Chapter 10 - Seven Letters Never Delivered
They argued in the clinic parking garage while dawn turned the sky gray over the Bronx.
Hannah stood beside the SUV with both hands clenched at her sides.
"You told me Elena died on the way to meet a federal attorney."
Dominic faced her.
"She did."
"Now Matteo says she was trying to run."
"Matteo says many things."
"Were there bags in her car?"
Dominic's expression shifted.
Hannah laughed without humor.
"There were."
"One suitcase."
"For what?"
"I don't know."
"You didn't ask?"
"She was dead."
"You thought she was dead."
His jaw tightened.
"Do not use hindsight as if it were evidence."
"Then give me evidence."
"She told me she was going to her mother's house after the meeting."
"Her adoptive mother's?"
"Maria Rossi."
"Maria was alive then?"
"Yes."
"Did you verify Elena went there?"
"She never arrived anywhere."
Hannah paced once beside the vehicle.
"Sofia says Elena called and said you were dangerous."
"Sofia was under threat."
"That doesn't mean the call was fake."
"The woman in Room 316 says Elena talked about loving you."
"Both can be true."
The answer surprised Hannah.
Dominic looked exhausted for the first time.
"I am not a good man simply because I love my children."
Hannah went still.
"What did you do?"
"Things Elena hated."
"Be specific."
"I used fear to solve problems."
"That's not specific."
"I threatened people."
"Did you hurt people?"
Dominic held her gaze.
"Yes."
Hannah swallowed.
He continued before she could speak.
"Not her."
"I wasn't going to ask that."
"You were thinking it."
She did not deny it.
"I never struck Elena."
His voice was quiet and absolute.
"I never threatened her."
"But she may still have been afraid of the world around you."
"Yes."
The admission seemed to cost him something.
"She wanted me to make the business clean enough that our daughters would never inherit the parts she hated."
"Did you?"
"Not fast enough."
Luca approached from the garage entrance.
"We found something in Room 314."
He held up a small metal key.
"Taped beneath the bed frame."
The key had a number etched into it.
42.
Luca had already checked the number against nearby lockers, safe-deposit systems, and storage facilities.
It matched a private mail vault service in Manhattan.
The three of them arrived shortly after the business opened.
Vault 42 contained seven envelopes.
Every envelope was addressed to Dominic Vale.
None had stamps.
None had been mailed.
All were written in Elena's handwriting.
Dominic stared at them without touching them.
Hannah looked at him.
"Do you want me to leave?"
"No."
"They're private."
"So was my marriage."
His bitterness made her quiet.
He opened the first letter.
The date was seventeen months earlier.
One month after Elena's supposed death.
Dominic read silently for several seconds.
His hands began to shake.
"Read it aloud."
Hannah said softly.
He hesitated.
Then he did.
"Dominic, if this reaches you, believe the impossible before you believe Matteo."
His voice roughened.
"I am alive."
Hannah closed her eyes.
Dominic continued.
"The crash was staged."
"I was taken before the car burned."
"I woke in a locked room with no phone, no windows, and a doctor who called me Maria."
"The doctor was Samuel Kline."
Hannah whispered, "Oh my God."
Dominic kept reading.
"Matteo came three days later."
"He told me you had arranged everything because I planned to expose the forged orders."
Dominic stopped.
His face went white with fury.
Hannah touched the table.
"Keep going."
"He showed me documents with your signature."
"He showed me photographs of you meeting men I had seen in the payment file."
"He said you wanted me declared unstable so you could keep the girls and protect your empire."
Dominic crushed the edge of the paper in his fingers.
"He lied."
"I know."
Hannah pointed at the next line.
"Read."
Dominic forced himself to continue.
"At first, I believed him."
"Then I saw him use your security code to open the clinic door."
"I heard him order someone to forge a message from you."
"I realized the prison was his, not yours."
Dominic looked at Luca.
Luca's face was stone.
The letter continued.
"I tried to escape."
"They caught me at the stairwell."
"After that, they kept me sedated for weeks."
"I do not know if you are searching for me."
"I do not know if you believe I am dead."
"I only know that if you are still the man I married, you will not stop looking once you learn the truth."
Dominic could not read the final line.
Hannah took the letter gently from him.
"I love you, even when I hate the world you built around us."
The room was silent.
Dominic turned away.
Hannah opened the second letter.
Elena described a nurse named Julia who had agreed to smuggle messages out.
The third letter said Julia had disappeared.
The fourth mentioned Hannah for the first time.
"I found my sister before the crash."
Hannah stopped reading.
Dominic looked at her.
"Continue."
Her voice shook.
"Her name is Hannah Mercer."
"She lives in Queens."
"She works too much, drinks terrible convenience-store coffee, and visits our father's grave every Sunday morning."
Hannah covered her mouth.
Dominic read the next line for her.
"She does not know about me."
"I stood across the street from her coffee shop twice and could not make myself walk inside."
Tears blurred Hannah's vision.
Elena had seen her.
She had been close enough to cross a street.
"I was afraid Matteo would see me contact her and understand I had found Thomas Mercer."
"I planned to tell Hannah everything after Dominic and I turned over the file."
"If I disappeared before I could, I pray somebody tells her I was coming."
Hannah lowered the letter.
"She was coming to me."
Dominic nodded.
"Yes."
The fifth letter was written fourteen months earlier.
Elena said Matteo had begun asking about the triplets' trust.
Dominic frowned.
"What trust?"
Hannah looked at him.
"You don't know?"
"No."
Luca leaned over the letter.
Elena wrote that Maria Rossi had left her a controlling interest in a port logistics company later merged with Vale Shipping.
Those shares had been placed in a trust for Elena's children.
If Elena died before the girls turned twenty-five, Dominic would manage the voting rights unless a court found him unfit.
If Dominic became unable to serve, the secondary trustee was Matteo Vale.
Dominic's face went cold.
"He wanted control of the girls' shares."
Luca nodded slowly.
"Thirty-two percent of Vale Shipping."
Hannah stared.
"That's enough to matter?"
"Enough to control the board with Matteo's personal stake."
Dominic opened the sixth letter.
Elena had learned Matteo planned to present evidence that Dominic was violent, unstable, and responsible for her disappearance.
The evidence relied on the same forged payment orders and staged photographs she had once believed.
If Dominic were arrested or declared unfit, Matteo could petition to control the trust.
Hannah felt sick.
"The girls weren't only leverage."
"They were the prize."
Dominic's voice was almost inaudible.
The seventh letter was dated three weeks earlier.
It was much shorter.
"Dominic, I found a way out."
"A nurse named Carla believes me."
"She says there is a service transfer every Wednesday at 5:30 a.m."
"If I make it, I will call Sofia because I no longer know which of your people Matteo controls."
"I may tell her things about you that are not fair because I need her afraid enough to help me."
Dominic stopped reading.
Hannah looked up sharply.
That explained Sofia.
Elena had called her.
Elena had said Dominic was dangerous.
But perhaps not because she believed it.
Dominic continued.
"I am sorry for that."
"I am more sorry that the girls may believe I abandoned them."
"I did not."
"Tell them I tried every day to get home."
The final lines were underlined.
"Do not trust anyone who says Matteo is acting alone."
"He has someone inside your closest circle."
Dominic and Luca looked at each other.
Hannah felt the room change.
"Someone close to you?"
Dominic's voice was quiet.
"Apparently."
Luca looked offended.
"Don't."
Dominic did not accuse him.
That almost made it worse.
Hannah folded the letter.
"Who knew your codes?"
"Luca."
Luca's face hardened.
"Yes."
"Rosa?"
"Some household codes."
"Sofia?"
"Nursery access only."
"Peter?"
"No."
"Family?"
Dominic's eyes shifted.
"My mother."
Hannah blinked.
"Your mother is alive?"
"Celia Vale lives in Florida."
"Does she know Matteo?"
Dominic gave her a humorless look.
"She was married to his brother for thirty-four years."
Luca's phone buzzed.
He looked at the message.
"Carla, the nurse Elena mentioned, is missing."
"Since when?"
"Yesterday morning."
Dominic's phone rang at the same moment.
He answered.
A woman's voice whispered through the speaker.
"Stop tracing me."
Dominic went still.
"Elena."
Hannah stepped closer.
The woman was crying.
"I have maybe thirty seconds."
"Where are you?"
"I can't tell you."
"Why?"
"Because they are still inside your house."
Dominic looked at Luca.
"Who?"
The voice on the line trembled.
"Ask Hannah what was missing from Thomas's apartment besides the papers."
Hannah frowned.
"What?"
"The photograph."
"What photograph?"
"The one of Thomas with Dominic's mother."
Hannah stopped breathing.
Dominic stared at her.
"My mother?"
Elena whispered one final sentence.
"Celia knew about the twins."
The line went dead.
The seventh undelivered letter contained a paragraph Dominic initially skipped.
Hannah noticed because his eyes moved too quickly across the page.
"What did you leave out?"
"Nothing important."
"That is exactly what people say before the important part."
Elena's handwriting filled half the remaining page.
Dominic sighed and read it.
"If I get home, I do not want you to rescue me and then expect gratitude to erase everything we were fighting about before this happened."
Hannah raised an eyebrow.
Dominic looked irritated.
"Keep reading."
"I still want the girls away from the violent part of the business."
"I still want you to stop pretending fear is the same thing as respect."
"I still want a marriage where I can disagree with you without watching everyone else in the room become afraid for me."
Dominic stopped.
Hannah leaned back.
"I like her."
"Of course you do."
He continued.
"If I survive this, I am coming home as your wife, not as your possession and not as proof that you won."
"You will have to decide whether you can live with that."
Dominic folded the letter carefully.
Hannah watched him.
"Can you?"
"Can I what?"
"Live with that."
He looked at the seven letters spread across the table.
"I thought I lost the chance to try."
"That's not an answer."
Dominic gave her a tired look.
"Yes."
May you like
Hannah believed he meant it.
The harder question was whether Elena would believe it after eighteen months of being controlled by men who constantly claimed to know what was best for her.
