Chapter 2 - FIVE WEEKS AFTER THE FUNERAL
Vincent recovered quickly.
“What’s going on?”
Dominic watched his face.
“A staffing problem.”
Hannah reached for Grace again. This time Dominic handed her over.
“Wait here,” he told her.
Vincent stayed in the doorway.
“If she brought a child into your office, I’ll have security remove them.”
“You’ll do nothing.”
The words were quiet.
Vincent’s eyes shifted.
He had stood beside Dominic’s father for thirty years. He had helped raise the brothers. He had identified Julian’s remains when the medical examiner warned Dominic not to look.
Now Dominic remembered how firmly Vincent had insisted.
He closed the office door.
Hannah hugged Grace so tightly that the baby squirmed.
“Tell me.”
“Evan disappeared. His phone stopped working. Then he came to my apartment with burns on his arm and stitches above his eye.”
“When?”
She gave him a date.
Five weeks after the funeral.
“He said he’d gotten away from people who would kill us if they knew about me. I’d just found out I was pregnant.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“He showed me a picture of my front door. Someone had taken it while I was inside.”
Dominic looked toward the closed door.
“What happened next?”
“He stayed three nights. Then he said he had to fix something. He never came back.”
“You said he died.”
Hannah swallowed.
“Someone left his watch outside my apartment. There was blood on the strap.”
“That doesn’t prove—”
“And a photograph.”
Her voice became flat.
“I know what I saw.”
Grace tugged at her collar.
Dominic forced himself to ask the next question.
“Why stay here?”
“Because I needed the job. Because the name on my paycheck was Caruso, and I thought someone in this house might eventually say something that explained why my daughter didn’t have a father.”
For nearly two years, she had scrubbed his floors while listening for answers.
“Where have you been keeping her?”
“In the linen room off the back stairs. Only since my sitter got hurt. I check on her every few minutes.”
Dominic felt something worse than anger.
Shame.
Hannah reached into the pocket of her uniform.
“He left this with me. I didn’t understand it.”
She placed a folded page on the desk.
A short list of container numbers.
A date.
Two words in Julian’s handwriting.
ASK DOM.
May you like
Below them was another line, pressed so hard the pen had nearly torn the paper.
UNLESS VINCENT GETS TO HIM FIRST.
