Chapter 3 - THE DEAD MAN’S EMAILThe email contained only eleven words.
Mia, if Raymond finds you, do not trust anyone from Vantage North.
Below that sentence was a photograph.
Amelia had stared at it for twenty minutes the first time she opened the message.
Her brother Ethan was standing in front of a roadside motel.
Older.
Thinner.
Bearded.
But alive.
A newspaper was tucked under his arm, its date visible enough to prove the picture had been taken only three days before the message arrived.
For three years, Amelia had believed Ethan was dead.
Raymond had told her so himself.
“He was in an accident,” Raymond had said the night she asked why Ethan had suddenly stopped calling.
There had been tears in his eyes.
Raymond was very good at tears.
According to him, Ethan had driven drunk, crossed the center line somewhere in Nevada, and died when his car burned.
Amelia had asked to see the police report.
Raymond told her it was too gruesome.
She asked where Ethan had been buried.
Raymond said the remains had been cremated.
She asked for the ashes.
That was when Raymond struck her for the first time.
Later he cried.
Later he apologized.
Later he told her grief had made both of them irrational.
For years, Amelia believed him.
Until the email.
Now she sat in Dante Castellano’s penthouse guest room at four in the morning while her son slept twenty feet away.
Dante had refused to take Amelia back to her apartment.
The police had agreed.
Mrs. Alvarez had brought Ben to the hospital’s private exit. From there, one of Dante’s drivers transported them to a secure residential tower overlooking Lake Michigan.
Amelia had protested until Dante said, “You can hate me tomorrow. Tonight your child sleeps somewhere Fletcher doesn’t know.”
She had stopped arguing.
Ben had run toward her the moment he saw her.
“Mommy!”
The force of his hug almost knocked her over.
He touched the bandage near her temple.
“You got an owie.”
“Yes.”
“Did you fall?”
Amelia looked over his head toward Dante.
He looked away, granting her privacy.
“I had an accident.”
Ben kissed her cheek.
“That fixes it.”
Amelia nearly broke.
Children believed kisses fixed injuries.
Adults learned some wounds merely became easier to hide.
After Ben finally fell asleep, Amelia joined Dante in the kitchen.
The penthouse was enormous but strangely sparse.
No family photographs.
No decorative clutter.
No evidence anybody lived there except a black coffee mug beside the sink and a newspaper folded on the counter.
“You actually live here?” Amelia asked.
Dante poured coffee.
“Sometimes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I own more rooms than I need.”
He pushed a cup toward her.
She didn’t touch it.
“You know what Vantage North is.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’ve done business with companies they finance.”
“Raymond worked for Conrad Voss.”
Dante’s hand paused.
That name meant considerably more.
Conrad Voss was the founder and chairman of Vantage North Capital, a sixty-two-year-old billionaire whose face appeared beside mayors, senators, university presidents, and hospital executives.
“You’re saying Fletcher worked directly for Voss?”
“Not officially.”
“What did he do?”
Amelia stared at the coffee.
“Raymond called himself a troubleshooter.”
Dante gave a humorless smile.
“Useful word.”
“I thought he handled corporate disputes. Then Ethan found something.”
Her brother had been a cybersecurity consultant.
Brilliant.
Absent-minded.
Protective enough to distrust Raymond from the first day they met.
Ethan had been hired by Vantage North to examine irregular network traffic after the company claimed hackers were targeting internal accounts.
Instead, he discovered encrypted payment ledgers.
Millions routed through consulting companies.
Money paid to private investigators.
Fixers.
Officials.
Attorneys.
People who could influence court cases.
Some transactions were merely unethical.
Others looked criminal.
Ethan copied the data.
Then he called Amelia.
“He told me Raymond was involved.”
“What did you do?”
“I confronted Raymond.”
Dante stared at her.
Amelia laughed bitterly.
“I was twenty-six and stupid.”
“You trusted someone you loved.”
“That’s a prettier way of saying it.”
Raymond denied everything.
Then he demanded to know whether Ethan had given her a copy.
That was the moment Amelia knew her brother was right.
She lied.
Raymond believed her.
For approximately six hours.
That night, someone broke into Ethan’s apartment.
Ethan vanished the next day.
Forty-eight hours later, Raymond told Amelia her brother was dead.
“What about the data?” Dante asked.
“Ethan sent it to me before he disappeared.”
“The files under your floor?”
“Yes.”
“And encrypted?”
“Very.”
“Why haven’t you gone to federal authorities?”
“I tried.”
Dante raised an eyebrow.
“A year after I escaped Raymond, I contacted an investigator. Two days before our meeting, somebody broke into my apartment.”
“Coincidence?”
“No.”
“How can you be certain?”
“They left a photograph of Ben sleeping.”
Dante went completely still.
Amelia’s voice became smaller.
“He was two.”
Dante turned away.
He walked toward the window.
The lake beyond the glass was black, with the lights along Lakeshore Drive reflecting like broken gold.
When he turned back, his face was different.
Controlled.
Dangerously controlled.
“Why is Fletcher interested in Ben now?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s Ben’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Does Ben know?”
“No.”
“Does Fletcher want custody?”
“Raymond doesn’t want children.”
“Then leverage.”
Amelia nodded.
“He wants me frightened.”
“Are you?”
She looked toward the bedroom where Ben slept.
“Terrified.”
Dante sat opposite her.
“Good.”
She stared at him.
“What?”
“Fear keeps people cautious. Panic gets them killed. You’re afraid, but you’re still thinking.”
“I’m barely thinking.”
“You protected your son for three years.”
“By hiding.”
“Sometimes hiding is strategy.”
She studied him.
“You sound like you have experience.”
Dante’s expression shuttered.
“I do.”
Amelia knew rumors about him.
Everybody did.
His father, Salvatore Castellano, had allegedly run illegal gambling operations throughout Chicago during the 1990s.
His uncle had been murdered outside a steakhouse.
Dante himself had never been convicted of anything more serious than a traffic violation.
But people stepped aside when he entered a room.
That kind of influence usually came from somewhere.
“Why are you helping me?”
The question made Dante lean back.
“You work for me.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“It should be.”
“It isn’t.”
Dante looked toward the hall.
“When I was twelve, my mother worked nights.”
Amelia waited.
“A man followed her home from work.”
His voice was flat.
“My father found him before police did.”
“What happened?”
“He never bothered her again.”
Amelia understood what he wasn’t saying.
Dante continued.
“My father believed fear solved everything. Sometimes he was right. Usually he created another problem.”
“And you?”
“I prefer leverage.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“No.”
Her phone buzzed.
Amelia jumped.
Unknown number.
Dante held out a hand.
“Don’t answer.”
Another message appeared.
You should have stayed gone.
Then a photograph downloaded.
Amelia’s face drained of color.
It showed Ben sleeping.
Not in her old apartment.
In Dante’s penthouse.
Taken minutes ago.
She sprang from the chair.
“Ben!”
Dante was faster.
He reached the hallway as two security men emerged from the elevator.
“What happened?”
“Lock everything down.”
Amelia ran into the bedroom.
Ben was still asleep.
Window closed.
Closet empty.
Bathroom empty.
No one inside.
Dante examined the photograph.
The angle was wrong for someone inside the apartment.
He moved toward the bedroom window.
Across the street stood another high-rise.
“Telephoto lens.”
One of his men swore.
Dante’s phone rang.
A security officer downstairs.
They had found an abandoned camera mounted inside an empty apartment opposite the building.
Whoever installed it was already gone.
Amelia sank onto the bed beside Ben.
“They found us in two hours.”
Dante said nothing.
She looked up.
“If they can find us here, where can we go?”
Dante’s gaze hardened.
“We stop running.”
“No.”
“You said Raymond wants something.”
“He wants the encryption key.”
“Then we give him something to chase.”
“You want to use me as bait?”
“No.”
“What then?”
Dante held up the phone displaying the photograph.
“We make him believe you still have the files.”
“He’ll come after me.”
“He already is.”
Amelia stood.
“You don’t understand Raymond. He enjoys hurting people.”
Dante’s expression became cold.
“Then he made a serious mistake tonight.”
“What?”
“He hurt someone in public.”
Amelia stared at him.
Dante continued.
“Men like Fletcher survive because their victims are isolated. Because everybody is afraid separately.”
He placed the phone on the bedside table.
“Tonight forty-three people watched him knock you unconscious.”
“So?”
“So tomorrow every one of them gets asked what they saw.”
“You think witnesses will save me?”
“No.”
Dante looked toward Ben.
“But witnesses change the battlefield.”
By dawn, the story had already reached local media.
WOMAN ASSAULTED INSIDE PRESTIGIOUS CHICAGO RESTAURANT.
Videos filmed by customers spread online.
Raymond’s face appeared everywhere.
The footage showed him striking Amelia.
It showed her falling.
It showed Dante entering seconds later.
And by eight in the morning, Raymond Fletcher’s attorney had obtained emergency bail.
Amelia discovered this from the television.
She stood frozen.
“No.”
Dante looked at his phone.
His security chief confirmed it.
Raymond was out.
“How?”
“Good lawyer.”
“He’ll come here.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
Dante’s phone rang again.
This time his expression changed.
“What?”
He listened.
Then looked directly at Amelia.
“What happened?” she asked.
Dante ended the call.
“Fletcher didn’t go after you.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Where did he go?”
“To a private airfield.”
“Why?”
“He boarded a charter jet twenty minutes ago.”
“Going where?”
Dante hesitated.
“Las Vegas.”
Amelia’s heart stopped.
Ethan’s photograph had been taken outside a motel in Nevada.
May you like
Raymond wasn’t running away.
He was running toward her brother.
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