Chapter 5 - THE DAUGHTER HE ERASED
Mara read the letter three times.
It didn’t become less impossible.
Senator William Thorne was her biological father.
The man whose daughter had just slapped her beside her mother’s grave.
The man whose house Mara had cleaned for three years.
The man who had passed her in hallways and barely looked at her.
“I served him dinner.”
Dante said nothing.
“I cleaned his office.”
“Mara—”
“He knew.”
Her voice broke.
“He knew who I was.”
Dante’s silence confirmed the part she didn’t want to believe.
Mara threw the letter across the storage unit.
“He knew!”
Dante caught her before she kicked the box.
“Don’t.”
“Let go.”
“You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I said let go!”
He did.
Immediately.
That made her angrier.
She paced the narrow room.
“My mother let me work there.”
“Maybe she didn’t know.”
“She knew everything else!”
“She may have thought it was safer.”
“Safer?”
Mara laughed.
“I spent three years being treated like garbage by my own half-sister while my father watched.”
Dante’s phone buzzed.
Gabriel.
“We have company.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“How many?”
“Six. Maybe eight.”
Mara stared at him.
“Thorne?”
“Probably.”
Dante began putting the files into a bag.
“We’re leaving through the back.”
A loud crash echoed down the hallway.
Then shouting.
Dante grabbed Mara’s hand.
“Move.”
They ran.
For a man in an expensive suit, Dante moved like someone who had spent his whole life expecting violence.
The rear stairwell door burst open.
A masked man appeared.
Dante hit him before Mara could scream.
One punch.
Then another.
The man dropped.
Mara stared.
“You do that often?”
“Bad time to ask.”
They reached the lower garage.
A black SUV screeched around the corner.
Gabriel threw open the door.
“Get in!”
Mara climbed into the back.
Dante followed.
The SUV launched forward.
Another vehicle chased them.
Gabriel swerved into traffic.
Mara grabbed the seat.
“Your people always drive like this?”
Dante glanced behind them.
“Only when someone is trying to kill us.”
“Comforting.”
A shot hit the rear window.
The glass cracked.
Mara ducked.
Dante covered her body with his.
“Stay down.”
His hand rested behind her head.
For one dangerous second, Mara remembered his hands from that night.
Warm.
Careful.
Nothing like the stories whispered about him.
Then the SUV turned sharply.
The chasing car missed the turn.
Gabriel accelerated.
Five minutes later, they disappeared beneath an underground parking structure.
Dante sat back.
Mara looked at him.
“Why does Senator Thorne want those files so badly?”
“Because they probably prove enough corruption to put him in prison.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“That’s not all.”
Dante watched her.
“My mother kept them for nineteen years.”
“Yes.”
“She could have turned them over anytime.”
“But she didn’t.”
Mara looked inside the evidence bag.
“There’s something worse.”
Back at the brownstone, they went through every page.
At midnight, Mara found it.
A handwritten ledger.
Payments.
Dates.
Initials.
One line circled in red.
A.V. — CONTROL FAILURE — ELIMINATE.
Dante went perfectly still.
Mara looked at him.
“What does eliminate mean?”
Dante said nothing.
“Dante.”
His eyes were on the date.
Twenty-one years earlier.
The same week his father Antonio Vale died in what police called a boating accident.
Mara understood.
“Oh my God.”
May you like
Dante slowly lifted his eyes.
“Your father killed mine.”
