Chapter 5 - WHAT CATHERINE HEARD
~1,100 words
“A cardiologist?”
Samuel Vale had been our family physician for as long as I could remember.
But I knew his original specialty.
Cardiology.
I had simply never connected it to my father.
“What was wrong with him?”
Dominic looked at Catherine.
She shook her head.
“Don’t make me answer for you.”
His expression tightened.
Then he faced me.
“Vincent had an aortic aneurysm.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“He would have told me.”
“He barely told Catherine.”
I looked at Mom.
Her silence confirmed it.
“How bad?”
She answered.
“Bad enough that Samuel wanted surgery.”
“And he refused?”
“He delayed it.”
Of course he did.
My father could face a gun without blinking.
Ask him to sit in a hospital gown and follow instructions, and suddenly he became impossible.
I looked at Dominic.
“What does that have to do with Dock Fourteen?”
“Everything.”
He sat across from me.
For the first time in my life, my uncle looked old.
“Vincent believed if he underwent surgery before restructuring the organization, people would smell weakness.”
“That sounds insane.”
“It sounded like Vincent.”
Mom almost smiled through her sadness.
“Yes.”
Dominic continued.
“He wanted the Calder agreement finished first. Samuel begged him to wait.”
“And you?”
“I begged harder.”
I thought of the argument Mom heard.
Dominic telling my father not to go.
Maybe not treachery.
Maybe fear.
Reversal after reversal.
Each one made the ground less reliable.
“Why did you follow him?”
“Because I knew he would go anyway.”
“Samuel?”
“Came because I called him.”
“You said he wasn’t there as my doctor.”
“He was there to keep your father alive if the argument got physical.”
“What argument?”
Dominic’s eyes darkened.
“With me.”
Mom looked away.
I stood.
“You expected to fight my father?”
“No.”
“Then explain it better.”
Dominic rubbed a hand across his mouth.
“Vincent wasn’t only closing routes. He planned to tell the captains the next morning that you would not inherit the street side of the organization.”
My anger returned.
“Why?”
“Because he wanted it dismantled.”
“Who would control it while that happened?”
“Me.”
There it was.
The obvious motive.
Dominic saw it on my face.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Turn this into a story where I killed my brother for a chair.”
“You benefited.”
His eyes flashed.
“I buried my brother.”
“And put me in his place.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because by morning, six men were already asking who would control the docks.”
His voice rose.
“You were thirty-four, grieving, furious and dangerous enough that nobody wanted to test you twice. I used that.”
Silence.
An ugly truth.
Not necessarily murder.
But manipulation.
Mom pressed a hand to her chest.
Megan noticed immediately.
“Catherine?”
“I’m all right.”
Megan crouched beside her.
Dominic watched.
A strange guilt crossed his face.
“You should be upstairs.”
Mom laughed weakly.
“That sentence has become very unpopular.”
Even Dominic almost smiled.
Then Catherine looked at him.
“Tell Isaac why you kept asking me for the watch.”
Dominic’s expression closed again.
“The photograph.”
“Only that?”
He hesitated.
I saw it.
“So there’s more.”
Dominic looked at the floor.
“I thought Vincent might have left something else.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know.”
Mom’s hand moved to the silver rosary around her neck.
A simple old thing she had worn since I was a child.
Megan’s eyes followed the movement.
“Catherine?”
Mom looked at her.
“You keep touching the cross.”
“I always do.”
“No.”
Megan shook her head.
“You’ve touched it every time Dominic talks about the watch.”
Mom slowly lowered her hand.
I looked between them.
“Mom?”
She sighed.
“Your father gave me this the week before he died.”
Dominic stood.
“What?”
That reaction told me he had never known.
Mom unclasped the rosary.
The crucifix was silver, scratched with age.
“He told me if anything happened before the restructuring was finished, I should keep it away from the business.”
My pulse quickened.
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know.”
Dominic stared.
“For twelve years?”
“I thought he meant the rosary itself.”
Megan examined the cross.
“There’s a seam.”
She handed it to me.
The lower edge of the crucifix slid less than a quarter inch.
Inside was no paper.
No secret ledger.
Just a tiny brass key.
Dominic whispered a curse.
I looked at him.
“You know what it opens.”
“No.”
“You reacted.”
“Because Vincent loved hiding simple things in ridiculous places.”
Mom looked toward the old desk.
“He did.”
I remembered my father keeping emergency cash inside an empty coffee tin because, according to him, no burglar respected bad coffee.
We searched his study.
Not tearing walls apart.
Not opening secret rooms.
Drawers.
Cabinets.
Boxes that had not been touched in years.
Megan found it.
A narrow wooden case beneath a stack of old Christmas cards.
The brass key fit.
Inside lay one object.
A theater ticket.
Boston Symphony Hall.
Two seats.
The night after my father died.
I stared at it.
Mom covered her mouth.
“I bought those.”
“For you and Dad?”
She nodded.
“Anniversary concert.”
It wasn’t proof of anything criminal.
That was why it hurt.
My father had expected a tomorrow.
He planned to sit beside my mother listening to music twenty-four hours after the night Dominic said he was risking his life.
Megan turned the ticket over.
Writing.
Vincent’s.
If Sam is right, Catherine gets the truth. If I’m right, we finally get old.
Mom began crying.
Not loudly.
That made it worse.
I sat beside her.
For once, I didn’t say, Don’t cry.
Didn’t ask what she needed.
I waited.
She took my hand herself.
“He was scared,” she whispered.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
I had never heard anyone say those words together.
Vincent Mercer and afraid.
Mom continued.
“He didn’t want you to know he was sick because he thought you would become exactly what you became with me.”
I closed my eyes.
“Controlling.”
“Yes.”
Megan moved away, giving us privacy.
Dominic stood near the fireplace.
His face looked wrecked.
“I loved him,” he said.
I looked at him.
“I know.”
That didn’t erase anything.
It simply made the betrayal more complicated.
“What happened after you followed him?”
Dominic swallowed.
“We argued at the dock office. Vincent accused me of wanting the organization more than I wanted him alive.”
“Was he right?”
Dominic’s answer took too long.
“Partly.”
Mom stared at him.
He didn’t look away.
“I believed dismantling everything would destroy the family. I believed your father was letting fear of dying make him weak.”
His voice broke.
“I was angry.”
For the first time, I believed him completely.
Not because it made him innocent.
Because it made him human enough to do terrible damage while thinking he was right.
“What happened next?”
“Samuel arrived.”
“And?”
“Vincent told both of us to leave.”
“Did you?”
“I did.”
“Samuel?”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“No.”
Mom leaned forward.
“Why not?”
“Because Vincent grabbed his chest.”
The room went still.
Dominic looked at me.
“I had made it halfway across the warehouse when I heard Samuel shout.”
My stomach tightened.
“You went back.”
“Yes.”
“What did you see?”
Dominic looked toward Samuel Vale’s medication bottle on the desk.
“Your father on the floor.”
“And Samuel?”
“Kneeling over him.”
“Alive?”
Dominic’s silence became unbearable.
“Was my father alive?”
“Barely.”
I stood.
“Then why did you leave the hospital twelve years ago telling me Calder gunmen killed him?”
Dominic’s eyes dropped.
“Because by the time we reached the hospital, I had already made the worst decision of my life.”
“What decision?”
He looked at Catherine.
Then back at me.
“I told Samuel what story we were going to tell.”
My voice went quiet.
“What story?”
“That Calder men opened fire.”
Mom whispered, “Dominic.”
He ignored her.
“There’s something else, Isaac.”
I stepped closer.
“What?”
He exhaled.
“The bullets in your father’s car?”
My pulse stopped.
May you like
“Those weren’t fired while Vincent was inside.”
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