Chapter 2 - The Secret Hidden in My Mother's NameThe first thing I noticed was the weight of Dominic Vale's body shielding mine.
The second was the gun in his hand.
It was pointed toward the door, perfectly steady, while his other arm remained stretched across me.
“Don't move,” he ordered.
“I wasn't planning to.”
A brief glance told me his shirt sleeve was torn. His knuckles were white around the weapon, and his breathing had become slow and deliberate.
This was not a man surprised by violence.
This was a man who had spent his life expecting it.
Three more shots echoed through the mansion.
Someone screamed downstairs.
Dominic rose just enough to look through the narrow opening beside the desk.
“Marcus!”
“Hallway secured!” came the response. “Two intruders down. One escaped toward the east wing.”
Dominic's expression hardened.
“Seal the gates. Nobody leaves.”
He turned back to me.
“Can you run?”
“Where?”
“Somewhere without windows.”
“Are you going to explain what's happening?”
“Not until you're safe.”
I hated how calmly he said it. As if gunmen storming the mansion were an inconvenience comparable to a broken refrigerator.
He took my hand, then stopped before his fingers closed around mine.
“May I?”
The question startled me.
After everything I had witnessed, I hadn't expected a man like Dominic Vale to ask permission for anything.
I nodded.
His grip was warm, careful, and surprisingly gentle.
We hurried through a narrow doorway hidden behind a bookcase. He led me down a staircase into a reinforced room lined with monitors. One wall displayed live footage from cameras overlooking the driveway, gardens, and surrounding woods.
Marcus entered moments later, his pistol drawn.
“East perimeter is clear. They knew exactly where to go.”
“Meaning someone inside helped them,” Dominic said.
Marcus's jaw tightened.
“That's what I was afraid you'd say.”
He looked at me.
“And she's the reason.”
I bristled.
“I'm standing right here.”
“Then understand this,” Marcus replied. “Whoever attacked us tonight wasn't interested in robbing the mansion. They had photographs of you, your workplace, and your apartment. They've been watching you.”
My stomach turned.
“For how long?”
“Three weeks, possibly longer.”
I thought about the stranger who had sat in the diner every Thursday afternoon, ordering black coffee and never drinking it. I thought about the car that had appeared outside my apartment twice that month.
Little details I had dismissed suddenly rearranged themselves into something monstrous.
Dominic studied the monitor.
“Show her the footage.”
Marcus hesitated.
“Sir?”
“Now.”
A camera view filled the largest screen. Two men in dark clothing crossed the eastern lawn. One carried a rifle; the other held a small black case.
They moved directly toward the entrance where Dominic had brought me inside.
Then a third figure appeared on the footage.
An older man in a gray overcoat.
He didn't carry a weapon.
He simply stood beneath a tree and watched the intruders approach.
I leaned toward the screen.
“Who is that?”
Dominic's entire face went still.
“Silas Vale.”
“Your father?”
“My uncle.”
He watched the man disappear beyond the camera's field of view.
“My father's brother. He's spent twenty years pretending to be the only person I can trust.”
“And you're saying he sent those men?”
“I'm saying he's suddenly very interested in you.”
I thought about the photograph and the locket.
“Why?”
Dominic opened a cabinet and removed a thick folder. He placed several photographs on the table.
The first showed a warehouse engulfed in flames.
The second showed a burned-out car.
The third showed a police officer standing beside a sheet-covered body.
“Fifteen years ago,” Dominic began, “my father was murdered. I was blamed for ordering the killing, and half our organization turned against me. I was twenty-three, badly injured, and locked inside a basement by men who once called themselves my friends.”
His eyes drifted toward the photograph of my mother.
“Claire was a nurse. She worked for my family before the shooting. She found me in that basement after everyone else had abandoned me.”
“What did she do?”
“She cleaned my wounds. Fed me when I couldn't stand. Stayed beside me through three nights of fever.”
His voice grew quieter.
“She was the first person who touched me without trying to control me.”
Something about that sentence unsettled me more than the gunfire.
Dominic continued.
“When I finally recovered, Claire discovered that someone inside my father's organization had arranged the murder. She found records proving it. Before she could give them to me, she disappeared.”
“And you think Silas killed her?”
“I think he convinced me she betrayed us. He told me she had stolen the records and sold them to our enemies.”
Dominic picked up the silver locket.
“For fifteen years, I believed your mother had chosen money over loyalty.”
He opened the locket.
Inside was a tiny photograph of me as a child, standing between my mother and an unfamiliar man.
The stranger's face had been scratched out.
I frowned.
“Who is that?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I've never seen him before.”
Dominic studied the picture.
“Look at the man's hand.”
I leaned closer.
A gold signet ring gleamed on his finger. Its surface was engraved with a serpent coiled around a crown.
Dominic went pale.
“That ring belonged to my father.”
Before I could respond, Marcus's phone vibrated.
He checked the screen and answered.
“Yes?”
He listened silently.
Then he looked at Dominic.
“Boss, the police have arrived. They found a dead man in the driver's seat of the car that escaped.”
“Identity?”
Marcus swallowed.
“Dennis Crowley.”
The businessman who had grabbed Dominic at the diner.
The man whose face had been bloodied before he was dragged away.
I stared at the screen, unable to breathe.
Dominic closed his fist around the locket.
“That's impossible,” he whispered.
Marcus's expression darkened.
“There's more.”
He turned his phone toward us.
May you like
A photograph showed Dennis's body lying against a steering wheel. Written across the windshield in red paint were five words.
THE CARTER GIRL IS NEXT.
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