Chapter 3 - The Price of Not Asking
Dominic did not take her to his penthouse.
He took her to an all-night diner three blocks away, with Nox in the back seat and a second car following at a distance.
“Public place,” he said when she hesitated. “You choose the booth.”
Sadi chose one facing both exits.
Dominic noticed without commenting.
Under fluorescent lights, Nox looked less like a monster and more like a man who had forgotten how to sleep.
“My name is Nathan Bell,” he said. “Your father trained me before the circuit.”
“I remember.”
“He was good to me.”
“Then tell me where my brother is.”
Nathan wrapped both hands around untouched coffee.
“An accounting office near the river. They move him sometimes. He does numbers for Matteo.”
Dominic’s uncle.
The man who had managed the Russo family’s properties since before Dominic inherited them.
Sadi looked across the table.
“You didn’t know?”
Dominic met her eyes.
“I knew Matteo used people who owed him money. I didn’t ask enough questions.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It is. That doesn’t make it less true.”
She hated that answer less than she expected.
Nathan stared at the tabletop.
“Eli copied something after your father died. Matteo caught him. Told him your mother would be next if he ran.”
Sadi’s throat closed.
Four years.
Four birthdays.
Four Christmases with an empty chair her mother refused to move.
She had imagined this conversation so often that its reality felt inadequate. There should have been thunder, or a door bursting open, or somebody admitting that her family had mattered. Instead, a waitress refilled their coffee and asked whether they wanted toast. Sadi said yes because saying something ordinary kept her from breaking. When the plate arrived, she divided it into three pieces. Nobody thanked her. Nobody needed to. For one minute, they were simply hungry people sitting in a booth, trying to decide what morning might require of them.
“Why didn’t he contact me?”
“Sometimes he tried. Messages disappeared. People who helped him got hurt.”
“And you?”
Nathan pulled a creased photograph from his wallet.
A teenage girl with his eyes held a violin.
“My sister. Matteo controls the money for her care. He reminds me before every fight.”
Dominic looked at the photograph.
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
Something worked in his jaw.
Sadi leaned forward.
“You own the club. Your name is on everything. Don’t sit there looking surprised by your own business.”
He accepted the blow without defending himself.
“You’re right.”
Nathan glanced between them.
“Matteo has people in your security team.”
“Names?”
“Not here.”
Dominic took out his phone, then stopped.
For the first time, he seemed to understand that possession and trust were different things.
He turned the device off.
“Then we start without them.”
“No,” Sadi said.
Both men looked at her.
“We don’t storm a building with guns and call it a rescue. I’ve buried one family member. I’m not collecting another body because you need to feel powerful.”
Dominic sat back.
“What do you suggest?”
“My father had a lawyer.”
She remembered the name because the woman had sent a sympathy card nobody else thought important.
Elena Brooks.
Sadi found the number through the diner’s telephone directory, then called from the counter.
Elena answered on the fourth ring, sounding furious until she heard Michael Calder’s name.
Then she listened.
At dawn, they sat in her office above a bakery.
Elena insisted on separate conversations.
She warned Dominic that she represented Sadi, not him.
He agreed.
She told Nathan he needed independent counsel.
He agreed too.
Then she shut the door behind Sadi.
“Before anything else,” Elena said, “I need you to know your father came to me before the fire.”
Sadi’s hands went numb.
“Why?”
“He suspected money was being moved through the youth gym.”
“Russo money?”
“Among other sources.”
Elena opened a locked drawer.
Inside lay an envelope.
Her father’s handwriting crossed the front.
For Sadie, if I cannot explain this myself.
Sadi touched the paper.
For four years, she had tried to remember the exact sound of his voice.
May you like
Now a dead man had found a way to speak.
And waiting outside the door was the living man whose family might have silenced him.
