Chapter 5 - THE SECOND MANThat night, someone broke into the Rossi estate.
Not through a window.
Not through a door.
Through the security system.
At 2:13 a.m., every alarm on the eastern wing activated simultaneously.
Marcus woke the guards.
I was already moving.
We found no intruder.
Nothing had been stolen.
Nothing had been broken.
Except the library.
The wall behind the hidden compartment had been opened again.
The metal box was gone.
The ledger was gone.
But the photographs remained.
I stared at the empty cavity.
Someone had come for the evidence.
Someone who knew exactly where it was hidden.
I turned toward Marcus.
“Who knew about the box?”
“Me. You. Tessa.”
“And Victor.”
Marcus nodded.
We checked every camera.
At first there was nothing.
Then I saw a man entering the library at 2:07.
He wore a hood.
His face was hidden.
But he walked with a limp.
Victor didn't limp.
The man touched the library wall.
Then stopped.
He looked directly toward the camera.
As if he knew where it was.
The footage went black.
“Enhance the frame,” I said.
Marcus did.
The image sharpened.
The man's hand became visible.
There was a scar across the knuckles.
And a ring.
Not silver.
Black.
Tessa walked into the room.
She saw the image.
Her face went blank.
“That's him.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
I turned.
“Your father broke into my house?”
“No.”
She stepped closer to the screen.
“He was trying to get the box before Victor did.”
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“You know more than you're saying.”
She started crying.
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
“From the truth.”
I hated that sentence.
Not because it was dramatic.
Because everyone who knew anything kept saying some version of it.
Protecting me.
Protecting the boys.
Protecting themselves.
Meanwhile, someone was taking pieces off the board.
I sat down.
“Tell me everything.”
Tessa finally did.
Her mother had worked for my father during the final years of his life.
She had discovered financial irregularities involving Victor.
She threatened to report him.
Then my father died.
Six months later, Tessa's mother received money from an unknown Rossi account.
She used the money to move.
Then Victor appeared.
He said the money had been stolen.
He said if she returned it, no one would get hurt.
She refused.
Two weeks later, she was found unconscious in her apartment.
Doctors called it a complication from her illness.
Tessa never believed them.
“Did she leave evidence?”
Tessa nodded.
“The notebooks.”
I looked at Noah's drawings.
“The children saw things?”
“Noah saw Victor.”
“What about Eli?”
“He remembers voices.”
“Whose?”
“My father.”
A car horn sounded outside.
Everyone froze.
Marcus moved to the window.
A black sedan.
The same model.
Same tinted glass.
It stopped at the gate.
Then drove away.
I turned to Tessa.
“Call your father.”
“I don't have his number.”
“Then how did he call you?”
“Unknown number.”
I gave Marcus instructions to trace it.
Two hours later, he found the source.
An abandoned phone registered to a man in Indiana.
The man's name was Daniel Cole.
Tessa's father.
We drove there the next morning.
The address led to a closed warehouse outside Gary.
The door was unlocked.
Inside, there was a chair.
A table.
A lamp.
And one envelope.
My name was written on it.
I opened it.
Zo,
If you're reading this, Victor has already lost control of the money.
He will try to convince you that your father was corrupt.
He wasn't.
He will tell you the Cole family was paid off.
They weren't.
He will tell you Tessa's mother stole from your family.
She didn't.
The twenty-eight million was never meant to belong to you.
It was insurance.
For the children.
I read the sentence twice.
Then came the line that changed everything.
Your father discovered that someone inside the Rossi organization was selling information to a criminal network. He planned to expose them.
He never got the chance.
The final line was only six words.
THE MAN WHO KILLED HIM IS STILL CLOSE.
A floorboard creaked.
Marcus spun around.
A gunshot shattered the lamp.
We dropped behind the table.
Another shot.
Glass exploded.
Then silence.
Marcus moved toward the exit.
Nothing.
Outside, tire marks cut across the mud.
The shooter had vanished.
I looked back at the letter.
The handwriting was Daniel Cole's.
At the bottom was a single symbol.
A circle.
With three dots inside.
Tessa saw it.
She started shaking.
“What?”
“My mother had that symbol.”
“Where?”
“On the back of every photograph.”
I looked at the symbol again.
Then at the warehouse door.
And suddenly I understood.
This wasn't only about stolen money.
Someone had been tracking the Rossi family for years.
Someone had known about Tessa's mother.
May you like
Someone had known about my father.
And now they knew about me.
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