Chapter 5 - Traitor in the Gates
That night, while the storm raged outside, I pulled Dominic into my underground bunker.
Dominic had been my head of security for fifteen years. He was a veteran of the Italian special forces, a mountain of a man with silvering hair and a scar across his left jawline. He had taken a bullet for my father twenty years ago, and I had trusted him with my life without a second thought.
“You called for a lockdown, boss?” Dominic asked, stepping into the control room, his leather holster creaking against his chest. “Did something happen on the perimeter?”
I was sitting in front of the array of monitors. On screen four, Clara was sitting beside Matteo’s bed, holding a small book, keeping a vigilant, quiet watch over my sleeping son.
“Dominic,” I said softly, without turning around. “How long have we worked together?”
“Fifteen years, Vincent. Since your father passed.”
“Fifteen years,” I repeated. “And in those fifteen years, I paid you four times the market rate for private security. I bought your mother her home in Tuscany. I paid for your daughter’s medical school in Boston.”
Dominic stood still. The ambient blue light of the monitors cast harsh shadows across his face. “Vincent... what is this about?”
I turned my chair around to face him. I reached onto the desk and picked up a heavy, leather-bound security log.
“Fourteen months ago, the day Elena died, the outer perimeter security cameras experienced a five-minute power drop,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “At the time, you told me it was a generator malfunction caused by a blown transformer. I believed you. I was holding my son’s bloody body in my arms, so I didn't verify the server logs myself.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened. His hand instinctively twitched near his belt.
“Don't,” I warned him, pointing a small black controller at the door. With a heavy metallic click, the reinforced blast doors of the control room sealed shut, locking us inside.
“Matteo spoke to Clara today,” I continued, watching Dominic’s face like a hawk. “He remembered something from the crash. He remembered a man in a black security jacket with a golden crest standing near the burning car. A man with a custom ringtone that plays a ticking clock.”
Dominic’s breathing slowed down to a dangerous, deliberate calm. He didn't deny it. He didn't break down into frantic apologies.
Instead, he let out a long, heavy sigh that sounded like a dying beast.
“He was eight years old, Dominic,” I said, my voice breaking slightly despite my iron control. “He was an eight-year-old boy. How much did Victor Moretti pay you to sell out my wife and my son?”
Dominic lowered his head, staring at the floor. “Moretti didn't pay me with money, Vincent.”
“Then with what?”
“My daughter,” Dominic said, his eyes rising to meet mine, filled with a mixture of profound shame and cold resignation. “Two years ago, Moretti’s men in Boston abducted my girl. They didn't hurt her. They just sent me a video of her walking into her apartment every single night with a red laser dot on her forehead. Moretti told me that if I didn't give him access to your route that afternoon, they’d send her home to me in a box.”
I stared at the man I had trusted like a brother.
“You should have come to me,” I rasped. “I would have burnt Boston to the ground to rescue your daughter, Dominic!”
“You were arrogant, Vincent!” Dominic snapped, his voice rising in desperate anger. “You thought you were invincible behind these forty-foot gates! Moretti had men inside your inner circle long before the bomb! If I had told you, my daughter would have died within an hour!”
“And so you chose my wife instead,” I said coldly. “And you kept poisoning my son to cover your tracks.”
“I didn't poison him!” Dominic yelled. “That was Vance! Dr. Vance was working directly for Moretti! I only kept the perimeter clear for Vance’s deliveries! I tried to protect Matteo where I could—”
“You protected nothing!” I shouted, standing up and drawing my sidearm in one fluid motion.
The sound of the gun cocking echoed through the sealed room. Dominic didn't move. He stood there, looking at the barrel of my gun, his shoulders slumping.
“Do it,” Dominic whispered. “I’ve been living in hell for fourteen months anyway. Do it, Vincent.”
I stared at him through the crosshairs, my finger pressing against the heavy trigger. Every instinct in my violent past screamed at me to put a bullet through his forehead.
Then I remembered Clara’s words from earlier that day: “I am not going to let another child be destroyed while I’m standing in the room.”
If I killed Dominic right here in cold blood, I was sliding back into the dark, bloody pit that had cost me my family. I was becoming the monster my son was terrified of.
May you like
Slowly, deliberately, I lowered the gun.
“You’re going to live, Dominic,” I said, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. “You’re going to live long enough to help me burn Victor Moretti’s empire to ashes. And if you play your part perfectly, maybe—just maybe—I won't let my men throw you to the sharks when this is over.”
