Chapter 2 - THE MAN DOMINIC CALLED BROTHER
Nathan did not run.
That scared Dominic more than if he had.
He simply stood in the cellar doorway with both hands visible and stared at Mia.
“Mia’s confused,” Nathan said.
Mia grabbed Dominic’s sleeve.
“No.”
Her voice cracked.
“He knows.”
Nathan frowned.
“You’ve been trapped down here for days. You’re dehydrated.”
“I saw you.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
Dominic rose slowly.
“Saw him doing what?”
Mia’s breathing became shallow.
Harper curled against her.
“Last Tuesday, Claire told me she wanted a bottle of Château Margaux for your welcome-home dinner.”
Mia swallowed painfully.
“We came down together.”
“And?”
“She left her phone upstairs.”
Dominic said nothing.
“She went back for it.”
Mia looked at Nathan.
“I heard voices behind the far wall.”
Nathan laughed once.
“The far wall?”
“There’s a room behind it.”
Dominic turned.
The stone wall behind the final wine rack looked solid.
He had owned the estate for fourteen years.
He knew every bedroom.
Every security entrance.
Every tunnel left from Prohibition.
Or he thought he did.
Mia continued.
“I heard Nathan talking to someone.”
“What did he say?”
Mia closed her eyes.
“He said, ‘Dominic signs the transfer after the wedding, then we finish it.’”
Dominic stared at Nathan.
Nathan shook his head.
“That never happened.”
Mia pointed weakly toward the wall.
“I moved the wine rack.”
“And found what?”
“A hidden door.”
Nathan stepped forward.
“That’s enough.”
Daniel blocked him.
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“Stay where you are.”
Nathan looked wounded.
“Seventeen years, Dom.”
“I said stay.”
Mia kept talking.
“There were papers inside.”
“What papers?”
“Property records.”
Her eyes filled with fear.
“Bank accounts.”
Nathan’s face changed slightly.
“Insurance policies.”
Dominic’s stomach tightened.
“Whose insurance?”
Mia looked directly at him.
“Yours.”
The cellar fell silent.
Harper began crying again.
Mia pulled her close.
“I tried to leave.”
“But Claire came back,” Dominic said.
Mia nodded.
“She saw the papers in my hands.”
“What did she do?”
“She slapped me.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Then Nathan came through the hidden door.”
Mia was shaking now.
“He took my phone.”
Her voice dropped.
“He said nobody would believe a maid over Dominic Vale’s future wife and his oldest friend.”
Nathan’s smile disappeared completely.
Dominic saw it.
The mask finally slipping.
“Search him,” Dominic ordered.
Nathan looked at him.
“You’re making a mistake.”
Daniel moved forward.
Nathan swung first.
Fast.
His fist struck Daniel’s throat.
Then he grabbed Marcus’s wrist and slammed him into the stone wall.
Dominic raised his gun.
“Nathan!”
Nathan froze.
Daniel recovered and shoved him face-first against the wall.
A pistol came from Nathan’s waistband.
Then a second phone.
Then a key ring.
Marcus picked up the keys.
One was old iron.
Mia pointed toward the wine rack.
“That one.”
Daniel twisted Nathan’s arms behind his back.
Dominic walked toward the rack.
“Move it.”
Marcus and another guard pulled.
The rack rolled six inches.
Then twelve.
A narrow steel door appeared behind it.
Dominic stared.
He had grown up learning that a man survived by knowing what happened beneath his own roof.
Someone had built a room beneath his house.
And he had never known.
Dominic inserted the iron key.
Nathan finally looked afraid.
“Dom.”
Dominic turned.
“For seventeen years, you called me your brother.”
“I am your brother.”
“Then you should have nothing to fear.”
Dominic opened the hidden door.
A motion sensor clicked.
White fluorescent lights came on.
Shelves covered the walls.
Files.
Cash.
Weapons.
Fake passports.
And directly in front of Dominic sat a large corkboard covered with photographs.
Photographs of Dominic.
His guards.
His businesses.
Claire.
Mia.
Even Harper.
But one photograph made Dominic forget how to breathe.
It showed the burned wreckage of the car that killed his wife eight years earlier.
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Across the bottom, someone had written in red ink:
PHASE ONE COMPLETE.
