CHAPTER 8 THE BROTHER IN THE MIRROR
Dante ordered the convoy to split before they reached Boston.
Marco took Noah, Dr. Hale, and Evelyn to a medical safe house in Brookline.
Dante remained with Aria in an armored sedan that changed routes three times before entering an underground garage beneath a closed hotel.
No one spoke during the drive.
Aria stared at the empty road behind them and tried to understand how Julian could have been driving Victor’s vehicle without anyone recognizing him.
The answer arrived before she asked.
Marco had recruited the driver two months earlier under the name James Mercer.
He had passed every background check.
His fingerprints belonged to a dead man from Providence.
His face had changed beneath a beard, thirty lost pounds, and a scar running from his temple to his jaw.
Victor had not merely turned Julian into an informant.
He had erased him and built someone new.
In the hotel basement, Dante led Aria into a private elevator.
She remained near the mirrored wall.
Her reflection looked like a stranger.
Smoke stained her coat.
Dust coated her hair.
Finger marks darkened the skin beneath her jaw.
Dante stood across from her with blood drying along his sleeve.
“You need a doctor,” she said.
“So do you.”
“I am not bleeding.”
“Not all injuries bleed.”
The elevator rose.
Aria watched his reflection rather than his face.
“Did you know the driver was Julian?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“Yes.”
“You answer quickly.”
“Because there is no answer that makes my failure smaller.”
Aria turned toward him.
“You did not fail.”
“My uncle infiltrated my home.”
“Your brother infiltrated my security.”
“Your father escaped from my custody.”
Dante’s voice remained controlled, but each sentence carried the weight of self-judgment.
“I failed in several directions at once.”
The elevator stopped on the twelfth floor.
A suite had been stripped of decorative objects and converted into a temporary command center.
Maps covered one wall.
Weapons cases covered another.
Two Rossi analysts sat before encrypted computers.
Dante removed his shirt so a medic could clean the bullet graze along his upper arm.
Aria looked away at first.
Then she forced herself not to.
His body carried scars across his ribs, shoulder, and abdomen.
Some were thin and pale.
Others were rough, uneven reminders of wounds that should have killed him.
He noticed her looking.
“Disappointed?”
“By what?”
“The monster is damaged.”
Aria’s eyes moved to his.
“Damaged is not the same as monstrous.”
The medic paused.
Dante’s expression changed, but only for a second.
Then one of the analysts raised a hand.
“We have a call routed through six relays.”
“The caller asked for Mrs. Rossi.”
Aria’s heart struck hard once.
“Julian.”
Dante buttoned a clean shirt over the bandage.
“Trace it.”
The analyst nodded.
Aria took the phone.
“Hello?”
For several seconds, only breathing came through.
Then a man spoke.
“Little star.”
Aria closed her eyes.
Julian had called her that since she was four.
No one else knew.
“Where are you?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Is Victor with you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you helping him?”
A pause.
“I am keeping him alive.”
“Why?”
“Because Luca wants him dead before the hearing.”
“Victor knows where Luca keeps the second half of the ledger.”
“We already have a ledger.”
“You have Evelyn’s half.”
“Angelo’s half contains the names of Luca’s people inside federal law enforcement.”
Aria looked at Dante.
He heard every word through the speaker.
“Why did you take Victor?” she asked.
“Because if Dante delivered him to the police, Luca’s agents would kill him in custody.”
“Victor deserves a courtroom, not a quiet death that protects everyone he paid.”
Julian’s voice sounded older than she remembered.
Tired.
Broken in places no scar could reveal.
“Why did you work for him?”
“To find Mom.”
“You knew she was alive?”
“I suspected.”
“Caleb moved her every six weeks.”
“I let Victor believe he had turned me so I could follow the transfers.”
“You sent the message about the recording.”
“Yes.”
“Why tell me not to let Dante hear it?”
“Because I did not know whether Angelo’s son had become what Angelo feared.”
Dante showed no reaction.
Aria gripped the phone.
“You could have come to me.”
“I tried.”
“The night before your engagement announcement, I entered your room.”
“You were asleep.”
“I saw the bruises.”
Julian’s voice cracked.
“I almost killed him that night.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Because Caleb was waiting outside.”
“He told me Victor would kill you before I reached the stairs.”
Aria remembered waking to find her window open and a silver star on the pillow.
She had believed it was a dream.
“Where do we meet?” she asked.
Dante shook his head.
Julian heard the silence.
“Dante is there.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The answer surprised them both.
“I need him to hear this.”
Julian lowered his voice.
“Victor placed a cardiac tracker inside the heart pendant.”
“Every time Aria uses it, Luca receives the signal.”
Aria reached beneath her blouse and tore the chain from her neck.
Dante took the pendant and placed it inside a metal evidence box.
Julian continued.
“Luca let you find the Vale archive.”
“He needed Aria to open it.”
“The fire was meant to separate her from Dante long enough for his men to take the ledger.”
“They failed.”
“What does Luca want now?” Dante asked.
“The full ledger and the master recordings.”
“Where are they?”
“Victor says the recordings are beneath the Sterling house.”
“But he cannot open the final vault without Aria.”
“The heartbeat again?”
“No.”
“Her voice.”
Aria looked toward the window.
The city spread below, glittering beneath the storm clouds.
“What does he need me to say?”
“I do not know.”
“Mom does.”
Julian breathed heavily.
“I can bring Victor to you.”
“Where?”
“The old aquarium service tunnel at nine tonight.”
“No weapons visible.”
“No more than Dante and Aria.”
Dante took the phone.
“You disappeared with an armed prisoner and expect me to walk into a tunnel.”
“I expect you to understand that I had three opportunities to kill your wife during the wedding.”
Aria flinched.
Julian continued.
“I did not.”
“You also had eight months to free your sister,” Dante said.
“And failed.”
“Yes.”
The simple admission silenced the room.
Julian’s voice softened.
“Please bring her.”
“I need to see that she is alive.”
The line disconnected.
The analysts failed to trace it beyond a public terminal near the harbor.
Dante immediately began planning surveillance around the aquarium.
Aria stood apart from the others.
“You are going to tell me to stay behind.”
“I am considering it.”
“Consider faster.”
Dante looked at her.
“I do not trust him.”
“He is my brother.”
“That is not evidence of loyalty.”
“No.”
Aria remembered Victor’s hand, Evelyn’s absence, and the years Julian spent trapped between them.
“But neither is his betrayal evidence of evil.”
Dante understood the argument because it applied to him as well.
At eight forty-five, they entered the abandoned service tunnel beneath the old aquarium complex.
Water dripped from corroded pipes.
The smell of salt and rust filled the darkness.
Dante wore a pistol concealed at his back.
Aria wore a recording device inside her coat seam.
Marco’s teams watched the entrances from three blocks away.
Julian waited beneath a flickering emergency light.
For a second, Aria did not recognize him.
Then he lifted his face.
His eyes were the same.
Blue like Victor’s, but without Victor’s emptiness.
Aria crossed the distance before caution could stop her.
Julian opened his arms.
She struck him across the face.
The sound echoed through the tunnel.
He accepted it without moving.
Then she struck him again.
“You left me.”
“I know.”
“You watched him hurt me.”
“I know.”
“You let me believe you were dead.”
“I know.”
Her third blow became a fist against his chest.
Julian caught her only when her knees weakened.
Aria clung to his coat and sobbed with anger she had carried too long to name.
He held her carefully.
“I am sorry, little star.”
Dante watched from several feet away.
He did not interrupt.
When Aria finally stepped back, Julian looked toward him.
“Victor is in the maintenance room.”
“Bound?”
“Drugged.”
“Alive?”
“For now.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean?”
Julian reached inside his coat and withdrew a flash drive.
“This contains the names of three federal agents Luca controls.”
“One is assigned to Senator Sterling’s protective detail.”
“Another is on the Boston organized crime task force.”
“The third works in the United States Attorney’s Office.”
Dante took the drive but did not lower his guard.
“Why give it to me?”
“Because someone followed me here.”
A red dot appeared on Julian’s chest.
Aria saw it first.
“Down!”
She lunged.
The rifle shot struck Julian beneath the ribs.
Dante dragged Aria behind a concrete support as bullets tore through the tunnel.
Julian fell against the wall.
At the far end, two masked figures moved through the darkness.
Dante fired.
One disappeared behind a pipe.
The other threw something metal across the floor.
It rolled toward Victor’s maintenance room.
A grenade.
Julian saw it.
With blood pouring through his shirt, he forced himself upright and kicked the grenade into a drainage channel.
The explosion ripped open the tunnel floor.
Seawater burst upward.
Lights shattered.
Aria crawled toward Julian.
Dante covered her while Marco’s teams entered from both ends.
The attackers retreated through a submerged passage.
Aria pressed her hands against Julian’s wound.
“Stay with me.”
He coughed and looked past her.
The maintenance room door hung open.
Victor Sterling was gone.
On the chair where he had been bound lay a white envelope.
Dante opened it.
Inside was a photograph taken less than an hour earlier.
Evelyn sat in the Brookline safe house beside Noah.
A rifle sight had been drawn over her chest.
On the back, Luca had written a single sentence.
BRING ME ARIA, OR NEXT TIME I WILL NOT MISS HER MOTHER.
Julian’s fingers closed around Aria’s wrist.
“Do not believe him,” he whispered.
“Believe who?”
“Dante.”
Julian’s eyes moved toward the flash drive in Dante’s hand.
“One of the three names is false.”
“Luca wanted me to steal that file.”
“He wanted Dante to trust it.”
“Which name?” Dante demanded.
Julian tried to answer.
May you like
Blood filled his mouth.
Then his eyes closed before the word came.
