Chapter 8 - What Her Mother KnewKhloe dropped the phone.
For years she had believed cancer killed her mother.
There had been doctors.
Treatments.
Hospital bills.
Months of decline.
But Anthony remembered something.
“Thomas suspected it.”
Khloe turned.
“What?”
“Your mother became sick shortly after Thomas found the ledger.”
Dominic immediately obtained her old medical records.
A toxicologist reviewed them.
The conclusion was devastating.
Long-term arsenic exposure could have produced symptoms resembling complications from her treatment.
Someone had slowly poisoned her.
Khloe locked herself in the bedroom.
Dominic didn't force the door.
He sat outside.
For almost an hour.
Eventually she opened it.
Her eyes were swollen.
“You can come in.”
He did.
She sat on the floor.
Dominic sat beside her.
No expensive suit.
No authority.
No commands.
Just a man beside a grieving woman.
“I spent years angry at her.”
“Why?”
“She wouldn't stop apologizing for leaving me.”
Khloe wiped her eyes.
“She kept saying, ‘I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry I can't stay.’ I got angry because I thought she was giving up.”
Dominic listened.
“I told her I didn't want to hear it anymore.”
Her voice broke.
“That was one of the last conversations we had.”
Dominic took her hand.
“She knew you loved her.”
“You don't know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How?”
“Because everything you've done tells me exactly what kind of daughter you were.”
Khloe looked at him.
There was no pity in his face.
Only certainty.
She leaned against him.
He held her until she stopped shaking.
The following morning, Khloe remembered something.
Her mother kept journals.
Most had been thrown away after the apartment was cleared.
But one box remained in storage.
They retrieved it.
Inside was a cookbook.
Her mother's handwritten recipes filled the pages.
Between chicken parmesan and peach cobbler was a note.
Thomas says Lorenzo has been asking questions.
Khloe turned the page.
Another note.
Lorenzo brought soup again. Strange metallic taste. Thomas told me not to eat anything he brings.
Khloe's stomach twisted.
Near the end:
If something happens to us, Lorenzo knows why.
That was enough.
Dominic tracked Lorenzo to an abandoned restaurant property in East Boston.
This time Khloe insisted on going.
They found him alone.
He didn't run.
Perhaps he was tired.
Perhaps he knew there was nowhere left.
“Why?” Khloe asked.
Lorenzo looked older than she remembered.
“Your father was going to expose everything.”
“So you killed my mother?”
“I didn't mean to.”
“Don't.”
Khloe’s voice cut through him.
“Don't make her death smaller so you can live with yourself.”
Lorenzo lowered his eyes.
Kensington had paid him to monitor Thomas.
Lorenzo began poisoning meals delivered to the Bennett home, intending to make Thomas sick enough to stop investigating.
But Thomas rarely ate them.
Khloe's mother did.
By the time Lorenzo realized it, she was dying.
“And my father?”
“I told Kensington where he'd be.”
Khloe stared at him.
“You murdered both my parents.”
“I've regretted it every day.”
“Regret isn't justice.”
Lorenzo looked toward Dominic.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Dominic looked at Khloe.
Years earlier, he might have answered himself.
Now he waited.
Khloe stepped forward.
“No.”
Lorenzo seemed surprised.
“You're going to live.”
His shoulders loosened.
Then Khloe finished.
“In prison.”
Federal agents entered through the rear door.
Lorenzo stared at her.
“You brought them?”
“Yes.”
“You think your father would want this?”
Khloe’s eyes filled, but her voice stayed steady.
“My father died trying to make sure men like you couldn't decide who deserved justice.”
Lorenzo was handcuffed.
As agents led him away, Khloe felt no triumph.
Only release.
Outside, Dominic waited beside her.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
She looked at him.
“I'm tired of pretending I'm okay.”
“You never have to pretend with me.”
They stood silently.
Then Khloe said something that terrified her more than guns ever had.
“I love you.”
Dominic froze.
For once, the man who always had an answer had none.
Khloe's heart sank.
“Oh.”
She stepped backward.
“I shouldn't have—”
Dominic caught her hand.
“I've been trying not to say that for three weeks.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
She stared at him.
“You have a strange way of showing it.”
“I threatened several people.”
“That isn't romance.”
“It is where I come from.”
She laughed through her tears.
Dominic kissed her.
Then his phone rang.
Matteo.
Dominic answered.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Khloe’s happiness vanished.
“What happened?”
Dominic lowered the phone.
“Rourke was arrested.”
“That's good.”
“No.”
His eyes remained fixed on hers.
“He had a detonator.”
“For what?”
“We don't know.”
Then Khloe heard an engine beneath the building.
Dominic turned toward the window.
A delivery truck had parked beside the restaurant.
Matteo shouted through the phone.
“GET OUT!”
May you like
Dominic grabbed Khloe.
The explosion threw them across the room.
