Chapter 1 - The Man Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Vincent entered the suite prepared to lose the woman he loved.
Instead, he found the brother he had buried.
The man beside the window turned slowly. He was thinner than Leo had been, his left hand stiff around a walking cane. A pale scar disappeared beneath his collar.
But his eyes were the same.
Vincent stopped so abruptly that Audrey reached toward him, then let her hand fall.
“Vince,” the man said.
Only one person had ever shortened his name that way.
Six years earlier, Vincent had stood beside a closed coffin while rain soaked through his coat. He had paid for flowers, chosen a headstone, and spent every Christmas afterward finding some excuse to avoid the cemetery.
Now Leo stood twenty feet away.
Vincent crossed the room.
He caught his brother by the shoulders, hard enough to make Leo wince.
“You're dead.”
“I know what they told you.”
“I identified your watch.”
“They put it on someone else.”
Vincent released him as if his skin had burned.
Behind him, Audrey closed the door.
“Before you decide to break anything,” she said, “please understand that I found him forty hours ago.”
Vincent looked between them.
The hotel. The secrecy. The message.
Everything inside him rearranged itself into something uglier than jealousy.
“You knew?”
“For forty hours,” Audrey repeated. “And I spent most of them confirming he wasn't someone trying to manipulate you.”
Leo lowered himself into a chair.
“I asked her not to tell you until we could meet somewhere your security system couldn't hear us.”
“My security system?”
“Dante controls it,” Leo said.
Vincent glanced at Audrey's blazer.
She saw the recognition.
“He cornered me in the garage yesterday. Wanted to know why I requested archived shipping records. He grabbed my shoulder when I tried to leave.”
The cologne.
Nothing more romantic than a hand placed where it had no right to be.
Vincent felt ashamed.
“You should have told me.”
“I tried to discuss the audit twice. You sent Dante to handle it.”
He remembered both conversations.
Remembered barely listening.
Leo placed a slim folder on the table.
“Eight weeks ago, Audrey found payments to companies that don't exist. She traced one to an account I opened before the explosion.”
“The explosion that killed you.”
“The explosion meant to kill me.”
Vincent did not sit.
Leo's voice roughened.
“Dante set it. I found out he was selling access to our docks. When I confronted him, he told me you approved.”
“You believed him?”
“I was twenty-four. You were already doing things you wouldn't explain. I didn't know where your lines were anymore.”
That landed harder than an accusation.
Vincent had drawn too few lines in those years.
Leo continued. A deckhand had pulled him from the water. Months of surgeries followed under an assumed name. Then came threats against Vincent, photographs proving Dante could get close whenever he wanted.
“So you stayed gone,” Vincent said.
“I was afraid. Eventually, I was ashamed, too.”
Audrey placed another document beside the folder.
“His banking records support what I found. Tomorrow, Dante moves a container through Dock Twelve under your authorization.”
“I signed no authorization.”
“Your digital signature did,” she said.
Vincent looked down.
His name sat beneath an unfamiliar cargo description.
Medical supplies.
A departure time.
An account linked to a city councilman.
Then Audrey's phone vibrated.
She glanced at the screen and went still.
Vincent knew that expression now.
Fear.
She turned the phone toward him.
A photograph showed the three of them through the suite window.
Beneath it, Dante had written:
Touching reunion. Ask your brother what happened to the first woman who helped him.
Leo stood too quickly.
“Get away from the window.”
Glass burst inward.
Vincent pulled Audrey down behind the sofa as something struck the wall where her head had been.
Nobody screamed.
For one second, the room held only falling glass and Leo's ragged breathing.
Then Audrey grabbed Vincent's wrist.
“Listen to me,” she whispered. “You can be angry later. Right now, you need to decide whether you trust us.”
Vincent looked at his living brother, then at the woman he had followed for wrong reasons.
May you like
“Yes,” he said.
This time, he meant it.
