Chapter 7 - Midnight at Pier 19Dominic wanted to go alone.
Evelyn knew because she didn’t sleep either.
At four in the morning, she found him standing alone beside the apartment windows.
Manhattan glittered beneath them.
His reflection in the glass looked older.
“You knew what they meant,” she said.
Dominic didn’t turn.
“When they said the other half of the archive.”
Silence.
“Dominic.”
“Yes.”
Evelyn’s disappointment landed harder than anger.
“How long?”
“Eight years.”
“You’ve had something dangerous enough to start all this for eight years?”
“Yes.”
“And you never told me.”
“No.”
She folded her arms.
“Where is it?”
“Safe.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I’m giving.”
Evelyn laughed softly.
“Even now.”
Dominic turned.
His eyes were exhausted.
“You think I enjoy keeping secrets from you?”
“I think you’ve become very good at it.”
“My father left me a list before he died.”
“What kind of list?”
“Names.”
“Whose?”
“People who used the organization to traffic women, exploit children, move narcotics through neighborhoods we controlled, and kill anyone who interfered.”
Evelyn stared at him.
“You told me you eliminated those operations.”
“I did.”
“How?”
“Sometimes by buying men out.”
“And other times?”
Dominic looked at her.
She understood.
She hated understanding.
He continued.
“My father recorded everything. Meetings. Payments. Orders. Confessions. Enough evidence to send dozens of men to prison.”
“Including Adrian?”
“Yes.”
“And Vincent?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you turn it over?”
Dominic laughed without humor.
“To whom?”
“The FBI.”
“Half the archive contains federal agents.”
“Prosecutors.”
“Two prosecutors.”
“Someone.”
“I tried.”
Evelyn stopped.
“What?”
“Seven years ago.”
He finally sat.
“I approached a federal investigator through an attorney. Forty-eight hours later, that attorney disappeared.”
Cold moved through her.
“I realized my father’s archive was contaminated evidence. If I gave it to the wrong person, everyone who helped me would die.”
“So you kept it.”
“I spent years quietly dismantling the operations it documented.”
“And Adrian thinks you still have it.”
“He knows.”
“How?”
“My father told him before he died.”
Evelyn stared at Dominic.
“Why would he do that?”
“Insurance.”
“Against whom?”
“Me.”
The answer stunned her.
Dominic looked toward the city.
“My father wasn’t a good man, Evelyn.”
“I know.”
“No. You know the version people whisper about. You don’t know what it was like being his son.”
Dominic’s voice remained calm, which somehow made it worse.
“When I was sixteen, he took me to a warehouse and made me watch a man die because he wanted me to understand consequences.”
Evelyn sat beside him.
“At nineteen, he made me choose which employee to fire after money went missing. The man I chose disappeared two days later.”
Her breath caught.
“I learned quickly that every decision could become a death sentence.”
“Dominic…”
“He loved me in the only way he knew. Which meant he wanted to turn me into himself.”
“But you didn’t become him.”
Dominic looked at her.
“I came closer than you think.”
She took his hand.
He looked down at their joined fingers.
“If our child is born into this,” he whispered, “everything I did was pointless.”
There it was.
The real fear.
Not losing power.
Repeating history.
Evelyn moved closer.
“Then we don’t raise our child in it.”
“You think it’s that easy?”
“No.”
She placed his hand against her stomach.
“But I think leaving me ignorant makes us weaker.”
He closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me where the archive is.”
Dominic almost smiled.
“You never quit.”
“No.”
He hesitated.
Then he spoke.
“Saint Matthew’s Church.”
Evelyn blinked.
“A church?”
“My grandmother funded the restoration thirty years ago. There’s a sealed crypt beneath the old chapel.”
“That sounds ridiculously dramatic.”
“It was my father’s idea.”
“Of course it was.”
Dominic gave a quiet laugh.
The first genuine sound of relief between them in two days.
Then Evelyn became serious.
“We use it.”
“No.”
“They want the archive.”
“They want to destroy it.”
“Exactly.”
Dominic looked at her.
“We give them something they think is the archive.”
His eyes narrowed.
“A decoy.”
“And we make them expose themselves.”
“No.”
“Dominic.”
“You’re pregnant.”
She stood.
“If you say that one more time as though pregnancy erased my brain, I am going to throw something at you.”
He almost smiled again.
Almost.
Then Marco entered without knocking.
His face killed the moment.
“We found Natalie.”
“Where?” Dominic asked.
“Hudson River.”
Evelyn’s stomach dropped.
“Alive?”
Marco shook his head.
Dominic closed his eyes.
Vincent had killed his own daughter.
Or someone wanted them to think he had.
Marco continued.
“There’s something else.”
He placed a photograph on the table.
Natalie’s body had been found wearing a necklace.
A silver medallion engraved with a crest.
Evelyn recognized it.
“Adrian wears one exactly like that.”
Dominic stared.
Marco shook his head.
“Too obvious.”
“A message?” Evelyn asked.
“Or misdirection.”
Dominic looked toward the sunrise.
“Noon call is in six hours.”
Evelyn squeezed his hand.
“We do this together.”
He wanted to argue.
She could see it.
Instead Dominic nodded.
“One condition.”
“What?”
“You follow instructions.”
“No.”
“Evelyn.”
“I’ll follow reasonable instructions.”
He sighed.
“Why did I marry a lawyer’s daughter?”
“Because I was pretty.”
“You were terrifying.”
“And yet here we are.”
He kissed her forehead.
For the first time since the hotel, Evelyn believed they might survive the betrayal around them.
She just wasn’t sure their marriage would.
At exactly noon, Dominic’s phone rang.
Same distorted voice.
“Bring the archive to Pier 19 at midnight.”
Dominic answered.
“You know I won’t bring the original.”
“We know.”
Silence.
“Then why ask?”
The caller chuckled.
“Because the archive isn’t the leverage.”
A photograph arrived on Dominic’s phone.
Isabella Vale sat tied to a chair.
Blood marked the corner of her mouth.
Evelyn gasped.
May you like
The voice continued.
“Your mother is.”
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