Chapter 5 - The Delivery at the Gate
“What did they drop off, Enzo?” My voice was a low warning, the kind that brooked no delay.
“A sealed crate,” Enzo said, his eyes fixed on the wall behind me. “Addressed to you, Dominic. With a note from the shipping registry downtown. It contains the original deeds to the Astoria property—and a second file marked with your father’s personal seal.”
Sophia staggered back a step, her hand flying to her mouth. “No... no, that’s impossible. That box was supposed to be in the vault at the bank on Liberty Street. Victoria said it was destroyed after the settlement.”
“Nothing your mother locks away ever gets destroyed,” Isabella noted coldly, her eyes shifting from Sophia to me with a calculating gleam. “It just gets repurposed when the leverage needs an upgrade.”
I didn't wait for Enzo to explain further. I brushed past Sophia, catching her elbow for a brief, involuntary second—her skin was freezing cold—before striding out of the study and down the dim, oak-paneled corridor toward the service entrance.
The party downstairs was still playing its string quartet arrangement of Silent Night, the light notes drifting up through the stairwell like children laughing behind a closed door. Two hundred people in silk and wool were raising glasses of vintage champagne, celebrating the union of two old families, completely unaware that the foundation beneath their feet had just cracked wide open.
When I reached the service loading bay, two security guards stood outside the open heavy metal doors, their breath pluming white in the freezing Long Island air. In the center of the concrete platform sat a small, unadorned wooden crate bearing a customs stamp from the Port of Newark dated four years ago—the exact week Sophia had supposedly vanished.
I crouched down beside it, ignoring the wet slush soaking into the knees of my trousers. Using the heavy steel pocketknife I always carried, I forced the latch. The lid gave way with a dry groan of splintering pine.
Inside, nestled beneath a layer of old newspaper clippings about my father’s retirement, was a heavy leather ledger and a small, antique silver music box—the exact one my father had given my mother on their twenty-fifth anniversary, which she claimed had been stolen during a burglary in Palm Beach a decade ago.
I lifted the music box. Beneath it lay a single sheet of heavy bond paper, typed on an old manual typewriter with a ribbon that needed replacing.
Dominic,
If you are reading this, Victoria has finally lost control of her ledger. You always thought you were the one running the syndicate, my boy. But your mother didn't just buy out Sophia four years ago—she traded her own exit strategy for yours. Turn around and ask her who really signed the papers on the Astoria building, and why your father’s signature was forged six months after he was already in the ground.
The signature at the bottom wasn't my mother's.
It was my father's attorney—a man who had supposedly died in a plane crash over the Atlantic six months before I took over the firm.
May you like
Behind me, footsteps crunched sharply on the frozen gravel of the driveway. I didn't turn around. I could hear the slow, rhythmic click of heels approaching the service bay, followed by the familiar, unmistakable voice of Victoria Moretti cutting through the winter wind like a blade.
“Close the box, Dominic,” my mother said smoothly from the doorway, her voice completely devoid of the panic I had seen under the stairs twenty minutes ago. “Your guests are waiting for the toast, and it’s time you learned why we never leave old accounts open in the snow.”
