Chapter 4 - The Betrayal That Wasn’t
Dominic pointed his pistol at Tommy.
Abigail had never seen him draw it.
One moment his hand rested on his cane.
The next, the weapon was aimed at the man he called his brother.
“Put your gun down,” Dominic said.
Tommy obeyed.
The other Russo guards froze.
Nobody knew which side of the room had suddenly become dangerous.
“Dominic,” Abigail whispered.
“Not now.”
His voice wasn’t cruel.
It was wounded.
He looked at Tommy.
“T.B.”
“Yes.”
“You told me the Costas planted that bomb.”
“That was the evidence we had.”
“You had access to Leo’s route.”
“So did twelve people.”
“You changed the security detail that night.”
“Because Leo asked me to.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Why?”
Tommy glanced at Abigail.
Dominic understood.
“She stays.”
Tommy exhaled.
“Leo was meeting someone.”
“Who?”
“A federal investigator.”
The warehouse seemed to become quieter.
Dominic lowered the pistol half an inch.
“My brother was informing?”
“No. He was trying to save you.”
Tommy’s answer landed harder than any bullet.
For months before the bombing, Leo had discovered that someone inside Russo operations was moving narcotics through businesses Dominic believed were clean. Dominic had forbidden hard drugs in neighborhoods controlled by his organization after watching addiction destroy their mother’s youngest brother.
Leo suspected a senior captain named Vincent Caruso.
But Caruso had friends everywhere.
Police.
Judges.
Union officials.
Even inside the Russo family.
“So Leo went to the government?” Dominic asked.
“He wanted immunity for you before exposing Caruso.”
Dominic’s face emptied.
“You knew.”
“Only the final week.”
“And you let him drive that night?”
“I begged him not to.”
Tommy’s voice cracked for the first time Abigail had heard.
“He told me you’d never walk away unless someone forced open the door.”
Dominic stared at him.
“He died opening it.”
Tommy nodded.
“The initials are mine because I paid the investigator.”
Abigail looked at the notebook.
“Then why would Mercer have this?”
Tommy turned toward her.
“Because Mercer was part of the investigation.”
Everything connected.
Evan had not met Abigail by accident three years earlier.
He had known she worked at a rehabilitation clinic used by wealthy private clients.
He had cultivated her.
Controlled her.
And when Dominic’s physician needed a new therapist, someone manipulated the referral.
Abigail felt sick.
“My entire relationship…”
She could not finish.
Dominic lowered the weapon.
Tommy picked up his own gun but did not holster it.
“There’s someone bigger behind Mercer.”
Dominic stared at Leo’s photograph.
“Caruso.”
“No,” Tommy said.
“Caruso died two years ago.”
“Then who inherited his network?”
Nobody answered.
A Russo guard approached.
“Boss, we found something.”
He handed Dominic a phone taken from one of Evan’s men.
A recent message remained on-screen.
If Weston fails, use her to get Russo outside.
The sender was saved under one letter.
H.
Abigail frowned.
“H?”
Dominic’s expression changed.
There was one person in his life whose surname began with H and who knew about Abigail before she ever entered his home.
Dr. Samuel Henderson.
His physician.
The man who had treated him since the bombing.
The man who had recommended every therapist.
The man who had prescribed the medication Dominic took for panic attacks.
Dominic suddenly remembered something Abigail had said during their third session.
Your balance is worse than your imaging suggests.
At the time, he dismissed it.
Now he looked at her.
“My medication.”
“What about it?”
“You asked whether Henderson had adjusted the dosage.”
“Yes. You were showing symptoms that didn’t fit the amount listed in your chart.”
Tommy swore.
Abigail’s face went pale.
“Dominic, what exactly does he give you?”
He named the medications.
Her concern deepened.
“Have you ever had them independently tested?”
“No.”
They returned to the penthouse before dawn.
Dominic crossed the lobby again, but this time something had changed.
The sky no longer felt like an executioner.
It was only sky.
He still trembled.
He still struggled to breathe.
But he walked.
Upstairs, Abigail examined his medication while Tommy contacted a private laboratory.
“You need rest,” she said.
Dominic sat beside the windows.
“So do you.”
“I’m not the one who walked outside after five years.”
“You were kidnapped.”
“That does make your point inconvenient.”
For the first time, Dominic smiled.
Barely.
But she saw it.
Then he noticed her wrists.
The new rope burns crossed the old bruises.
“Abigail.”
She followed his gaze.
“I should have told someone.”
“Yes.”
“I tried once.”
He waited.
“Evan was charming at first. Then he started deciding who I could see. What I could wear. Where I could work. When I tried leaving, he promised to destroy my career.”
Her voice weakened.
“The first time he hit me, he cried afterward.”
Dominic looked away.
Not because he was uncomfortable.
Because rage was returning.
Abigail saw it.
“Do not kill him for me.”
Dominic looked back.
“That’s not what I need.”
“What do you need?”
“To know he cannot control my life anymore.”
Dominic absorbed that.
Then nodded.
“Then that is what we’ll do.”
No vengeance.
No body disappearing into Lake Michigan.
For her, he would find another way.
At sunrise, the laboratory called.
Tommy answered.
His face hardened.
“What?”
Dominic asked.
Tommy slowly lowered the phone.
“The pills Henderson prescribed aren’t what the label says.”
Abigail stood.
“What are they?”
“A much higher dose of sedative combined with another compound.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
Tommy finished.
“Something that can increase confusion, weakness, and anxiety during withdrawal.”
Five years.
Dominic looked at the bottle in his hand.
Five years believing his own mind had betrayed him.
Five years inside forty-seven floors of glass.
And suddenly he understood.
May you like
His prison had never been only trauma.
Someone had been reinforcing the bars.
