Chapter 4 - SINS OF THE FATHER
The grandfather clock in the hallway struck 3:00 AM. The mansion felt less like a home and more like a mausoleum. Dominic sat at the massive oak dining table, his father’s gold pocket watch resting on the polished wood in front of him.
I handed him a cup of hot chamomile tea. “Drink. You’re still recovering. Your oxygen levels need time to stabilize.”
He didn’t touch the mug. His eyes were locked on the watch. “Only two living people have the keys to the Caruso family crypt. Me, and Anthony.”
“You think Anthony opened your father’s grave?” I asked, pulling out a chair and sitting across from him. I should have been terrified. I was a civilian, a nurse trying to pay her mother’s medical bills, sitting in the middle of a mafia civil war. But looking at Dominic, I didn’t feel fear. I felt a desperate urge to protect him.
“Anthony has always resented my father’s choices,” Dominic said, his voice laced with exhaustion. “My father left the syndicate to me. Anthony got the legitimate businesses. He always viewed it as an insult. But to desecrate a grave? To take Elena’s rosary? To hide a child in my walls?”
Before he could continue, the dining room doors opened. Marcus walked in, dragging the elderly housekeeper by the arm. She was sobbing, her apron crumpled in her shaking hands.
“She was trying to leave through the servant’s entrance, boss,” Marcus said, forcing her into a chair.
Dominic didn’t yell. He didn’t threaten her. He just looked at her with a quiet, devastating disappointment. “How long, Maria?”
The housekeeper broke down. “I didn’t want to, Mr. Caruso! I swear on my life! Mr. Anthony, he found out about my grandson’s gambling debts. He said if I didn’t help him, my grandson wouldn’t live to see Christmas.”
“Help him do what?” I pressed, leaning forward.
“Put the drops in the tea,” Maria sobbed, unable to meet Dominic’s eyes. “Just a few drops every night. He said it wouldn’t kill you! He said it would just make your heart flutter, make you tired. So the family council would think you were unfit to lead!”
My blood ran cold. Answer one: Dominic’s collapse at the business meeting wasn’t exhaustion or a natural heart condition. Anthony had been slowly poisoning him. Open one: why escalate to carbon monoxide in the library? Open two: how did Mia fit into the hostile takeover?
I grabbed Dominic’s tea cup, the one he had been drinking from all evening before the library incident. I tipped it toward the light. At the bottom, a faint, chalky white residue clung to the porcelain. Digitalis. A medication that slowed the heart, easily fatal if overdosed.
“You’ve been chemically weakening him,” I said, glaring at Maria. “And the library? The carbon monoxide?”
“I didn’t know about the gas!” Maria cried. “But the child... she’s been living in the unused east wing for three weeks. A woman brought her. A woman with a scar on her neck. She looked just like your Elena, Mr. Caruso.”
Dominic stood up, the chair scraping violently against the floor. “Elena didn’t have a sister. She was an orphan.”
“I’m telling the truth!” Maria wailed.
Dominic turned to Marcus. “Lock her in the wine cellar. And find Anthony. Now.”
I needed to clear my head. The mansion felt suffocating. “I’m going to my car to get my backup medical kit,” I told Dominic. “I want to run a full tox screen on your blood right now.”
He nodded, his eyes softening for a fraction of a second as he looked at me. “Be careful, Claire.”
I walked out the front doors into the frigid Chicago night. The driveway was lined with expensive cars, but it was eerily quiet. I reached my modest sedan, wrapping my arms around myself against the biting wind.
As I unlocked the door, I noticed something tucked under my windshield wiper.
May you like
It was a piece of thick, glossy paper. I pulled it out. The streetlight illuminated the text. It was a one-way ferry ticket to Michigan. Attached to it was a handwritten note on expensive stationery.
Miss Bennett. Take this ticket. Leave Chicago tonight. If you are still in this city by sunrise, the funding for your mother’s rehabilitation center will be withdrawn, and her oxygen machine will experience a sudden, tragic malfunction.
