Chapter 2 - Shadows In The Hallway
Camille Boudreaux ran toward us in the basement corridor, her face bone-white beneath the flickering fluorescent tubes. She threw her arms around Adeline, sobbing into her daughter’s tangled brown hair. Camille had worked in the Castellano compound since she was eighteen, brought in from New Orleans after her own family fell on hard times. Vincent had protected her, paid for her college classes, and treated Adeline like the daughter he never had.
""What happened, Marcus? What did she see?"" Camille cried, burying her face against the child's neck.
""She saved his life,"" I told her, steering them into the underground panic suite behind the walk-in wine cellar. ""And because she saved him, she’s in more danger than anyone else alive. Dominic did this.""
Camille gasped, clamping a trembling hand over her mouth. ""Dominic? But he brought her that wooden dollhouse for her birthday. He was just in the kitchen an hour ago asking for herbal tea!""
""He went up to the private office when he knew the perimeter shift was changing,"" I reasoned, pacing the reinforced steel room. ""He knew the surveillance cameras in that corridor glitch for ninety seconds during the daily server backup at 9:00 AM. Vincent trusted him enough to let him walk behind the desk. Dominic plunged the blade, locked the double interior deadbolt from the inside, and slipped out through the adjoining balcony stairs.""
""Uncle Vin gave me a gold coin,"" Adeline chimed in softly, reaching into her tiny denim pocket. She pulled out a heavy antique medallion bearing the Castellano crest—a roaring lion beneath an iron crown. ""He told me to hide it in Barnaby's belly so the mint man couldn't take it.""
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My jaw clenched. Vincent wasn't just defending himself; he was trying to safeguard evidence. The medallion wasn't just jewelry. It was the physical key to Vincent’s personal Swiss deposit vault in Zurich, containing the handwritten ledgers of every bribe, shell company, and corrupt politician on the Eastern seaboard.
Dominic hadn't just tried to kill his brother for power. He was hunting for the keys to the entire kingdom.
