Chapter 6 - The Uncle at Breakfast
Matteo Vale returned to New York at 6:40 the next morning.
Dominic knew because Luca had someone waiting at the private airfield.
Matteo knew Dominic knew because he came directly to the townhouse instead of going home.
Hannah was in the breakfast room with the triplets when the front door opened downstairs.
The girls were learning the word banana with intense seriousness.
"Nana," Emma announced.
"Close enough."
"Nana."
"Still close enough."
Lily pointed at Hannah's plate.
"More."
Hannah laughed.
"You don't even like banana."
A male voice came from the hallway.
"Well, this is interesting."
Hannah turned.
Matteo Vale stood in the doorway.
He was sixty-one, silver-haired, broad through the shoulders, and dressed in a navy suit with no tie.
His face was warmer than Dominic's, but his eyes were not.
Those eyes settled on Hannah.
For one second, his polite expression vanished.
Recognition flashed there.
Then it was gone.
"You must be Hannah Mercer."
Hannah rose slowly.
"You already knew that."
Matteo smiled.
"Dominic briefed me on the phone."
"He told you my first name?"
The smile remained.
"I assume he did."
Dominic appeared behind him.
"I didn't."
Silence fell over the room.
Matteo turned.
"Then Luca must have."
Luca entered from the opposite hallway.
"I didn't."
Matteo sighed as though everyone were being tiresome.
"She has a name tag in the restaurant photographs you sent."
Hannah stared at him.
"You saw photographs?"
Matteo looked at Dominic.
"Apparently we're doing this before coffee."
Dominic pulled out a chair.
"Sit."
Matteo's smile faded.
"I'm your uncle, not one of your employees."
"Sit."
The triplets sensed the tension.
Grace reached for Hannah.
Hannah picked her up.
Matteo watched the movement too closely.
Dominic noticed.
"You knew Elena had a twin."
"No."
"You paid to have Hannah watched."
Matteo's brows rose.
"Excuse me?"
Luca placed a photograph of the ledger entry on the table.
Matteo looked at it for three seconds.
"That's not my handwriting."
"Nobody said it was."
"Then what exactly are you accusing me of?"
"I'm asking why your initials appear beside a twenty-five-thousand-dollar payment for surveillance on Hannah Mercer."
Matteo leaned back.
"Anyone can write initials."
"Victor's initials appear in the same ledger."
Something small changed in Matteo's face.
"Your father had hundreds of enemies."
"Thomas Mercer wasn't one of them."
"You don't know that."
Hannah stepped closer.
"My father said you threatened both of his newborn daughters."
Matteo looked at her.
The warmth disappeared completely.
"Your father is dead."
"He recorded it before he died."
Matteo's jaw tightened.
"Sick men say strange things."
"He said your name clearly."
"Then a dead man accused me of something that supposedly happened twenty-six years ago."
He looked at Dominic.
"Is this what your judgment has become?"
Dominic leaned both hands on the table.
"Where is Elena?"
Matteo laughed in disbelief.
"She's dead."
"Are you sure?"
"I attended the funeral."
"So did I."
Dominic's voice dropped.
"There was no body."
Matteo's gaze flickered.
Hannah saw it.
Dominic did too.
"What do you know?"
"I know grief has finally broken something in you."
Matteo stood.
"You're letting a waitress walk into your home, attach herself to your children, and fill your head with conspiracy stories because she looks like your dead wife."
Hannah's face burned.
"I didn't walk into his home."
Matteo ignored her.
"Did you verify the DNA lab?"
Luca's eyes narrowed.
"Yes."
"Every employee?"
"Yes."
"The samples?"
"Yes."
Matteo smiled thinly.
"And yet someone tried to destroy the sample, didn't they?"
No one moved.
Dominic's expression became terrifyingly calm.
"How do you know that?"
Matteo realized his mistake.
It lasted less than a second.
"You said it on the phone."
"No."
"Then Luca did."
"No."
Matteo's hand moved toward his pocket.
Dominic's gun appeared before Hannah saw him reach for it.
"Hands on the table."
Grace whimpered.
Hannah turned the child's face into her shoulder.
"Dominic, not in front of them."
His eyes never left Matteo.
"Rosa."
The older woman hurried in and took the girls.
Lily began crying as they left.
"Dad!"
Dominic's face tightened at the word but he did not lower the weapon.
Matteo slowly placed both hands flat on the table.
"You point a gun at your own blood now?"
"My blood is upstairs."
The answer silenced him.
Luca removed Matteo's phone and wallet.
"Search him."
Matteo looked at Hannah.
"You have no idea what you've stepped into."
"I'm beginning to."
"No."
His eyes became almost pitying.
"You think this is about a stolen baby."
Hannah's stomach tightened.
"What is it about?"
Matteo smiled.
"Ask Dominic what Elena found in his safe three days before she died."
Hannah looked at Dominic.
His face had gone still.
"What did she find?"
Matteo laughed softly.
"There it is."
"Shut up."
"You didn't tell her?"
Dominic's gun lowered by an inch.
Matteo saw the opening and drove his shoulder into Luca.
The move was fast enough to surprise everyone.
Luca crashed into the table.
Matteo ran for the hallway.
Dominic followed.
Hannah heard a shout, a body striking the wall, and glass breaking.
By the time she reached the foyer, Matteo was on the floor with Luca's knee between his shoulders.
Dominic stood over him.
"You're getting old."
Matteo spat blood from a cut lip.
"And you're getting stupid."
Dominic crouched.
"Where is Elena?"
Matteo smiled through the blood.
"Closer than you think."
Dominic grabbed his collar.
"Where?"
"You want the truth?"
"Yes."
"Then ask your wife why she was planning to leave you."
Dominic froze.
Hannah felt the sentence strike the room.
"What are you talking about?"
Matteo looked directly at Hannah.
"She found evidence of things Dominic had done."
"What things?"
"People hurt."
"Money moved."
"Orders signed."
Dominic stood.
"He's lying."
Matteo laughed again.
"Then show her the safe."
Hannah turned to Dominic.
"What safe?"
He did not answer.
That was answer enough.
Two hours later, Matteo was locked in a secure room in a different Vale property under guards Luca trusted personally.
Dominic refused to explain the safe until the triplets had been moved again.
Hannah followed him to a private office on the third floor.
He removed a painting and entered a code into a wall panel.
The steel door opened.
Inside were business documents, passports, cash, and several sealed envelopes.
"Elena found this safe?"
"She knew it existed."
"What did she find?"
Dominic opened a lower drawer.
Empty.
"A file."
"What file?"
"Records of payments authorized under my name."
"For what?"
His mouth tightened.
"Violence."
Hannah stared at him.
"Against who?"
"Men connected to competitors."
"Did you order it?"
"No."
"But your signature was there?"
"Yes."
"Then whose orders were they?"
"I believed they were forged."
"By Matteo?"
"I never proved it."
Hannah folded her arms.
"Why didn't you tell police?"
Dominic gave her a long look.
"You know the answer."
"Because you don't call police."
"Because if I handed those records to law enforcement, they would have opened every company and every account my family has touched for thirty years."
"Maybe they should."
His eyes hardened.
"Maybe."
The answer surprised her.
"Elena wanted you to turn them over?"
"Yes."
"And you refused."
"At first."
"At first?"
"The night she died, I had agreed to meet a federal attorney the next morning."
Hannah stared at him.
"Did Matteo know?"
"I thought no one knew except Elena."
"But if he did—"
"Then she died hours before she could expose him."
Hannah looked at the empty drawer.
"Where is the file?"
"It disappeared after the accident."
"Convenient."
Dominic's face turned cold.
"Be careful."
"Why?"
"Because you think looking like Elena gives you permission to speak to me the way she did."
Hannah stepped closer.
"No."
"I speak to you this way because you dragged me into your car and locked me in your house."
For a second, neither moved.
Then Dominic looked away.
"Fair."
Hannah blinked.
"Was that an apology?"
"Don't get used to it."
Luca entered without knocking.
"We have a problem."
Dominic closed the safe.
"Which one?"
"Matteo is gone."
Dominic turned slowly.
"Explain."
"Two guards unconscious, one vehicle missing."
"How?"
"Someone from inside our own security network changed the shift rotation."
Hannah's stomach dropped.
"Again."
Luca nodded.
"Again."
Dominic's phone buzzed.
A photograph appeared from an unknown number.
It showed Matteo standing beside a dark-haired woman whose face was turned away from the camera.
The timestamp was less than five minutes old.
Beneath the image was a message.
YOU KEEP ASKING WHERE ELENA IS.
The next photograph arrived.
The woman turned toward the camera.
Hannah's breath vanished.
The face was hers.
No.
Not hers.
Elena's.
And unlike the old photographs, this one had been taken that morning.
After Matteo was restrained in the foyer, Hannah noticed he never once asked whether Grace had been hurt during the nursery breach.
That detail bothered her more than his threats.
He had spent years presenting himself as a devoted great-uncle to Dominic's children.
Yet when one of them had been placed in danger, his only concern was controlling the conversation.
Hannah followed Luca into the hall while Dominic searched the safe.
"Does Matteo love those girls?"
Luca looked surprised.
"In his way."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
"What is his way?"
Luca considered it.
"Matteo loves people the way some men love property."
"Meaning?"
"He protects what proves his importance."
Hannah looked back toward the foyer.
"Then if the girls stop increasing his power, they become dangerous to him."
Luca's expression changed.
"Yes."
"Dominic knows that?"
"He does now."
Hannah lowered her voice.
"And you?"
"What about me?"
"How long have you worked for Dominic?"
"Thirteen years."
"Did you work for Matteo before that?"
Luca met her eyes.
"Briefly."
Hannah's suspicion sharpened.
"Doing what?"
"Security logistics."
"Did Elena know?"
"Yes."
"Did she trust you?"
Luca hesitated.
"Usually."
Hannah filed away the word.
May you like
Usually was not always.
In a house where every lock had an inside key, she was beginning to understand that loyalty could be genuine and still contain old doors nobody remembered to close.
