Chapter 4 - UNMASKING THE ARCHITECT
By three o'clock in the morning, the rain had stopped, leaving the grounds of the estate shrouded in a thick, ghostly fog.
The mansion was secure. Eight perimeter shooters lay dead or captured in the lower holding cells beneath the wine cellar. State police cars sat two miles away behind a wall of high-level judicial injunctions filed by my legal team before the sun even began to rise.
In my private study, illuminated only by the fire crackling in the hearth, Matty Russo was tied securely to a heavy iron chair. His hand was wrapped tightly in blood-soaked gauze, his face pale and sunken from blood loss.
Frankie stood beside the desk, a laptop open in front of him, displaying financial ledgers pulled from Matty’s offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands.
Grace sat in the armchair across the room, holding a sleeping Nora in her lap, while Olivia and Sophie slept fitfully on the leather sofa under my wool overcoat. She had refused to leave the room, and my daughters had refused to let her out of their sight. For the first time, I didn't feel jealous. I felt an overwhelming sense of profound gratitude that made my chest ache.
"Talk, Matty," I said, standing in front of the hearth, nursing a fresh glass of scotch. "The men who hit the east wing tonight didn't work for Valetti. Those were mercenaries from an outfit out of Chicago. Who paid them?"
Matty lifted his head weakly, his lips cracked and dry. "If I tell you... you kill me anyway, Dominic."
"If you don't tell me," I replied softly, "I hand you over to Frankie. And Frankie hasn't used his butcher tools in almost ten years."
Matty shuddered, his eyes darting nervously toward Grace and the kids in the corner. "It wasn't... it wasn't about the territory, Dominic."
"Then what was it about?" Frankie barked.
"Isabelle," Matty whispered.
The room went icy cold.
"Go on," I said, my voice dangerously low.
"Isabelle found out... three weeks before she died," Matty stammered, his words coming fast now. "She found out that someone in the family was laundering money through the children's hospital foundation she ran. Over forty million dollars in federal government grants... diverted to the Moretti family in Chicago."
I felt my jaw tighten. Isabelle had been an angel—a philanthropist who wanted nothing to do with my blood money. She had built that hospital foundation with her own sweat and tears.
"Who was laundering it, Matty?" I asked.
Matty swallowed hard, looking directly at Frankie. "Tell him, Frankie."
I turned my head slowly.
Frankie Vane didn't flinch. He stood beside my desk, his snub-nosed revolver already resting casually in his hand. But it wasn't pointed at Matty.
It was pointed at me.
"Frankie?" I said, my voice flat.
"I told you fourteen months ago to let it lie, Dominic," Frankie said, his tone entirely devoid of emotion. "Isabelle was getting too smart. She was going to go to the Special Prosecutor. She was going to drag the entire Romano empire into a federal courtroom. I couldn't let her do that. I built this family with your father. I wasn't going to let a schoolteacher tear it down."
Grace gasped from the armchair, pulling Nora tighter against her chest.
"You," I whispered, the betrayal hitting me harder than any bullet ever could. Frankie had been my father’s right-hand man. He had held me on his shoulders when I was five years old. He had stood as my best man when I married Isabelle.
"I organized the hit," Frankie admitted calmly, stepping away from the desk. "I used Matty to coordinate with the Chicago crew so it looked like a Valetti territorial dispute. It was clean, Dominic. You were supposed to fight Valetti, take their docks, and grow stronger. But then you turned into a pathetic, mourning widow. You stopped collecting. You stopped expanding. You let three little girls turn you into a coward."
"They aren't cowards," a soft voice spoke up from the dark sofa.
May you like
Olivia was standing up, her blanket slipping to the floor. Her small hands were clenched into fists at her sides, her dark eyes shining with an absolute, terrifying bravery that belonged entirely to a Romano.
"You killed my Mommy," Olivia said, her voice clear and strong, ringing through the quiet room. "And Daddy is going to make you pay."
