Chapter 4 - A Dangerous Kind of Truth
Emergency lights flooded the hallway in deep red.
Dominic pulled a gun from behind his back.
Lydia had no idea where it had been hidden, and she decided she did not want to know.
“Stay behind me.”
“I’m getting tired of hearing that.”
“You’ll be more tired if someone shoots you.”
Men shouted from the foyer. Doors slammed. Somewhere outside, an engine roared.
Matteo touched a finger to the communication device in his ear.
“Perimeter breach near the east gate,” he said. “Security system was disabled remotely.”
Dominic looked at Lydia.
“The locket.”
“It transmitted a signal?”
“It may have carried malware designed to connect with the house network.”
“That is not how every device works.”
“It is how expensive devices work.”
A burst of gunfire sounded outside.
Lydia flinched.
Dominic took her arm and moved her toward a concealed door behind the bookcase.
“No.”
“This passage leads to a secure room.”
“I’m not hiding while everyone else fights.”
“You are not trained.”
“I hit a gunman with an ice bucket.”
“A memorable achievement. Go.”
The bookcase swung inward.
Before Lydia entered, Sofia appeared at the end of the hall carrying a pistol and wearing silk pajama pants.
“Three vehicles,” she said. “Two at the east gate, one near the river.”
“You should be upstairs,” Dominic said.
“You should learn that no woman in this house listens to you.”
A man rushed from the stairwell behind her.
Sofia turned and fired once.
The man fell.
Lydia’s mouth opened.
Sofia looked at the pistol. “I hate this family.”
Dominic pushed Lydia through the hidden doorway.
The panel closed behind her.
She found herself in a narrow passage lit by small floor lamps. Concrete steps led downward.
She could still hear gunfire through the walls.
Every instinct told her to return.
Common sense told her that Dominic was right.
She was an accountant wearing borrowed trousers. She would not improve an armed confrontation.
Lydia descended.
The passage opened into a secure room containing surveillance screens, emergency supplies, and a steel door thick enough to survive an explosion.
One monitor displayed the mansion grounds.
Masked men moved between trees while Rossi guards returned fire from stone barriers. Another screen showed the east gate, where a truck had crashed through the iron bars.
Lydia searched for Dominic.
She found him near the foyer, directing men toward the river entrance.
A shadow moved behind him.
“Turn around,” she whispered.
The shadow raised a weapon.
Lydia grabbed the communication console.
Several buttons were marked with locations.
She pressed the one labeled FOYER ALARM.
A deafening siren erupted through the mansion.
Dominic turned at the exact moment the attacker fired.
The bullet missed.
Dominic dropped behind a marble column and fired back.
The attacker collapsed.
Lydia released the button.
Her hands shook so violently that her nails struck the console.
Dominic looked directly toward the hidden camera.
For one impossible moment, it felt as though he could see her.
Then the exterior monitors went black.
A message appeared across every screen.
SHE HAS THE LEDGER.
Lydia stared at the words.
“I don’t have anything,” she said to the empty room.
The message changed.
ASK FRANK ABOUT THE BLUE HOUSE.
The screens flickered back to life.
The remaining attackers were retreating.
Within minutes, the gunfire stopped.
Lydia opened the secure-room door when she heard Dominic’s voice through the passage. He descended the stairs with Sofia and Matteo behind him.
Blood marked his right sleeve.
Lydia hurried toward him.
“You’re hurt.”
“Not mine.”
She stopped.
Dominic looked over her face and body, checking for injuries.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You triggered the alarm.”
“There was a man behind you.”
“I know.”
“You’re welcome.”
His hand came up as if he intended to touch her cheek.
He stopped before making contact.
Sofia cleared her throat. “I would love to watch whatever this is, but we have three dead attackers, four wounded guards, and half the security network speaking Russian.”
Matteo examined the message on the screens.
“Whoever sent this believes Lydia has Eleanor’s ledger.”
“I don’t,” Lydia said.
“What is the blue house?” Dominic asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Think.”
“My father rented places when he was hiding from creditors. Apartments, motels, a cabin once. None was blue.”
“What about your childhood?”
Lydia hesitated.
A memory surfaced.
Summer heat. White curtains. Her mother standing at a kitchen sink. Blue wooden walls peeling near the window.
“There was a house,” she said slowly. “In Rockaway. My mother took me there after school sometimes. She said it belonged to a patient.”
“Address?”
“I was eight or nine. I don’t remember.”
Sofia approached a computer terminal. “Describe the area.”
“Near the water. Small yard. A church at the end of the street. The house had a red door and blue siding.”
“That narrows it down to half of coastal America,” Matteo said.
Lydia remembered something else.
“A painted lighthouse. On the mailbox.”
Sofia began typing.
Dominic called two of his men.
“We leave in ten minutes.”
Lydia folded her arms. “I’m coming.”
“No.”
“The message was intended for me.”
“That is why you are staying.”
“I’m the only person who may recognize the house.”
“We can use photographs.”
“You used me as bait yesterday. You don’t get to become protective now.”
Dominic’s expression darkened. “Yesterday, I believed the danger could be controlled.”
“And today?”
“Today, men invaded my home to reach you.”
Lydia stepped closer. “Then we both need answers.”
For several seconds, neither moved.
Sofia broke the silence.
“I found three possible houses. One has a lighthouse mailbox.”
Dominic continued looking at Lydia.
“Stay beside me,” he said at last.
“That sounds almost like a request.”
“It is not.”
They reached Rockaway before dawn.
The blue house sat at the end of a narrow street where salt wind rattled bare branches. Age had faded the siding to gray-blue, but the front door remained red.
A rusted mailbox stood near the curb.
A tiny lighthouse was painted on its side.
Memories returned in fragments as Lydia stepped from the vehicle.
Her mother’s hand around hers.
The smell of cinnamon toast.
A man laughing in another room.
A locked basement door.
Dominic positioned men around the property.
“No one has entered recently,” one guard reported. “Dust is undisturbed near the rear door.”
Lydia walked up the cracked path.
She found the front-door key beneath a flat stone beside the porch.
Dominic watched her.
“My mother always hid keys in obvious places,” she explained.
The lock opened.
Inside, the house smelled of salt, dust, and abandoned years.
Furniture remained beneath white sheets. A clock hung frozen above the fireplace. Children’s drawings had been pinned to one wall.
Lydia approached them.
One drawing showed three figures holding hands in front of the blue house.
A woman.
A little girl.
And a tall dark-haired man.
The word FAMILY had been written above them in purple crayon.
Dominic stood beside her.
“Did you draw this?”
She nodded.
“Who is the man?”
“I don’t remember.”
But she did remember something.
A deep voice telling stories.
A gold watch flashing in sunlight.
Her mother saying, “You cannot keep coming here.”
Lydia moved toward the kitchen.
Behind the pantry door, faint lines had been drawn against the wall to measure a child’s height.
LYDIA—AGE 8.
LYDIA—AGE 9.
Beneath those markings was another name.
NICO.
Dominic went still.
“What?” Lydia asked.
He touched the faded pencil letters.
“My full name is Nicodemo.”
Her pulse skipped.
“Dominic is your middle name?”
“Yes.”
“You were here?”
“I don’t remember this house.”
“You were the man in the picture?”
“I would have been twenty-three.”
Lydia looked from the marking to his face.
Fragments shifted inside her memory.
The man had carried her on his shoulders once. He had brought books and chocolate. Her mother had called him Nico when she was angry.
Lydia stepped away.
“You knew me.”
Dominic’s confusion appeared genuine.
“I did not.”
“My mother knew you after she left the Rossis.”
“I never saw Eleanor after the warehouse explosion.”
“Then why is your name on her wall?”
A floorboard creaked beneath Matteo’s shoe.
Hollow.
Dominic crouched and examined the wood. With a knife, he lifted a narrow panel.
Inside lay a metal box.
Lydia knelt beside him.
The box contained photographs, several cassette tapes, a small handgun, and a stack of letters tied with blue ribbon.
The top envelope was addressed to Lydia.
In her mother’s handwriting.
Lydia opened it.
My dearest girl,
If you are reading this, then the past has found you despite everything I did to bury it.
You will hear terrible things about the Rossi family. Some will be true. You will hear terrible things about your father. Most will be true. But the greatest lie concerns the man you know as Dominic.
He did not become dangerous because he lacked a heart.
He became dangerous because everyone who saw his heart tried to use it.
Lydia’s eyes moved faster.
Years ago, after the warehouse explosion, Dominic suffered a head injury. He remembered the deaths, but many months before the bombing became unclear. His father used that confusion. He told Dominic I had betrayed them.
The truth is that Dominic helped me collect evidence against Vittorio Rossi.
Lydia looked at him.
“Your father’s name was Vittorio?”
“Yes.”
“He says you helped my mother.”
Dominic took the letter.
He read in silence.
Matteo picked up one of the photographs.
It showed Dominic, younger and smiling, sitting on the porch of the blue house with Lydia asleep against his chest.
Sofia, who had insisted on coming, whispered, “You knew her.”
Dominic’s face lost color.
Lydia continued reading.
The ledger does not contain only criminal accounts. It contains proof that Vittorio Rossi ordered the warehouse bombing himself. He intended to kill Dominic’s mother and brother because they were helping Dominic take control of the family.
Dominic closed his eyes.
For the first time, Lydia saw him look unguarded.
Not weak.
Wounded.
“My father blamed Valenti,” he said.
“Your father arranged it,” Lydia replied.
She returned to the letter.
Frank knew part of the truth. I trusted him with a key and regretted it almost immediately. His fear makes him selfish, and his guilt makes him reckless. If the ledger is missing, Frank has either sold it or gambled away the secret of where it is hidden.
The final line was underlined.
Lydia, the ledger is not in this house. It is inside the only thing your father never managed to lose.
Lydia read the sentence twice.
“My father loses everything.”
“Not everything,” Matteo said.
She thought about his old car, his wedding ring, his sobriety chips that meant nothing.
Then she remembered.
“My mother’s piano.”
The upright piano had been placed in storage after Eleanor died. Frank had refused to sell it, even during his worst financial crises.
“Where is it?” Dominic asked.
“A warehouse in Brooklyn.”
A noise came from the second floor.
Everyone froze.
Dominic raised his weapon.
One of his men moved toward the staircase.
A figure crashed through an upstairs window.
Glass exploded outward.
The figure landed on the porch roof, rolled, and jumped to the yard.
Rossi guards shouted.
Dominic ran outside.
Lydia followed despite Matteo’s attempt to stop her.
A motorcycle roared to life behind the house.
The rider sped toward the street.
Dominic fired at the rear tire but missed as the motorcycle vanished around the corner.
One guard emerged carrying a backpack left upstairs.
Inside were surveillance photographs of Lydia’s apartment, workplace, and the restaurant.
There was also a recent photograph of Frank tied to a chair.
Across his chest, someone had placed a handwritten sign.
BRING THE LEDGER TO AUGUSTUS.
Lydia felt Dominic’s hand close around her wrist.
She looked at him.
“Augustus is working with Valenti,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What happens when we find him?”
Dominic’s eyes hardened.
“You do not want the answer.”
A phone rang inside the backpack.
Dominic activated the speaker.
Frank’s voice came through, broken and terrified.
“Lydia?”
“Dad?”
“Oh, thank God. Listen to me. Don’t give them the ledger.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know. There’s water nearby. Boats. They said—”
A blow sounded.
Frank cried out.
Then another voice came onto the line.
Smooth. Young. Amused.
“Hello, Lydia. I’m sorry I missed our dinner.”
Augustus Rossi laughed.
“My cousin has something I want. You have something I need. Bring the ledger to Pier Nineteen at midnight, and perhaps we can all become one happy family.”
The call ended.
Dominic crushed the phone in his hand.
Lydia looked toward the dark ocean.
“We have less than twenty hours.”
“No,” Dominic said. “We have exactly enough time.”
“For what?”
“To find the ledger.”
May you like
His gaze met hers.
“And to discover which one of us your father intends to betray next.”
