Chapter 5 - The Woman Who Knew My Brother's Secret
I had spent nineteen years convincing people that I was incapable of fear.
Now I was responsible for a seven-year-old girl, my supposedly dead brother, and a woman whose identity could get everyone around me killed.
Fear wasn't the problem.
The problem was that I had no idea who was holding the strings.
We left the building through an underground parking exit and moved to an abandoned warehouse I owned near the river. It wasn't listed under my name, and only three people knew it existed.
Marco checked every entrance before allowing Clara inside.
While he inspected the security system, I sat with the girl beneath a hanging industrial lamp.
"Clara, I need you to tell me everything your mother said about the original contract."
She dug into her backpack and removed a small envelope sealed with red wax.
"She told me not to open it unless I found you."
"Why didn't you give it to me earlier?"
"Because she said I had to make sure you agreed to protect me first."
I broke the seal.
Inside lay a photograph of two men standing beside a desk.
My father, Anthony Moretti, stood on one side. My brother Michael stood on the other.
Between them was a woman I had not seen in nearly a decade.
Elena Cross.
For years, I'd believed Elena had betrayed our family. She had worked as my father's financial secretary, managing accounts that stretched from legitimate property investments to businesses that existed only to conceal the movement of dirty money.
When the police raided our family's offices nine years earlier, Elena vanished.
Three days later, Michael supposedly died in a car explosion.
I had connected the two events and concluded that Elena had sold us out.
Now I was looking at a photograph of Elena standing beside Michael, with my father holding a document bearing the words Protection Agreement.
Beneath the photograph was a note.
Dominic, your father made a promise he could not keep. Michael made one he refused to break. You are the only person left who can decide what that promise is worth.
I turned the paper over.
A name had been written in the corner.
PROJECT LANTERN.
Marco returned carrying a laptop.
"Boss, I found something. Project Lantern was never an official federal program, but several retired agents have received payments connected to a private security company called Asterion."
"Owned by whom?"
"Victor Sloane."
The name meant nothing to me until Marco opened a photograph.
Victor Sloane had once been my father's closest business partner.
He had also attended Michael's funeral.
I remembered him standing beside me at the cemetery, one hand on my shoulder, whispering that grief made men weak.
I had believed he was comforting me.
Perhaps he had simply been making sure I stayed where he wanted me.
"Find him," I said.
Marco hesitated.
"There's another problem. Asterion employs former law enforcement officers, surveillance specialists, and contractors who used to work in witness protection."
"So Mercer works for Sloane."
"Probably."
"And he has enough influence to shut down my building."
Marco nodded.
I looked at Clara.
"Your mother knows where Sloane is?"
"She said he knows where everybody is."
"That's not an answer."
Clara reached into her bag again and took out a folded drawing.
This one showed a lighthouse beside a black sea. A little girl stood at its base, holding hands with two adults.
In the upper corner, her mother had written an address.
"She told me this was where Daddy went when he wanted to think."
The address belonged to a lighthouse on the abandoned coast road outside the city.
I recognized it immediately.
Michael and I had discovered that place as children. Our father had forbidden us to go there because the old lighthouse stood on private land.
Years later, Michael had bought the property secretly.
I had never asked why.
My phone rang.
An unfamiliar female voice spoke before I could identify herself.
"Dominic Moretti?"
"Who is this?"
"You don't know me, but your brother does."
"Put him on the phone."
A pause.
Then Michael's voice emerged, weak but unmistakable.
"Dom?"
I gripped the phone so tightly my knuckles turned white.
"Michael. Where are you?"
"Don't come to the station."
"You sent the message."
"No. Sloane did."
I looked at Marco.
Michael continued speaking rapidly.
"Listen to me. The contract is real, and Elena is alive. But if you bring Clara anywhere near Asterion, they'll take her permanently."
"Why?"
Silence.
Then my brother whispered a sentence that made every hair on my arms stand upright.
"Because Clara isn't just my daughter, Dominic."
He drew a shaky breath.
"She's the only living witness who can prove that our father ordered the disappearances."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone.
Across the warehouse, Clara was drawing a little house on a piece of cardboard.
She didn't know that the family protecting her had been built on a lie.
She also didn't know that the man hunting her might possess enough evidence to destroy everything I had ever owned.
I walked toward her.
"Clara, we need to visit a lighthouse."
She looked up.
"Is Mommy there?"
"I don't know."
She slipped the cap back onto her marker.
"Then we should bring her something warm."
I stared at her small hands.
After everything she'd endured, she was still thinking about her mother being cold.
I took off my coat and wrapped it around her shoulders.
Then I made a promise I'd never made to anyone before.
"No matter what we find, you won't face it alone."
Clara studied me for several seconds.
Then she held out her hand.
"Okay, Uncle Dominic."
I froze.
May you like
She smiled faintly.
"Mama told me what to call you."
