Chapter 7 - CLARA'S SECOND PLAN
Before Victor explained Clara's second investigation, I searched the funeral chapel for anything Carlo had left behind.
Most men in a hurry abandon something useful.
Carlo was usually too disciplined for that.
This time we found a disposable phone beneath a chair.
Mateo powered it on with gloves.
One outgoing call.
One incoming message.
The message read simply, HE STILL THINKS THE GIRL IS THE CENTER OF IT.
No name.
No number stored.
I showed Victor.
His swollen eye narrowed.
"That is about you."
"Obviously."
"No."
He coughed.
"Think about the wording."
The girl.
Serena.
The center of it.
Whoever sent the message knew I had discovered Serena's role but believed I remained focused on the affair rather than the financial scheme.
"Someone is reporting my thinking to Carlo."
Mateo looked toward the doors.
"Or predicting it."
Victor gave a weak laugh.
"Predicting Dominic is not difficult."
I glared at him.
"You are tied to a chair and bleeding."
"And still correct."
That was annoyingly true.
We found a second clue in the chapel office.
A file folder labeled with my initials.
Inside were photographs of me entering restaurants, leaving hotels, meeting politicians, walking through my own house.
Some were more than ten years old.
Carlo had kept surveillance on me long before Serena appeared.
I spread the photographs across a desk.
"Why?"
Victor looked at them.
"Control."
"He was my adviser."
"He was your handler."
The word landed hard.
One photograph showed me at twenty-one outside a courthouse after my first arrest.
Carlo stood behind me smiling at reporters.
I remembered believing he had saved me by making the charge disappear.
Maybe he had simply taught me consequences could be erased if I obeyed the right people.
Another showed Clara and me leaving our wedding reception.
Carlo had written a note on the back.
SHE WATCHES TOO MUCH.
I read it twice.
Then I handed it to Mateo.
His expression darkened.
"He marked her on your wedding day."
I remembered Carlo pulling me aside during the reception.
He had congratulated me.
Then he had warned that marriage made men sentimental.
I had laughed.
Clara had been twenty-eight, radiant, holding my hand like she trusted the future completely.
Carlo had looked at her and seen a threat before I had even learned to see her as a partner.
The shame became something colder than guilt.
Resolve.
"He does not get to write the ending."
Victor looked at me.
"Then stop reacting to every page he hands you."
That was when he began telling me about Clara's second investigation.
Victor could barely stand.
Mateo put one arm under his shoulder.
"We need a doctor."
Victor shook his head.
"You need to listen first."
I wanted to drag the information out of him sentence by sentence.
Instead, I forced myself to wait.
That was becoming a new kind of discipline.
"Clara knew Carlo might have her watched," Victor said.
"So she created two investigations."
I frowned.
"Two?"
"The one Carlo could see."
He coughed into his sleeve.
"And the real one."
Mateo and I looked at each other.
"The documents Elena found?"
"Mostly real."
Victor wiped blood from his mouth.
"But incomplete."
"Why?"
"Because if Carlo saw Clara getting too close to the real money, he would kill her immediately."
My jaw tightened.
"He almost did anyway."
"Lorenzo changed the plan."
That matched Serena's story.
"What was Clara really investigating?"
Victor looked straight at me.
"Your father's death."
The room went silent.
My father had died when I was seventeen.
Officially, a heart attack.
Unofficially, too much stress, too many cigarettes, too many enemies.
Carlo had found him collapsed in his office.
Carlo had called the ambulance.
Carlo had arranged the funeral.
Carlo had helped raise me afterward.
"No."
The word came out before I could stop it.
Victor reached inside his torn jacket and pulled out a small brass key.
"Clara found this in a box of your father's papers."
I recognized it.
A safe-deposit key from First Lake Bank.
The branch had closed twelve years earlier.
"That box was empty when I inherited it."
"Not completely."
Victor dropped the key into my palm.
"Clara noticed a false bottom."
Of course she did.
"What did she find?"
"A note from your father."
My throat tightened.
"Where is it?"
"Safe place."
"Victor."
"Clara made me promise."
I stepped closer.
"My wife has been kidnapped."
"And if I give you everything before we know who has her, she may die."
I hated him for making sense.
"Then tell me enough."
Victor leaned back against the altar.
"Your father suspected Carlo was stealing from the family."
I said nothing.
"He planned to remove him."
My hand closed around the brass key.
"The week before he died, your father met with an attorney and created a sealed trust."
"What trust?"
"Not money."
Victor met my eyes.
"Evidence."
A chill moved through me.
"Against Carlo?"
"Against Carlo and two city officials."
Mateo cursed under his breath.
"Where is it?"
"That is what Clara was trying to find."
I looked at the fake Geneva account information.
"She used the fake account to make Carlo think she had found the trust."
Victor nodded.
"Exactly."
"Then where did Carlo take her?"
Victor shook his head.
"He did not."
I stared at him.
"I heard him talking about her five minutes ago."
"He thinks his people have her."
"They took her from the hospital."
"Yes."
"Then explain."
Victor smiled despite the pain.
"One of the ambulance drivers works for me."
For one second, I could not process the words.
"You hijacked the kidnapping?"
"Clara told me months ago that if anyone ever tried to move her, I was to redirect the transport."
Mateo laughed once in disbelief.
"That woman planned her own counter-kidnapping?"
Victor shrugged weakly.
"She is married to Dominic."
I ignored the insult.
"Where is she?"
"St. Catherine's."
I knew the place.
A small private surgical hospital near Oak Park that had closed two years earlier for renovations.
"Who is with her?"
"Dr. Amelia Grant."
The name hit me.
Clara's college roommate.
A trauma surgeon.
I had met her twice and forgotten both times.
Clara had apparently not.
"Why did the photo show a gun?"
Victor's face tightened.
"Because one of Carlo's men was inside the ambulance when my driver took control."
"What happened to him?"
"Sedated."
Mateo raised an eyebrow.
"With what?"
"I did not ask."
I was already moving toward the door.
"We go now."
Victor grabbed my sleeve.
"No."
I looked down at his hand.
He released me.
"Carlo is on his way there."
"Then I definitely go now."
"He thinks he is going somewhere else."
I paused.
Victor continued.
"My driver fed his tracker a false route."
"Where?"
"An abandoned clinic near Cicero."
Mateo smiled.
"So Carlo is chasing a ghost."
"For maybe twenty minutes."
I looked at Victor.
"You have been working with Clara for months and never thought to mention any of this to me?"
He met my stare.
"She asked me not to."
"And you chose her over me."
"On this?"
Victor's expression hardened.
"Yes."
I almost hit him.
Then he said quietly, "Because you were not listening to her."
That stopped me.
"She tried to warn you about Serena."
I looked away.
"She tried to warn you about missing money."
My silence was answer enough.
"She tried to tell you Carlo was asking strange questions about her schedule."
I remembered that conversation too.
Clara had brought it up over breakfast.
I had been replying to Serena's messages under the table.
I had told Clara not to make problems where none existed.
Victor watched recognition spread across my face.
"She stopped telling you because every warning became another reason for you to make her feel crazy."
The shame was almost unbearable.
"I know."
Victor shook his head.
"No."
His voice was tired.
"You are starting to know."
I had no defense.
Mateo's phone buzzed.
He checked it.
"Carlo reached the fake clinic."
Victor straightened.
"Then the clock started."
We left through the rear.
Mateo drove Victor to a trusted urgent-care doctor while I took another car toward St. Catherine's.
I went alone for the final two blocks.
Not because Carlo demanded it.
Because I no longer knew which tail belonged to whom.
The old hospital looked abandoned.
Dark windows.
Construction fencing.
One side entrance stood open.
I entered with my gun drawn.
A woman in scrubs appeared at the end of the corridor.
Dr. Amelia Grant.
She recognized me.
Her face became ice.
"You have some nerve coming here."
"Where is Clara?"
"Safe."
"I need to see her."
"She needs stability."
"Amelia-"
"Do not use my first name like we are friends."
I stopped.
She stepped closer.
"Clara called me three weeks ago crying so hard she could barely speak."
The words hit like fists.
"She asked me what paperwork she needed to designate someone other than her husband for emergency medical decisions."
I stared at her.
"She changed her proxy?"
"Yes."
"To who?"
Amelia lifted her chin.
"Me."
I looked toward the closed room behind her.
I had lost even the legal right to decide what happened to my wife.
"Can I see her?"
Amelia studied me for a long moment.
"She woke up ten minutes ago."
Hope rose too fast.
"Is she coherent?"
"Enough."
"Did she ask for me?"
Amelia's silence answered before she did.
"No."
The door behind her opened.
Clara's weak voice came from inside.
"Let him in."
Amelia looked surprised.
So was I.
I entered.
Clara lay beneath white sheets with oxygen tubing beneath her nose.
Her face was pale.
Her eyes were clear.
Too clear.
She looked at me the way people look at a house they have already decided to leave.
"Sit down, Dominic."
I sat.
She took one careful breath.
"Before you say anything, I need you to understand something."
I waited.
"I did not do all of this to save your empire."
Her eyes did not leave mine.
May you like
"I did it because I was trying to survive it."
