Chapter 4
THE GODFATHER’S SECRET
Dominic did not turn. He knew the sound of Malcolm Voss’s breathing from a hundred private meetings. He had heard it across poker tables, in hospital corridors, and beside his father’s grave.
“Put the gun down, Malcolm,” Dominic said.
“You should have stayed home.” Voss’s voice held weary disappointment, as though Dominic had missed an appointment rather than uncovered a conspiracy.
Gabriel moved slowly toward the lantern. “He didn’t kill me himself. He arranged the crash, then paid a medical examiner to substitute another body. The plan was to make the family believe I was dead while he took control of the accounts I’d traced.”
“You were stealing from us,” Voss snapped.
“I was documenting the theft.”
Dominic finally turned. Voss stood in the doorway with a pistol aimed at his chest. His silver hair was damp, his face composed.
For years, Dominic had believed Voss was the reason the Moretti family survived its most dangerous period. Now he saw the truth: Voss had helped create the danger, then sold them protection from it.
“How much?” Dominic asked.
Voss shrugged. “Your brother was clever enough to build a company, but not clever enough to understand the world. Northbridge moved money for judges, police commanders, contractors, and men who prefer not to appear on paper. Your father knew about some of it.”
“My father is dead.”
“And your brother was about to expose everything. I had to stop him.”
Gabriel’s voice hardened. “You had me sedated and put in a vehicle bound for the river. The driver panicked when the car went over the embankment. I crawled out and hid in a drainage culvert. A nurse found me before your men did.”
“You should have died,” Voss said.
Dominic lunged. Voss fired. The shot struck stone beside Dominic’s head. Gabriel tackled his brother behind a pillar as Marco’s team stormed the mausoleum. Two guards seized Voss, but the older man did not struggle. He simply smiled.
“You think arresting me ends this?” he asked. “You have no idea who signed the original orders.”
Marco disarmed him and pulled him outside. Dominic turned back to Gabriel, staring at the scar on his brother’s face, the hollow cheeks, the living proof of four years of grief.
“Why didn’t you come home?”
“Because Voss told me you were part of it. He showed me bank transfers bearing your authorization and recordings of you discussing a shipment that was never supposed to exist. I thought you’d chosen the family empire over me.”
“I never saw those transfers.”
“I know that now.”
Gabriel reached inside his coat and removed a folded sheet. “I found the original ledger. It proves Voss forged your signature, but the ledger only survives if the copies are verified against Northbridge’s server. That’s why I needed the briefcase.”
Dominic thought of Emily. “The maid has the USB.”
“No,” Gabriel said sharply. “The USB is bait. The real file is encrypted inside the silver key’s hollow shaft.”
Dominic remembered the key Emily had given him. He had left it in the briefcase.
They returned to the mansion under heavy guard. At the entrance, Dominic found the security team already moving Emily to a safer room. Vanessa sat on the stairs, pale and silent.
When Gabriel entered, she rose as if she had seen a ghost.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He looked at her for a long moment. “You helped keep me alive. You also helped keep my brother blind. I don’t know what to do with both truths yet.”
Vanessa nodded, accepting the judgment.
In the study, Dominic retrieved the silver key and examined its shaft. Gabriel showed him a tiny seam. A twist released a micro-storage chip.
Marco connected it to an isolated laptop. Files appeared: transfers, recorded calls, forged signatures, and a list of officials paid to suppress the crash investigation.
At the top of the list was Malcolm Voss.
Below him was Robert Sterling.
And beneath Robert Sterling was Dominic’s own name, marked as the intended final recipient of a payment scheduled for the morning after Gabriel’s death.
Dominic stared at the screen. “They were going to frame me.”
Gabriel nodded. “And they needed Vanessa to keep you from asking the right questions.”
Before they could copy the files, every screen in the study went black. A countdown appeared, ticking down from sixty seconds.
Marco swore. “Someone’s inside the network.”
A new message flashed across the screen:
THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THE BROTHERS TOGETHER.
Then the mansion’s power died.
May you like
From the hallway came a scream.
Emily’s room was empty.
