Chapter 3
THE MAN AT THE GATE
Dominic reached the east gate in less than two minutes, with Marco and four armed guards behind him. Rain slicked the drive. The gate stood open, but the road beyond it was empty.
Only a dark stain marked the pavement beneath the camera.
“Search the grounds,” Dominic ordered. “No shots unless I give the word.”
Marco pointed to the security booth. The guard inside was unconscious, his radio ripped from his belt. Dominic knelt, checked the man’s pulse, and found it steady.
Whoever had come here knew the property’s blind spots. That meant the intruder was not a stranger.
Dominic returned to the study and played the damaged camera feed frame by frame. The face was blurred by rain, but the scar, the posture, the slight tilt of the head were unmistakable. Gabriel had stood that way since childhood, as if he were always listening for a joke no one else had heard.
Vanessa watched from the doorway.
“You saw him,” Dominic said.
She nodded, tears shining in her eyes. “Once. Three weeks after the funeral.”
“Where?”
“At a private clinic outside Baltimore. He was injured. He told me to keep quiet because the people hunting him would use you to reach him.”
“And you accepted nearly a million dollars from his company.”
“I accepted money to disappear. My father arranged it. I was twenty-six, Dominic. I thought Gabriel was dead, and then I thought he was alive, and then a man came to my apartment and showed me photographs of my father tied to a chair.” Her voice cracked. “They said if I told you, your brother would die for real.”
Dominic wanted to believe the fear in her face. He also remembered her reaching for the USB drive, her hand hovering over the flames.
“Why did you come into my life?”
“My father arranged our first meeting. I was supposed to learn whether you had found Gabriel’s records. But I fell in love with you.”
“You lied from the beginning.”
“Yes.” Vanessa wiped her cheeks. “And every day after that, the lie got harder to confess.”
A bitter laugh escaped him. “You should have tried.”
Marco entered with a small object sealed in an evidence bag: a silver cuff link, engraved with the letter G.
“It was on the drive near the gate,” he said. “Fresh blood on the clasp.”
Dominic stared at it. Gabriel had worn a pair of those cuff links at their father’s funeral. One had gone missing years ago.
A second message appeared on the prepaid phone.
ST. AGNES. 11:40. COME ALONE OR THE NEXT BODY WILL BE HERS.
A photograph followed. Emily lay asleep in the medical suite, taken from outside her window. Someone had been close enough to see her face.
Dominic’s blood turned cold.
He rushed to the suite. Emily was awake now, the doctor checking her blood pressure. She saw his expression and understood before he spoke.
“They know I have the case,” she whispered.
“They won’t get near you again.”
“You can’t promise that.”
He looked at the tiny monitor tracing the baby’s heartbeat. For years, he had treated fear as a weapon—something to put into other people before they could use it against him. Emily’s quiet courage made that philosophy feel suddenly small.
“I can promise I’ll do everything I can,” he said.
She studied him. “Then don’t go alone.”
“Someone specifically asked me to.”
“That’s how you know it’s a trap.”
Dominic almost smiled, but there was no humor in it. He ordered Marco to assemble a team and approach the cemetery from three directions. Dominic would enter the mausoleum alone while the others held the perimeter.
At 11:38, he stepped through the iron gate of St. Agnes Cemetery. Wind pushed dead leaves across the path. The Moretti mausoleum stood at the far end, its stone door ajar.
Inside, a single lantern illuminated the family crypt. Gabriel’s name was carved into a marble plaque above a sealed niche.
A voice rose from the shadows.
“You always were late, Dom.”
A man stepped into the light.
He had Gabriel’s eyes.
Dominic forgot how to breathe.
“Tell me you’re real,” he whispered.
Gabriel’s mouth tightened. “I’m real. The man in the coffin wasn’t me.”
Dominic took one staggering step forward. Then Gabriel lifted his hand.
“Before you touch me, you need to know why I stayed away.”
A gun clicked behind Dominic.
May you like
Gabriel’s expression changed.
“Because the man holding that gun,” he said, “is the one who put me in the ground.”
