Chapter 3 - The Call That Shouldn't Exist
The telephone rang three times before Dominic realized it was coming from the chamber.
It was an old cream-colored landline mounted beside a narrow bed. A stack of newspapers lay beneath it, all dated years earlier. Someone had supplied food, water, and medicine, but never enough to make the room feel like anything other than a carefully managed prison.
Dominic turned to his mother.
“Who has been calling you?”
Margaret shook her head.
“I don't know. The line only rings at night.”
He lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
A man's voice answered.
“Is she still alive?”
Dominic recognized the voice immediately.
Frank Bellini, his father's former attorney.
Frank had attended Antonio's funeral, delivered the estate documents, and assured Dominic that every legal matter had been settled.
Dominic tightened his grip on the receiver.
“Frank. This is Dominic.”
A pause.
Then the line went dead.
Dominic slowly lowered the telephone.
Marcus was already speaking into his radio, ordering the house's communications secured. Arthur stood near the door, visibly shaken.
Vanessa pulled free from Marcus.
“You're all making a terrible mistake. Margaret is sick. She needs medical attention, not a dramatic interrogation.”
Margaret recoiled at the sound of her name.
Dominic saw it.
He stepped between them.
“Don't come near her.”
Vanessa's tears stopped almost instantly.
“You don't understand what she did.”
“Then explain it.”
“She destroyed your father.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Dominic turned to her.
“Is that true?”
His mother looked down at the photograph in her hands.
“Your father was not the man you remember.”
“Then tell me who he was.”
Margaret's voice trembled.
“Antonio loved you. He loved you more than anything. But he built his life around a secret that eventually consumed him.”
Dominic waited.
“When I discovered it, I tried to leave. He told me that if I took you, he would make sure you never saw another day outside his control.”
Dominic's face hardened.
“You said you died in a car accident.”
“I never said that. Antonio did.”
The distinction struck him harder than an accusation.
Margaret explained that she had been taken to a private medical facility after a violent confrontation with Antonio. She escaped briefly, but before she could reach Dominic, she was captured and returned to the estate.
After Antonio's death, Vanessa arranged for the chamber to be sealed again.
“Why would Vanessa keep you here?” Dominic asked.
“Because I know what happened the night your father died.”
Vanessa laughed bitterly.
“You know what you want to believe happened.”
Margaret looked directly at her.
“You were there.”
Dominic turned.
“Vanessa?”
His fiancée's face tightened.
“I was twenty-four. Antonio was a dangerous man. Everyone was afraid of him.”
“That doesn't answer the question.”
“I went to the library that night because he asked to see me.”
“Why?”
Vanessa looked toward the blue door.
“Because he had discovered what I was doing.”
“What were you doing?”
She said nothing.
Dominic approached her.
“Tell me.”
Vanessa's eyes flashed.
“I was protecting this family from your mother. She wanted to give the police documents that would have destroyed your father's business and sent half the people who work for you to prison.”
“Were those documents real?”
“They were incomplete.”
“Were they real?”
Vanessa looked away.
Margaret began shaking.
“Dominic, the blue folder.”
He remembered her warning.
“Where is it?”
“In the room. Beneath the mattress.”
Marcus retrieved a thick blue folder from the chamber. Inside were bank transfers, handwritten notes, and photographs of men entering the estate at night.
Dominic recognized several names.
Politicians. Judges. Business partners.
And one name that appeared repeatedly beside payments made shortly before Antonio's death.
Frank Bellini.
Dominic turned the pages slowly.
“This is enough to destroy the organization.”
“Not all of it,” Margaret said. “Your father kept the final ledger somewhere else.”
Vanessa's expression changed.
Dominic noticed.
“Where?”
She shook her head.
“I don't know.”
Margaret looked at her with exhausted contempt.
“Then why did you spend six months searching his library?”
Vanessa's silence was answer enough.
Dominic closed the folder.
“Marcus, take Vanessa to the security office. She stays on the property, under guard, until I decide what happens next.”
Vanessa stiffened.
“You can't imprison me!”
“I'm not imprisoning you. I'm preventing you from leaving before we understand what you've done.”
Marcus escorted her out.
Margaret reached for Dominic's hand.
He wanted to hold her. He wanted to ask a thousand questions. He also wanted to scream at her for letting him grieve an imaginary death while she remained somewhere inside his own house.
Instead, he whispered, “Why didn't you find me?”
Margaret's eyes filled.
“I tried.”
She slipped the photograph into his hand.
On the back, in his father's handwriting, were six words:
THE HEIR MUST NEVER SEE THE ORIGINAL.
Dominic turned the photograph over again.
A second image had been hidden behind it.
A newborn baby.
And written beneath the photograph was a date from twenty-six years earlier.
Dominic stared at the date.
It was the date of his birth.
Margaret grabbed his wrist.
“Dominic, there's something about your birth that your father never told you.”
Before she could continue, a gunshot shattered the library window.
Marcus shouted from the corridor.
“DOWN!”
Dominic threw himself over his mother.
When he looked up, Margaret was gone.
May you like
And the blue folder lay open on the floor, its most important page missing.
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