Chapter 10
Midnight settled over the Costello estate like a velvet shroud.
The house was dark and peaceful. Sam was sound asleep in his newly furnished bedroom on the third floor, and the rain pattered softly against the high arched windows.
Sadi sat at the vanity in Victor’s master bedroom, admiring the way the emerald ring sparkled in the lamplight. Victor was downstairs in the vault, finalizing the transfer of Dominic Vance’s seized assets into a trust fund under Sam's name.
A soft tap sounded at the bedroom door.
"Enter," Sadi said, expecting Mrs. Gable with evening tea.
Instead, Marcus stepped inside. His face was unusually grim, his eyes darting toward the hallway before he closed the heavy oak door behind him.
"Marcus?" Sadi asked, turning around on the vanity stool. "What's wrong? Is it Sam?"
"No, Miss Hayes. Sam is sleeping like a rock," Marcus said quietly, his voice tightly controlled. He held a small, weathered leather lockbox under his arm, sealed with rusted iron clasps. "This arrived twenty minutes ago by private courier from the federal repository in Manhattan."
"What is it?"
"Before Dominic Vance was... retired," Marcus began, choosing his words carefully, "he left a dead-man's instruction with his private attorney. If he disappeared, this box was to be delivered directly into your hands. Not Victor’s. Yours."
A knot of icy dread formed in the pit of Sadi’s stomach. "Why would Dominic leave something for me?"
Marcus set the box down on the vanity table. From his pocket, he produced a small brass key. "Dominic told his lawyer that if Victor killed him, this box would be his final revenge. I haven't opened it. But I ran it through the bomb scanner downstairs. It’s clean of explosives."
Marcus handed her the key, gave a respectful nod, and stepped back out into the hall to stand guard.
Sadi stared at the box. The metal was cold to the touch. Her heart thumping against her ribs, she inserted the key into the rusted lock and turned it.
*Click.*
The lid sprang open.
Inside lay a collection of yellowed documents, old newspaper clippings, and a single black-and-white photograph.
Sadi lifted the photograph first. Her hands began to shake violently.
The photo showed two young men in their early thirties, standing shoulder-to-shoulder outside an old brick warehouse on the docks. One of the men was her father, Michael Hayes, smiling brightly with his arm slung over the shoulder of the second man.
The second man was Victor’s father, the legendary founder of the Costello empire: Vincent Costello.
On the back of the photo, handwritten in faded blue ink, were the words: *Brothers in Blood. 1994.*
Confused, Sadi set the photograph aside and pulled out the legal documents underneath. They were notarized birth certificates and a sealed paternity declaration dated twenty-four years ago.
Her eyes scanned the legal terminology, her breath hitching in her throat as the horrifying truth leaped off the page.
Her father, Michael Hayes, was not a common dockworker. He was Vincent Costello’s firstborn son—born out of wedlock, hidden away to protect him from a gang war decades ago, and given the mother's maiden name: Hayes.
Sadi let out a choked gasp, dropping the papers onto the vanity.
*Michael Hayes was a Costello.*
Which meant she wasn't an outsider plucked from the gutter. She was the legitimate granddaughter of the syndicate’s founder.
And then she reached the final document at the bottom of the box.
It was an official coroner's report from twelve years ago, marked *CLASSIFIED - SYNDICATE INTERNAL AFFAIRS*.
Attached to it was an encrypted audio cassette tape and a transcript of the day her father was murdered at the Red Hook docks. Sadi’s eyes scanned down to the signature line of the man who had authorized the hit on Michael Hayes.
It wasn't Dominic Vance.
Dominic had merely been the lookout.
The man who had ordered the execution—the man whose signature was scrawled in bold black ink across the death warrant that orphaned Sadi and Sam—was stamped with a seal she saw every single day on the signet ring downstairs:
*Victor Costello.*
The bedroom door clicked open.
Victor walked in, wiping his hands on a clean linen towel, a warm, affectionate smile spreading across his face as he looked at her.
"The trust fund is settled, my love," Victor said softly, stepping toward her. "Everything is in place. No one can ever hurt you again."
Sadi froze. Her blood turned to ice water.
She slowly lowered her hand, covering the open lockbox with her silk robe, her heart pounding with a deafening, terrifying roar as she looked into the eyes of the man she had just agreed to marry—the man who had claimed her, protected her, and murdered her father in cold blood.
Victor stopped two feet away, noticing the sudden, pale horror on her face.
May you like
"Sadi?" Victor asked softly, reaching out for her. "What's wrong?"
Sadi looked down at the massive emerald ring glistening on her finger, and for the first time since that rainy night outside his office, she felt the suffocating chill of absolute terror.
