage showed Vale entering at 2:13 a.m.
Mercer followed.
At 2:19, another person appeared.
Fineian.
Norah stared.
“That was last night.”
Fineian had claimed he was already imprisoned.
Victor called him downstairs.
Fineian watched the footage.
His face went white.
“That isn’t me.”
“It looks exactly like you,” Norah said.
“It’s not.”
Victor replayed the clip.
Then paused it.
“Fineian has a scar beneath his left ear.”
Everyone looked.
The man on-screen did not.
Norah frowned.
“Then who is he?”
Gabriel enlarged the image.
The resemblance was extraordinary.
Fineian whispered, “I don’t have a twin.”
Victor looked toward Norah.
Her mother’s secret was becoming larger by the hour.
A telephone rang.
Victor answered.
A woman spoke.
Victor’s expression hardened.
“Where?”
He listened.
Then ended the call.
“Vale is dead.”
Norah’s stomach tightened.
“Mercer?”
“Missing.”
“Where was Vale found?”
Victor looked at Fineian.
“In your apartment.”
Norah went still.
Police sirens sounded faintly outside the estate gates.
Gabriel moved to the window.
“Three cruisers.”
Victor checked his phone.
“They have a warrant.”
“For what?”
He looked at Norah.
“Your arrest.”
Her cup slipped.
Victor caught it before it hit the floor.
“Vale was shot with a gun registered to you.”
“I don’t own a gun.”
“You do now.”
The front gates opened.
Norah backed away.
“I didn’t kill him.”
Victor set the cup down.
“I know.”
“How?”
“You poured wine on me in front of two hundred witnesses at the time Vale was killed.”
She stared.
Victor's ruined suit.
The ballroom.
The cameras.
Her reckless stunt.
It had accidentally created an airtight alibi.
A strange smile touched Victor’s mouth.
“Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“You may be the first person in history to use assaulting a mafia boss as an alibi.”
But Gabriel was not smiling.
He held up his phone.
“Problem.”
A photograph had already reached the news.
Norah’s alleged gun beside Vale’s body.
Beside it was a printed photograph.
Victor and Norah leaving the gala together.
Someone was not merely framing her for murder.
May you like
They were framing Victor as the man who ordered it.
And outside, the police began pounding on the door.
