Chapter 4 - The Brother Who Knew Too MuchDante reached the hallway before Marcus.
For one terrifying instant, holding her felt exactly like the nightmares that had tortured him after the funeral.
In those dreams, he always reached her too late.
She always disappeared before he could touch her.
This time she was real.
Warm.
Breathing.
Alive.
“Medic!” Marcus shouted.
Dante lowered her carefully to the floor.
“Ellie.”
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Stay with me.”
Her hand moved weakly across his chest, as though checking whether he was solid.
“You’re alive.”
“So are you.”
Tears slipped down her temples.
“They said—”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Her fingers curled around his jacket.
“They showed me your grave.”
Dante stared at her.
Before he could ask more, the medic pushed into the room.
“We need space.”
Dante didn’t move.
“Mr. Russo.”
Marcus touched his shoulder.
“Let him work.”
Dante finally released Eleanor.
The basement told a story almost as disturbing as her condition.
A narrow cot.
A folding table.
Stacks of children’s books.
Three small mattresses arranged along one wall.
A portable heater.
Canned food.
A padlock mounted outside the door.
And above the cot, dozens of drawings.
Most had been made by children.
Three girls holding hands.
A woman standing beside them.
A tall dark-haired man beneath a giant sun.
One drawing had four figures labeled MOM, RUBY, ROSE, RILEY.
The fifth was labeled DANTE IN HEAVEN.
Dante stared until the letters blurred.
Marcus saw it too.
“Jesus.”
A security man called from upstairs.
“Movement outside!”
Marcus immediately switched focus.
“How many?”
“Unknown vehicle just pulled around back.”
Dante stood.
“Get Eleanor out.”
“Already moving.”
They placed her on a stretcher.
Her eyes snapped open when she felt herself being lifted.
“The girls.”
“They’re safe,” Dante said.
“Where?”
“At my secure house.”
Fear transformed her face.
“No.”
“Eleanor—”
“You don’t understand.”
She grabbed his wrist with surprising strength.
“He’ll use them.”
“Caleb?”
Her expression told him everything.
“He knows you found us?”
“Someone shot at us downtown.”
Eleanor went completely still.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“That wasn’t for you.”
Dante leaned closer.
“Then who?”
“Ruby.”
Before he could respond, gunfire erupted upstairs.
Marcus drew his weapon.
“Move! Now!”
The medical team rolled the stretcher toward a side exit.
Dante stayed beside Eleanor while security returned fire above them.
They reached an underground loading corridor connected to the neighboring building.
Marcus had prepared an armored SUV.
As the doors opened, Eleanor tried to sit up.
“You have to get the book.”
“What book?”
“The blue one.”
Dante remembered the girls mentioning it.
“Where?”
“Inside the wall.”
She pointed weakly toward the basement.
“Behind the heater.”
Dante looked at Marcus.
“No.”
Dante started back.
“Dante.”
“No,” Marcus repeated. “I’ll send someone.”
“You’re needed here.”
“My job is keeping you alive.”
“My job is getting answers.”
Marcus muttered something unprintable and spoke into his radio.
Two men moved toward the basement.
Seconds later came another burst of gunfire.
Then silence.
“Team Two?” Marcus said.
Static.
“Team Two, respond.”
Nothing.
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“He knows.”
“Knows what?” Dante asked.
“That I kept proof.”
A loud explosion shook the building.
Dust poured from the ceiling.
Marcus shoved Dante into the SUV.
“Go!”
They barely cleared the alley before orange flames blew through second-floor windows.
Dante twisted in his seat.
The Mission Hill building burned behind them.
The blue book was inside.
Along with whatever proof Eleanor had preserved for seven years.
Unless Caleb had reached it first.
At Massachusetts General, Dante quietly rented an entire private wing.
Technically, hospitals did not rent wings.
Technically, Dante Russo had never cared much for that word.
By noon, Eleanor was undergoing scans, bloodwork, and treatment for dehydration, anemia, malnutrition, two fractured ribs that appeared several weeks old, and an untreated infection.
The doctors told Dante she was fortunate.
Dante did not feel fortunate.
He felt murderous.
The triplets arrived under heavy guard.
When Eleanor saw them, she cried harder than she had upon seeing Dante.
All three girls climbed carefully onto her bed.
“Mommy!”
“You’re okay?”
“We sold the painting.”
“We got a lot of money!”
“Then people shot at us.”
“Rose!” Ruby yelled.
Eleanor’s eyes flew to Dante.
He nodded.
“They’re unharmed.”
She pulled them closer.
“I told you never to leave.”
“You needed medicine,” Ruby said.
Eleanor pressed her forehead to hers.
“Oh, baby.”
Dante stood near the window, suddenly feeling like an intruder.
A family existed in front of him.
A family Eleanor had built without him.
Then he remembered the ages.
Six.
Triplets.
He refused to ask the question forming in his mind.
Not yet.
The children were taken to another room to eat.
Eleanor watched them leave.
Then the door shut.
Dante and Eleanor were alone for the first time in seven years.
Neither knew where to begin.
“You look older,” she finally said.
He almost laughed.
“So do you.”
“That’s rude.”
“There you are.”
A faint ghost of her old smile appeared.
It vanished quickly.
Dante moved closer.
“Tell me everything.”
Eleanor looked at her hands.
“The last night we were together, we fought.”
“I remember.”
“You said you were flying to Singapore.”
“I did.”
“You told me we’d talk when you got back.”
“Yes.”
“I found out I was pregnant the next morning.”
Dante stopped breathing.
She looked toward the door through which the girls had disappeared.
His eyes followed.
“No.”
Eleanor’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
The room tilted.
“All three?”
“They’re yours.”
Dante sat down because his legs no longer felt reliable.
For several seconds, the billionaire who could absorb financial reports faster than most executives could read headlines was incapable of forming a sentence.
“My daughters.”
Eleanor nodded.
Dante looked toward the closed door again.
Ruby.
Rose.
Riley.
His daughters.
He had missed everything.
Births.
First steps.
First words.
Birthdays.
Nightmares.
Christmas mornings.
Thousands of moments someone had stolen.
His grief transformed into rage so powerful he could taste metal.
“Who did this?”
Eleanor stared at the blanket.
“Your father.”
Dante had expected the answer.
Hearing it still struck like a blow.
“Why?”
“Because of who I was.”
“You were a museum conservation assistant.”
“That’s what you knew.”
Dante looked confused.
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“My father wasn’t Thomas Bennett.”
“What?”
“My mother changed our name when I was a child.”
“From what?”
“Marchetti.”
Dante knew the name.
Every Boston financier over forty knew it.
Marchetti Shipping had once competed directly with Vittorio Russo’s company.
Twenty-three years earlier, its founder, Anthony Marchetti, had been convicted of embezzlement and fraud.
The company collapsed.
Anthony died in prison.
Russo Shipping bought most of its assets for pennies on the dollar.
Eleanor continued.
“My father maintained until his death that Vittorio framed him.”
Dante’s face hardened.
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I found the records.”
“When?”
“A month before you left for Singapore.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was trying to verify everything first.”
She looked at him.
“I loved you. I didn’t want to accuse your father without proof.”
Dante’s jaw clenched.
“What happened after I left?”
“Vittorio came to my apartment.”
His father had always called her Miss Bennett.
Never Eleanor.
Never daughter-in-law-to-be.
“He knew I was pregnant,” she said.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“He threatened you?”
“At first he offered money. Five million dollars to disappear.”
Dante almost smiled bitterly.
“That sounds like him.”
“I refused.”
“Then?”
“He told me you knew everything.”
Eleanor’s voice weakened.
“He said you had only been dating me to find the records my father hid.”
Dante stared.
“I would never—”
“I know that now.”
“But then?”
“He showed me documents with your signature.”
Forged, Dante realized.
“He said you planned to marry someone else once the Russo-Marchetti dispute was settled.”
She swallowed.
“I still didn’t believe him.”
“What changed?”
“He showed me photographs of an explosion in Singapore.”
Dante felt cold.
“He told you I died.”
“He showed me a body.”
Dante closed his eyes.
His father had known exactly what would break her.
“What about the crash?”
“That happened two nights later.”
Eleanor began trembling.
“Caleb came to my apartment and said your father wanted to talk again. I refused. He grabbed me.”
Her breathing accelerated.
Dante moved toward the bed but stopped himself before touching her.
“They drugged me.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“Caleb and a doctor named Adrian Pike.”
Dante memorized the name instantly.
“When I woke up, I was in a house outside Worcester. Your father told me the world believed I had died.”
“He staged the crash.”
“Yes.”
“Whose body?”
Eleanor looked sick.
“I never found out.”
Dante’s anger deepened.
A dead stranger had been used to create a lie.
“What did he want?”
“The records proving what he did to my father.”
“Did you give them to him?”
“No.”
A tiny spark of defiance appeared in her eyes.
“I told him they were somewhere he would never find.”
“Were they?”
“Yes.”
Dante leaned forward.
“Where?”
Eleanor looked toward the door.
“With someone I trusted.”
“Who?”
She hesitated.
Before answering, the hospital lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then went out.
Emergency lights snapped on.
Marcus burst through the door.
“We have a problem.”
“What?”
“Hospital security system just went offline.”
Dante stood.
Marcus looked grim.
“Someone accessed this floor using a Russo executive credential.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It belonged to your brother.”
Dante’s blood froze.
“Gabriel?”
Marcus nodded.
May you like
The younger brother Dante had not spoken to in nearly three years.
Then somewhere down the corridor, three little girls began screaming.
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