Chapter 5 - THE MAN I TRUSTED SECOND MOST
Anthony did not react when Vincent named him.
That frightened me more than denial would have.
He stood in the chapel doorway holding the lab report in one hand and looked at Vincent as though the accusation were nothing more than rain against glass.
"That's convenient," Anthony said.
Vincent rose slowly from the floor.
"You asked who knew the combination."
"And you decided to throw my name into the room."
"Your name was already in the room."
I stepped between them.
"Enough."
Anthony turned to me.
"Dominic, I've been with you since Brooklyn."
"So has Vincent."
"Vincent just admitted he fired at Isabelle."
"He also said somebody planted her blood on his ring."
Anthony's jaw tightened.
"And you believe him?"
"I believe evidence that survives pressure."
Anthony stared at me for a long second.
"Then pressure me."
It was exactly what the old Anthony would have said.
That did not make it true.
I ordered both men separated.
Vincent went to the reinforced wine cellar with two guards outside.
Anthony surrendered his weapon, phone, keys, and access card without argument before moving to the guest office across the courtyard.
The house became quieter than it had been when the girls were mute.
Every employee knew something had cracked at the center of the Romano estate.
Nobody knew which side of the crack they stood on.
I returned to the nursery.
Grace was sitting on the carpet while Nora braided a ribbon through her hair.
Sophie held a stuffed rabbit against her chest.
Olivia watched me enter.
She no longer looked away immediately.
That tiny change felt like mercy.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
Grace gave me a warning look.
"One thing," she said.
I almost smiled at the fact that she was setting interrogation rules for me again.
I sat on the floor instead of standing over them.
"Did any of you ever see Anthony with Mommy on the day she died?"
Olivia frowned.
Sophie looked at Nora.
Nora shook her head.
Then Sophie whispered, "Uncle Tony was crying."
My chest tightened.
"When?"
"Night."
"The night Mommy died?"
She nodded.
"Where?"
Sophie pointed toward the hall.
"Her closet."
Grace and I looked at each other.
I had not entered Isabelle's dressing room in months.
The first weeks after her murder, I slept on the couch outside our bedroom because I could not bear the smell of her perfume on the pillows.
Eventually, I sealed the entire suite and moved into the room across the hall.
Nobody was supposed to enter without my permission.
If Sophie saw Anthony in Isabelle's closet that night, he had been somewhere he had no reason to be.
"What was he doing?" Grace asked.
Sophie pressed the rabbit tighter.
"Looking."
"For what?"
"Blue thing."
The folder.
I stood too quickly.
Nora flinched.
I immediately slowed myself.
"Thank you," I said to Sophie.
Her eyes widened at the words.
Then she gave me the smallest nod.
Grace followed me into the hallway.
"Don't storm into Anthony's room with a gun."
"That specific plan had crossed my mind."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
She caught my sleeve.
I looked down at her hand.
Grace let go, but she did not retreat.
"The girls are speaking because they believe the rules changed," she said.
"What rules?"
"The old rules were silence, fear, and adults deciding what truth they were allowed to say."
Her gaze held mine.
"If you turn every answer into violence, they will learn silence was safer."
I hated how accurate she was.
"Then come with me."
"Where?"
"Isabelle's closet."
The lock had not been broken.
Anthony had possessed a master key for emergency access.
Inside, Isabelle's clothes still hung exactly as she left them.
A cream coat.
Three summer dresses.
A black gown from a charity dinner where she whispered rude jokes about donors into my ear until I nearly laughed during a speech.
I had not prepared myself for memory to have a smell.
Grace stood quietly while I opened drawers.
Nothing looked disturbed.
Then she noticed scratches on the baseboard behind a row of shoes.
We removed a cedar panel.
Behind it was a shallow cavity.
Empty.
Except for a strip of torn blue cardboard.
Somebody had searched for the folder and found only the place where Isabelle once hid it.
I called Anthony from the doorway instead of going to him.
"Were you in Isabelle's closet the night she died?"
There was silence on the line.
"Yes."
My grip tightened on the phone.
"Why?"
"Because she called me at 8:11 that morning."
"You never told me that."
"She made me promise."
"She's dead, Anthony. Promises to the dead don't outrank the truth."
His breath came slowly.
"She said if anything happened, I had to find the blue folder before Vincent did."
Grace's eyes narrowed.
"Why before Vincent?"
Anthony answered before I repeated the question.
"Because she knew he was being blackmailed."
I looked toward the torn cardboard.
"So you searched the closet."
"Yes."
"Did you find it?"
"No."
"Did you touch Vincent's ring?"
"Never."
"You knew his safe combination."
"Because you ordered me to know every emergency code on the property."
That was true.
I had created a system in which several men could enter nearly every secure room if I was unavailable.
Now the same redundancy made betrayal almost impossible to isolate.
"What else did Isabelle tell you?"
Anthony hesitated again.
"She said there was a fourth person with the safe combination."
Vincent had said three.
I felt my stomach drop.
"Who?"
"She didn't know his name."
"Then how did she know he existed?"
"She saw him open Vincent's safe without forcing it."
"Where?"
"On a camera Vincent didn't know she had installed."
I went still.
"What camera?"
"A nanny camera in an antique clock."
We both turned toward the shelf at the end of Isabelle's dressing room.
An ivory carriage clock sat beneath a layer of dust.
I lifted it carefully.
The back panel contained a memory card.
We did not tell Vane that Eddie had restored the camera clip.
Instead, we let him believe his call had frightened us into chasing Vincent.
Hale had not yet joined the case, so Dana arranged a quiet surveillance team using two retired detectives and one federal contact she trusted from an old task force.
Vane left his Manhattan apartment at 6:20 p.m.
He went first to a private dining club near Madison Avenue.
Three judges were already there.
A state senator arrived ten minutes later.
Rachel Stone entered through a side door at 6:47.
She and Vane never sat at the same table.
They never spoke in public view.
At 7:05, Rachel went to the ladies' room.
At 7:06, Vane walked into a private telephone booth near the coatroom.
At 7:08, both returned to their seats.
Two minutes later, my phone received a message from an unknown number.
STOP DIGGING OR THE GIRLS LOSE ANOTHER PARENT.
The timing was too precise to ignore.
Dana wanted to keep watching.
I wanted to walk into the club.
Grace asked what I expected to happen if I did.
"He'll know I found him."
"He already knows."
"Then he'll know I'm not afraid."
Grace looked almost tired.
"Dominic, your need to prove you're not afraid is one of the easiest buttons these people have."
I disliked hearing that in front of Anthony.
Anthony nodded anyway.
"She's right."
I stared at both of them.
"This is becoming a terrible habit."
We kept watching.
Vane left alone and took a town car to a brownstone on East Seventy-Second Street.
The property belonged to a charitable foundation connected to Falcon.
Rachel arrived twelve minutes later in a different car.
The lights on the third floor came on.
A third visitor appeared at 8:11.
Lorenzo Romano.
My father walked through the front door without knocking.
I felt the room around me disappear.
Anthony cursed softly.
Grace said nothing.
The three remained inside for forty-three minutes.
When Lorenzo left, he looked furious.
Vane appeared in the doorway behind him.
They argued.
Lorenzo pointed a finger at Vane's chest.
Vane laughed.
Rachel never came outside.
I called my father immediately.
He answered after five rings.
"You should be with your children," he said.
"You should tell me why you were with Thomas Vane."
Silence.
It lasted long enough to become an answer.
"Who is watching me?" Lorenzo asked.
"That isn't a denial."
"This is bigger than your temper."
"Everybody keeps saying that right before they lie to me."
My father exhaled.
"Then listen carefully."
His voice dropped.
"If Vane calls you, let him think you still believe Vincent killed Isabelle."
I looked at Grace.
"Why?"
"Because Vane is afraid of whoever actually ordered it."
The call disconnected.
Seconds later, Vane's unknown number rang.
I answered without telling him I had just spoken to Lorenzo.
For the first time, I understood that my father might not be standing on Vane's side.
He might be standing inside the same trap from a different direction.
By midnight, nobody in the estate trusted a familiar face simply because it was familiar.
That was dangerous too.
Suspicion could protect us, but it could also become the weapon Vane wanted us to use against one another.
I began writing down what we knew separately from what we feared, because the two lists had been mixed for too long.
We began treating every new accusation as a test of our process as much as a clue about the killer.
Falcon wanted certainty faster than the evidence deserved.
Eddie restored the files within an hour.
The oldest surviving video was from four days before Isabelle died.
Vincent's room appeared in grainy black and white.
A man entered at 2:13 a.m.
He wore gloves and a baseball cap.
He walked directly to Vincent's safe.
He entered the combination on the first try.
Then he removed the silver Falcon ring and held it under the camera.
For one second, his face turned upward.
Grace inhaled sharply.
I knew the man.
Everyone in New York knew the man.
Judge Thomas Vane smiled faintly at the hidden camera as if he had known Isabelle would someday watch.
Then he slipped Vincent's ring into his pocket.
The video cut to black.
My phone rang.
The caller ID showed an unknown number.
I answered.
Thomas Vane's voice filled my ear.
May you like
"Dominic, you really should teach your daughters that secrets are dangerous."
