Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Slept Beside a Loaded Secret"Behind the laundry room."
Hannah's answer was so quiet Dominic almost missed it.
He stared at her.
"Explain."
"There's an unused sitting room beside the service elevator. I put a blanket on the floor, some toys, and a portable crib I bought secondhand. I check on her every fifteen minutes."
Dominic looked down at Grace.
The child was playing with his tie.
"Eleven days?"
Hannah shook her head. "Three. Before that, my neighbor watched her. Then she got sick too."
"You left a nine-month-old alone in a room inside a house with armed security?"
"I know."
"Do you understand what could have happened?"
Her eyes filled.
"Every morning I thought about it. Every morning I told myself I'd find another solution before tomorrow."
Dominic had watched men confess to murder without showing as much fear as Hannah showed now.
"Why didn't you ask for help?"
She gave a small, exhausted laugh.
"From whom?"
He said nothing.
"Your house manager told me that bringing personal problems to work was grounds for dismissal. I was already behind on rent. I couldn't lose this job."
Dominic remembered signing the household budget three months earlier.
He remembered cutting expenses.
He did not remember asking which expenses had been cut.
"Who is your supervisor?"
"Mrs. Bellamy."
He reached for his desk phone.
Hannah flinched.
"Please don't fire her because of me."
Dominic stopped.
The woman standing before him had apparently spent two years learning that every decision made by a powerful person could hurt somebody weaker.
He put the phone down.
"Take Grace."
Hannah moved immediately.
But Grace had other plans.
When Hannah reached for her, the baby twisted toward Dominic's desk, stretching one small hand toward a brass lion mounted on the front corner.
"No, sweetheart," Hannah whispered.
Grace protested.
Dominic watched her fingers open and close.
Julian had been fascinated by that lion as a boy. Their father kept the original on his desk in Brooklyn. When Dominic inherited the business, he had moved it into his Manhattan office.
Julian used to joke that the lion guarded the family's lies.
Dominic had never found the joke particularly funny.
"She likes shiny things," Hannah explained.
"Apparently."
He handed Grace over.
The baby began crying immediately.
Hannah bounced her gently.
"She's tired. I'm sorry."
Dominic turned toward the window.
Beyond the glass, the Hudson River reflected the pale November sky. Tugboats moved through the water, hauling cargo toward terminals his companies controlled.
Eighteen months.
For eighteen months, Dominic had accepted that his brother died because his brakes failed on a rain-slick highway.
He had paid for the funeral.
He had stood beside the closed coffin.
He had personally approved the investigation's conclusion.
And now a woman earning less than twenty-four hundred dollars a month was standing in his office with Julian's daughter.
"Tell me how you met him."
Hannah hesitated.
"At a diner in Jersey City."
"When?"
"Three years ago."
"What diner?"
"Rose's, on Montgomery Street. I worked nights."
Dominic knew the place.
Julian had eaten there when he wanted to escape the private clubs and restaurants where every waiter knew his family name.
"He came in during a snowstorm," Hannah continued. "The power went out. I gave him coffee from a thermos and told him he could wait inside until the roads cleared."
"Did you know who he was?"
"No."
"Did he know you worked here?"
"Not at first."
Dominic turned.
"What does that mean?"
Hannah looked at Grace.
"I started working here about six months after we met. Julian helped me find the opening."
"Julian arranged your employment?"
"He said the Caruso estate needed reliable people."
A cold pressure formed behind Dominic's ribs.
Julian had placed Hannah inside the family home.
Why?
"Did he ask you to watch anyone?"
"No."
"Steal documents?"
"No."
"Listen to conversations?"
Her face changed.
"Mr. Caruso, I loved your brother."
Dominic went still.
Hannah's voice strengthened.
"I loved him when he had twenty dollars in his wallet. I loved him when he slept on my couch because he said he couldn't bear going home. I loved him when he woke up shaking from nightmares he wouldn't explain."
She swallowed.
"And I loved him when he told me he was afraid of his own family."
Dominic's jaw tightened.
"Afraid of whom?"
Hannah shook her head.
"He wouldn't tell me."
"Think carefully."
"He said there were things happening at the ports. Things he couldn't stop without destroying people he cared about."
Dominic stepped closer.
"What things?"
"He never explained."
"Did he leave anything with you?"
Hannah looked away.
That was enough.
Dominic felt the atmosphere in the room change.
"What did he leave?"
"Nothing I understood."
"Where is it?"
"Somewhere safe."
"Hannah."
She lifted her chin.
"Before I tell you, I need to know something."
Dominic had not been questioned in his own office in years.
"What?"
"Did you order Julian killed?"
For the first time that morning, anger overtook his shock.
"No."
Hannah searched his face.
"Then why did he tell me that if anything happened to him, I should never trust you?"
The question hung between them.
Dominic's phone vibrated.
Vincent Rizzo.
He ignored it.
It rang again.
Dominic answered.
"What?"
Vincent's voice was unusually tense.
"We have a problem."
"Be specific."
"Federal investigators just contacted our attorneys. They're reopening Julian's accident."
Dominic stared at Hannah.
"Why?"
"Someone sent them evidence."
"What evidence?"
Vincent hesitated.
"A recording of Julian's final phone call."
Dominic's fingers tightened around the receiver.
"Who was he speaking to?"
Vincent answered in a voice barely above a whisper.
"You."
Dominic remembered no such call.
May you like
Then Vincent added the words that made the blood drain from his face.
"And apparently, Dominic, they have you saying you wanted your brother dead."
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