Chapter 9 - Dominic Broke the Rule He Had Lived By for Years

Dominic met Victor in a private club overlooking the river.

Victor arrived carrying concern like a tailored accessory.

He embraced Dominic.

“I heard about Rosa. Again.”

Dominic let himself be held for exactly two seconds.

“She’s stable.”

“Thank God.”

Victor sat across from him and ordered coffee. He looked exactly as he always had: silver hair, perfect cuffs, expensive watch, the relaxed posture of a man who believed rooms belonged to him.

Dominic had spent half his life learning from him.

Now he watched for tells.

“My security is compromised,” Dominic said.

Victor frowned. “How badly?”

“Someone used Nathan Cole’s credentials.”

“Nathan? Impossible.”

“He’s dead.”

Victor’s surprise appeared genuine.

That made Dominic hate the situation more.

“Suicide?” Victor asked.

“Maybe.”

Victor leaned back. “The Morettis are escalating.”

Dominic let silence stretch.

Victor filled it.

“They attack Rosa, then the girl who saved her, then infiltrate your security. Salvatore wants you unstable.”

The girl.

Victor had never been told Sadie survived the sniper attempt.

Dominic had kept that information inside a five-person circle.

He lifted his coffee without drinking.

“What girl?”

Victor paused.

“The waitress. Sadie.”

“How do you know her name?”

A single beat.

Then Victor smiled.

“Carmine mentioned it.”

He had not.

Dominic changed the subject.

By the time they left, he had learned nothing that could be used in court and everything he needed to know personally.

Victor knew too much.

That evening, Dominic returned to the hidden safe house.

Sadie sat at a dining table with the three ledgers open in front of her and Rosa asleep nearby.

Carmine stared at Dominic when he entered.

“Well?”

“He knew Sadie’s name.”

Carmine’s face went hard.

“I never told him.”

“I know.”

Sadie looked up. “What now?”

For years Dominic had followed one rule above all others: civilians stayed outside organization meetings.

They did not hear names.

They did not see ledgers.

They did not sit at tables where violent decisions were made.

He pulled out a chair across from Sadie.

“Now you stay.”

Carmine glanced at him.

Dominic ignored it.

“We need to map every payment in these books,” he said. “Not just Victor’s. Anyone who benefited from escalation between us and Moretti.”

Sadie looked at the ledgers.

“You want me involved?”

“You already are.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No.”

She waited.

Dominic forced himself to say the sentence he disliked most.

“I trust you.”

Something changed in her expression.

Not softness. Not yet.

Respect.

They worked until after midnight.

Sadie found patterns because she did not know which names were supposed to matter. Men Dominic had dismissed as low-level contractors appeared repeatedly beside insurance claims, freight delays, and retaliatory attacks.

Carmine connected one to MidLake Restoration.

Another was a city inspector who had signed off on the burned brownstone’s electrical system only two weeks before the fire.

Then Sadie found the oldest pattern.

Twenty-eight years earlier, just before the original Castile-Moretti feud began, Victor had authorized a transfer from Michael’s trucking company to a freight broker called North Crown.

Two days later, the shipment both families accused each other of stealing disappeared.

“Who owned North Crown?” Sadie asked.

Carmine searched archived corporate records.

The company had dissolved decades ago.

Its registered agent was a lawyer named Peter Vassallo.

Rosa woke when she heard the name.

“Vassallo?”

Everyone turned.

“You know him?” Sadie asked.

“He was Victor’s college roommate.”

Dominic stared at the ledger.

The feud that had killed men on both sides might have begun because Victor stole a shipment and made each family believe the other had done it.

“Why?” Carmine asked.

Rosa’s answer was quiet.

“Because Michael and Anthony were about to merge their companies.”

Dominic looked at her.

“Victor would have lost his position,” Rosa said. “Michael planned to put Anthony in charge of the docks.”

The room became still.

Victor had not merely profited from a war.

He may have created one because peace threatened his power.

Sadie leaned back.

“If that is true, he has spent almost thirty years protecting the original lie.”

“And now,” Dominic said, “the ledger can prove it.”

Carmine’s phone buzzed.

He read the message and frowned.

“What?”

“Salvatore Moretti wants a meeting.”

Dominic’s eyes narrowed.

“Why?”

“He says he knows who ordered the fire.”

Sadie looked from Carmine to Dominic.

“What does he want in return?”

Carmine read the final line.

“Safe passage for Marco.”

Dominic glanced at the ledgers.

For the first time in decades, the Castiles and Morettis possessed different pieces of the same truth.

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And Victor had spent a lifetime making sure they never compared them.

Dominic looked around the table at the ledgers, the old photograph, and the faces of the two people he trusted most. The strange part was not that his enemy had hidden for decades. The strange part was realizing how much of his own life had been arranged around a story someone else had written before he was old enough to question it.