Chapter 6 - Bloodline Secrets
The doubt gnawed at my marrow for three days.
We returned to the Hudson estate under an armed escort that rivaled the President's. Dominic doubled the perimeter guards, placed snipers on the roof, and spent sixteen hours a day in war councils with the Commission. The hit on Costa was coming; everyone in the house knew it. The air smelled of gun oil, adrenaline, and impending blood.
Isabella noticed my withdrawal. Over morning tea in the glass solarium, she watched me stare into the dark river below.
"He carries the weight of a thousand men, Clara," Isabella said gently, pouring a drop of honey into my cup. "Do not judge him by the blood on his hands. Judge him by the blood he spills to keep you clean."
"Did your husband love my father, Isabella?" I asked bluntly.
The porcelain cup in Isabella's hand clattered softly against the saucer. She looked away, her eyes clouded with memories of twenty years past.
"They were brothers in everything but blood," she murmured. "Thomas was the conscience of the Rossi family. When my husband wanted to burn the city, Thomas was the one who pulled him back from the cliff. But the underworld is a labyrinth, child. Sometimes the people you trust the most are the ones who dig your grave."
She refused to say more, leaving me to wander the cavernous corridors alone.
That night, Dominic was called away to an emergency sit-down in Brooklyn. Enzo took half the garrison with him, leaving the estate under secondary lockdown.
This was my only chance.
At two in the morning, barefoot and moving through the shadows like a ghost, I climbed the spiraling stairs to Dominic's private study on the third floor. The door was locked with a biometric scanner, but I knew the code. Three days ago, while Dominic was asleep at his desk, I had watched him key it in: *08-14-98.*
My birthday.
The scanner beeped softly. The heavy mahogany door unlatched.
I slipped inside, closing the door behind me and switching on the small desk lamp. The office was vast, lined with antique books, tactical maps of the five boroughs, and a large steel vault set into the stone wall behind his desk.
The vault was open an inch. Dominic had been in a rush when the convoy left for Brooklyn.
My hands trembled as I pulled the heavy steel door open. Inside were neat stacks of bearer bonds, untraceable passports, and a fireproof strongbox labeled: **THOMAS HAYES – ESTATE & TESTAMENT.**
With shaking fingers, I opened the lockbox.
Inside was a weathered, leather-bound notebook—my father's handwriting, unmistakably slanted and neat. Beside it was an audio cassette tape and a certified transcript from the New York District Attorney's office dated twenty years ago.
I opened the transcript. My eyes scanned the yellowed pages, my heart dropping into my stomach with every word.
The document was an internal affairs leak. It revealed that twenty years ago, Dominic’s father, Antonio Rossi, had discovered a traitor within the high council. But it wasn't a Rossi who had leaked Thomas Hayes’s location to Victor Costa.
It was Thomas Hayes himself who had orchestrated the ambush.
I froze. "What...?"
I flipped to my father’s notebook, reading his jagged, desperate scrawl written days before his death:
>*“Ellen, my love... if you are reading this, I am already gone. Antonio thinks I went into the fire to save his empire. He doesn’t know that I made a deal with the feds to burn it all down so you and Clara could be free. But Costa found out. Costa played both sides. He’s going to kill Antonio, and he’s going to kill me. My only hope is young Dominic. The boy has a heart Antonio never had. If I give my life to save Dominic, Antonio will owe my bloodline forever. He will protect you and Clara with the entire might of the Rossi family. Clara will never have to know the filth of this life. Forgive me, Ellen. Keep our baby safe.”*
Tears blurred the ink.
My father hadn't been an innocent victim. He had been playing a suicidal game of three-dimensional chess between the mafia, the federal government, and Costa—and when the trap closed, he used his own death to purchase an eternal shield for my mother and me.
And Dominic?
I flipped to the back of the folder. There was a handwritten letter from Dominic to the head of the Vatican Bank, dated three weeks before the shooting at the Aster Crown:
>*“Transfer the entirety of the Hayes offshore trust—two hundred and forty million dollars—into a blind irrevocable trust under the name of Clara Hayes upon the death of Ellen Hayes. Ensure she never learns of this office's involvement. If anything happens to me in the coming conflict with Costa, she is to be extracted to Zurich with full diplomatic immunity. She is Thomas Hayes’s daughter. She owes this family nothing. We owe her everything.”*
He hadn't been hunting me to steal my father's legacy. He had been preparing to give me everything—and walk away into the shadows to fight Costa alone.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
I spun around, clutching the papers to my chest, expecting to see Dominic returned from Brooklyn.
Instead, standing in the doorway with a silenced pistol raised directly at my forehead, was Marco—Dominic's third-in-command, the man who had guarded my hospital room for ten days.
His face was cold, devoid of emotion.
May you like
"You shouldn't have gone digging, Mrs. Rossi," Marco said quietly. "Victor Costa sends his regards."
---
