Chapter 6 - THE CHILD’S DRAWING
The armored SUV tore down the wet highway, the tires hissing against the asphalt.
“What did you just say?” Dominic asked, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror.
I held up the child’s drawing.
“This coat,” I said, my voice shaking. “It belongs to your brother. Vincent. And this drawing was in his pocket.”
Dominic kept one hand on the steering wheel and snatched the drawing with the other.
He stared at the crude crayon lines. The red X over Elena’s face. The words She knows.
“Matthew drew this,” Dominic said, his voice hollowing out.
I looked at the eleven-year-old boy sitting quietly in the back seat next to my mother.
“Matthew,” I said gently. “Honey, when did you give this drawing to Uncle Vincent?”
Matthew looked down at his shoes. “A long time ago.”
“How long ago?” Dominic pressed, his tone urgent but careful not to scare his son.
“Before the car crash,” Matthew whispered.
The air in the SUV grew suffocatingly tight.
Vincent had supposedly died in a fiery car crash five years ago. His body was burned beyond recognition. The dental records matched. The family buried a closed casket.
“Matthew,” Dominic said, pulling the SUV off the main highway onto a dark, secluded rural road. “Why did you draw an X over Elena’s face?”
Matthew sniffled, tears welling in his eyes.
“Because I heard her fighting with Uncle Vincent in the library. Five years ago.”
The pieces were slamming into place, violently rearranging everything Dominic thought he knew about his family.
“What were they fighting about, buddy?” Dominic asked softly.
“Elena was crying,” Matthew said, rubbing his eyes. “She told Uncle Vincent that she didn’t want to marry you. She said she loved him. But Uncle Vincent said she had to marry you, so they could get the bank codes.”
Answer one, open two.
Elena hadn’t been blackmailed by Vincent recently.
She and Vincent had been plotting to rob Dominic for half a decade. Before she even became Dominic’s fiancée.
“And what does ‘She knows’ mean?” I asked, pointing to the words on the paper.
Matthew looked at his father.
“Uncle Vincent found out that Grandma knew about them,” Matthew whispered. “Grandma heard them talking. That’s why Uncle Vincent was scared.”
Dominic slammed the brakes.
The massive SUV skidded to a halt on the gravel shoulder, throwing us forward against our seatbelts.
Dominic didn’t speak.
He put the car in park.
His chest heaved as he stared out the windshield into the dark, rainy night.
His mother—Matthew’s grandmother—had died of a sudden, massive heart attack exactly one week before Vincent’s fatal car crash.
“She didn’t have a heart attack,” Dominic whispered, the realization breaking his voice.
“They poisoned her,” I breathed, horrified.
“With the same sleeping pills Elena tried to give me tonight,” Dominic realized.
Vincent and Elena had murdered Dominic’s mother to keep their secret safe. Then, realizing the heat was too much, Vincent faked his own death in the car crash to disappear, leaving Elena behind to secure the marriage and the bank codes.
And tonight was supposed to be their grand reunion.
Dominic gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather creaked.
“He killed my mother.” Dominic’s voice wasn’t angry anymore. It was dead. Hollow. The voice of a man who was about to burn the world down.
He picked up his cell phone and dialed a number.
“Marco. I need a location on Paul.”
A pause.
“I don’t care if he’s bleeding out. Track his phone. Vincent is alive, and Paul knows where he is.”
Dominic listened for ten seconds.
His eyes flicked to me in the rearview mirror.
He hung up.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Joliet,” Dominic said. “An old abandoned warehouse on 4th Street.”
My mother gasped in the backseat.
“Grace,” she whispered, grabbing my arm. “That’s two blocks from the diner.”
“They’re meeting there to split the money,” Dominic said, shifting the car back into drive. “Paul is injured. Vincent is waiting for him.”
He turned back onto the highway, accelerating to eighty miles an hour.
“Dominic, you can’t go in there,” I pleaded. “They have men. You have your son in the car.”
“I’m not taking Matthew inside,” Dominic said. “I’m dropping you, your mother, and Matthew at your diner. You lock the doors. You hide in the back office. And you wait for me to finish this.”
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the gravel parking lot of my mother’s diner.
It was 11:00 PM. The neon OPEN sign was off. The diner was dark and empty.
Dominic grabbed an extra pistol from the glove compartment and handed it to me.
“Do you know how to use this?”
I nodded, my hands shaking as I took the heavy weapon.
“Lock the doors. Do not open them for anyone but me.”
He looked at Matthew, kissing his son’s forehead. “Be brave for me, okay?”
“I love you, Dad.”
Dominic looked at me. His gray eyes were intense, stripping away the roles of boss and maid.
“Keep him safe, Grace.”
“I will.”
We got out of the car. Dominic sped off into the rainy night toward the warehouse.
I unlocked the diner doors. We rushed inside. I locked the deadbolt, pulled down the metal security grates, and led my mother and Matthew to the back office.
We sat in the dark, listening to the rain hit the tin roof.
Ten minutes passed.
Then, twenty.
The silence was agonizing.
Then, the heavy brass bell above the diner’s front door jingled.
My blood turned to ice.
I had locked that door. I had pulled the grates.
Footsteps echoed on the checkered linoleum floor of the dining area.
Slow, deliberate footsteps.
I raised the gun, my hands trembling violently.
The office door creaked open.
A figure stood in the shadows.
It wasn’t Dominic.
It was a man in a wet trench coat, holding a silenced pistol.
May you like
“Hello, Grace,” Vincent Russo said, stepping into the dim light.
And wrapped around his wrist, glittering in the shadows, was a familiar diamond bracelet.
