Chapter 2 - THE BROTHER WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
Damian did not answer immediately.
For most men, silence under Luca Costello’s stare became unbearable within seconds.
Damian had grown up under the same roof.
He knew how to survive it.
“You didn’t tell me today,” Damian said.
Luca remained still.
“That’s different from never telling me.”
“I received the toxicology results three days ago.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Damian looked toward the window.
“Dr. Harris called me.”
Luca’s expression did not change.
“There is no Dr. Harris.”
Damian looked back at him.
Luca allowed the silence to deepen.
“Harris is my security chief.”
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“A neurologist, then.”
“Name him.”
Damian shook his head.
“You’re playing games.”
“No.”
Luca leaned forward slightly.
“I’m finding out who is.”
For a moment, something old passed between the brothers.
They had fought as children.
They had fought as teenagers.
They had fought over cars, women, business decisions, territory, their father’s approval, and who had been responsible for breaking a stained-glass window in the west corridor when Luca was fourteen.
But this was different.
This was the first time Luca had looked at Damian and consciously considered the possibility that his brother had helped steal twelve years from him.
Damian crossed his arms.
“You’ve been ordering tests for weeks.”
“That was not public.”
“You think people around here don’t talk?”
“Which people?”
“Staff.”
“Name one.”
Damian gave an irritated laugh.
“What is this, an interrogation?”
“Yes.”
The answer ended the pretense.
Damian’s eyes hardened.
“You want to accuse me of something, accuse me.”
“I asked how you knew.”
“And I answered.”
“You gave me three answers.”
“Because I don’t remember where I heard it.”
“You remembered enough to mention poison.”
“Everyone knew your new specialists were testing for toxins.”
“No.”
Luca shook his head.
“They didn’t.”
Damian stared.
Luca pressed a button beneath the desk.
The study doors locked.
Damian looked toward them.
Then back at Luca.
“Seriously?”
“I want the truth.”
“You want someone to blame.”
“I have someone to blame.”
“You don’t know who.”
“Not yet.”
Damian walked closer.
“You think I put you in that chair?”
Luca watched him.
“Did you?”
Damian’s nostrils flared.
“No.”
The word came quickly.
Possibly too quickly.
“Did you know it wasn’t a stroke?”
“No.”
“Did you know someone had poisoned me?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know?”
Damian said nothing.
Luca reached for his phone.
“I can have Harris tear apart every device you own before dinner.”
“Do it.”
“I can audit every account you control.”
“Do it.”
“I can reopen every medical decision made after my collapse.”
“Do it.”
Damian stepped toward the desk.
“But when you discover I spent twelve years keeping your empire from being torn apart while you were learning how to move through a doorway without help, remember this conversation.”
Luca’s expression did not shift.
Damian continued.
“When you couldn’t travel, I went.”
“When your captains smelled weakness, I stood in front of them.”
“When the Marconis thought the chair meant Costello blood had gone soft, I buried their takeover before you even knew it existed.”
“When you spent six months refusing visitors because you couldn’t stand being looked at, I handled everything outside this house.”
His voice remained controlled.
“I did that because you were my brother.”
Luca looked down at the report on the desk.
“That is exactly why I need you to answer the question.”
Damian’s anger changed.
For one second, pain appeared beneath it.
Then he looked away.
“I heard Dr. Marcus Vale discussing it.”
Luca stopped.
Marcus Vale.
The name belonged to a man Luca had not thought about seriously in years.
Dr. Marcus Vale had been the Costello family physician before Luca’s collapse.
He had treated Luca’s father.
His mother.
Damian.
Luca himself.
He had been among the first doctors at the hospital the night Luca lost the use of his legs.
He had also been the physician who repeatedly defended the original vascular diagnosis when outside specialists questioned inconsistencies in the scans.
“Where?”
Damian rubbed the back of his neck.
“New York.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“What was Vale doing in New York?”
“Fundraiser.”
“For what?”
“Some medical foundation.”
“You spoke to him?”
“He spoke to someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Luca’s stare sharpened.
“I was walking past the terrace.”
“What did he say?”
Damian hesitated.
“He said you were asking the wrong questions.”
Luca felt the room change.
“What else?”
“He said if the new toxicology team found certain markers, there would be problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“He didn’t say.”
“And you didn’t call me?”
Damian looked at him.
“I was going to.”
“When?”
“I wanted to know what he meant first.”
“So you investigated.”
“Yes.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Try me.”
Damian sighed.
“Vale closed his Chicago practice six years ago.”
“I know.”
“He owns property in Connecticut, Florida, and the Cayman Islands.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It sounds like a rich doctor.”
“Anything else?”
“He received a five-million-dollar consulting payment eleven years ago.”
Luca’s fingers stopped moving.
“From whom?”
“That’s the part I couldn’t trace.”
Luca stared at his brother.
“You knew a doctor connected to my original diagnosis received five million dollars shortly after I became paralyzed, and you said nothing.”
“I learned it four days ago.”
“And what exactly were you waiting for?”
Damian looked angry again.
“Evidence.”
Luca almost laughed.
“That word sounds familiar.”
Damian sat.
Neither man spoke for several seconds.
Then Luca unlocked the doors.
“You’re staying.”
“I wasn’t planning to leave.”
“No.”
Luca’s voice hardened.
“You misunderstood me.”
“You are staying on the estate until I know exactly what you knew and when you knew it.”
Damian stared at him.
“You’re confining me?”
“I’m protecting my daughter.”
That landed differently.
Damian stood.
“I would never touch that child.”
“I hope that’s true.”
“You know it is.”
“Twelve years ago, I knew a great many things.”
Luca looked toward his legs.
“I have become less sentimental about certainty.”
Damian left without another word.
Harris entered thirty seconds later.
“You heard?”
“Everything.”
“Verify Vale.”
“Already started.”
“And Damian?”
“His phone is clean so far.”
“Too clean?”
Harris looked at him.
“That occurred to me.”
Luca wheeled toward the window.
On the diamond, Maya was throwing pitches to Tommy.
Tommy swung at nearly everything.
Most of the balls missed the bat by several feet.
Neither child seemed bothered.
“Put two people on Maya.”
“Visible?”
“No.”
“And Elena?”
“Same.”
Harris nodded.
Luca looked at him.
“Find Marcus Vale.”
Elena moved into the main house that afternoon.
She did not want to.
Luca did not ask twice.
“This isn’t about controlling you.”
“It feels a lot like controlling me.”
“Someone photographed Maya.”
“I know.”
“Someone inside this house sent the photograph.”
“I know.”
“Then the staff apartment is the worst place you could be.”
Elena folded Maya’s clothes into a suitcase.
“You also have a suspicious brother sleeping twenty rooms away.”
“Which is why I want you closer to me.”
She stopped.
The sentence hung between them.
Luca realized how it sounded.
Elena did too.
Neither addressed it.
Finally, Elena resumed packing.
“Maya gets her own room.”
“Obviously.”
“She chooses it.”
“Fine.”
“No guards standing inside the doorway.”
“Outside.”
“Down the hall.”
“Outside.”
“Luca.”
“Elena.”
She turned.
He held her gaze.
“There are things in my world you don’t understand yet.”
“I understand danger.”
“No.”
His voice softened.
“You understand surviving without protection.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Elena’s expression changed.
He continued.
“You spent eight years making sure she had food before you did.”
“You moved three times because landlords raised the rent.”
“You worked nights when she was sick because you couldn’t afford to miss a shift.”
“I know what that kind of strength looks like.”
Elena stared.
“How do you know those things?”
Luca hesitated.
“I had someone look into your history after I learned about Maya.”
Her face hardened.
“You investigated me.”
“I investigated what happened while I was gone.”
“You investigated me.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t normal.”
“Very little about my life is normal.”
“It needs to be normal around Maya.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Elena set down the shirt she was holding.
“You live behind gates.”
“You have men carrying guns outside breakfast.”
“People call before they enter rooms.”
“You can order forty people to stay inside a house and they do it.”
“That might be normal to you.”
“It is not normal to her.”
Luca listened.
“She needs school.”
“Friends.”
“Homework.”
“Dance class.”
“Cheap pizza.”
“She needs to lose one glove every winter and insist someone stole it.”
“She does not need to become a princess in a fortress.”
Luca looked toward Maya’s little suitcase.
“I don’t want that either.”
“Then prove it.”
“How?”
“Stop trying to buy back eight years.”
The words hit harder than she intended.
He showed it only briefly.
Elena regretted them immediately.
But she did not take them back.
Luca looked down.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
That admission surprised her.
Luca Costello rarely sounded unsure.
“I know how to protect people.”
“I know how to solve problems.”
“I know how to make things disappear.”
He looked at her.
“I do not know how to become a father to a child who already had eight years without me.”
Elena’s anger softened.
“You don’t become one in a day.”
“What do I do?”
“You show up tomorrow.”
“And then?”
“You show up the day after that.”
“That simple?”
“No.”
She almost smiled.
“But that clear.”
That night, Maya chose a bedroom at the end of the east wing.
It was not the largest room.
It did not have the best view.
It had faded blue wallpaper and an old window seat overlooking the baseball field.
“That one.”
Luca looked around.
“There are twelve better rooms.”
“No.”
“There is a suite upstairs with its own sitting room.”
“I don’t need a sitting room.”
“There’s another one with a balcony.”
“Mom says I’m not allowed balconies without an adult.”
Luca looked at Elena.
Elena smiled sweetly.
“Good rule.”
Maya ran to the window seat.
“I can see the diamond.”
That settled it.
Luca ordered nothing changed without Maya’s permission.
Maya immediately asked if she could paint one wall yellow.
“Yes.”
Elena looked at him.
“You’re supposed to say we’ll discuss it.”
Luca frowned.
“Why?”
“Because parents discuss things.”
“What is there to discuss?”
“Whether she’s painting a wall.”
“It’s her wall.”
Maya grinned.
“I like his parenting.”
Elena sighed.
“You would.”
Later, after Maya slept, Luca went to the rehabilitation room his doctors had quietly established in the unused west gym.
Dr. Aiden Mercer waited beside the parallel bars.
Aiden had been blunt from their first consultation.
That was why Luca hired him.
“Tonight we see whether the signal Maya noticed is reproducible.”
Luca looked at the bars.
“And if it isn’t?”
“Then we try tomorrow.”
Luca almost smiled.
“You sound like Elena.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Two therapists helped Luca position himself.
His hands gripped the bars.
His legs were secured.
The muscles below his hips had weakened severely.
Twelve years of disuse could not be undone by optimism.
“Don’t try to stand.”
Aiden crouched beside him.
“Try to move the right foot.”
Luca focused.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Again.
Sweat appeared at his temples.
Again.
The room narrowed.
He remembered running.
He remembered stairs.
He remembered standing beside Elena at a South Side window while rain struck the glass.
He remembered being thirty-six and assuming walking was something a person could spend without ever running out.
“Again,” Aiden said.
Luca clenched his jaw.
His right foot moved.
Barely.
A fraction of an inch.
But it moved.
No one spoke.
Luca stared.
“Again.”
The foot trembled.
Then shifted.
Aiden looked at the therapist.
She was crying.
Luca was not.
He did not trust himself enough.
“Again.”
The movement came stronger.
Not enough to stand.
Not enough to walk.
But enough to prove that twelve years of certainty had been built on a lie.
Luca lowered himself back into the chair.
His hands were shaking.
Aiden put a hand on his shoulder.
“This changes things.”
“Yes.”
“Recovery is still going to take time.”
“I know.”
“Months.”
“I know.”
“Possibly years.”
“I know.”
“And there are no guarantees.”
Luca looked at his foot.
“For twelve years, I had a guarantee.”
He lifted his eyes.
“I prefer this.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Luca turned.
The door was open.
Someone had been standing there.
A shadow moved beyond the glass.
Harris ran toward it.
Luca gripped the wheel of his chair.
“Who was that?”
Harris disappeared around the corner.
Seconds passed.
Then a shout.
Then silence.
Harris returned holding a phone.
“No person.”
“What?”
“They were gone.”
He handed Luca the device.
“But they dropped this.”
The screen was cracked.
A photograph was open.
It showed Luca between the rehabilitation bars.
Standing almost two inches above the wheelchair.
The photograph had been taken less than a minute earlier.
And beneath it, an unsent text message waited.
HE’S RECOVERING FASTER THAN EXPECTED.
Luca looked at Harris.
“Expected by whom?”
Before Harris could answer, the phone rang.
The caller ID contained no name.
Only a number.
Luca answered.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then an elderly man’s voice whispered two words.
May you like
“Marcus Vale.”
The line went dead.
