Chapter 9 - The Federal Mosaic
The man introduced himself as Agent Vance Miller—no relation to the traitorous accountant—though everyone in his unit simply called him Director Vance. He stood in the wreckage of the library, using a handkerchief to clean soot off his wire-rimmed glasses while outside, the wail of approaching sirens signaled that local authorities had finally bypassed the scrambled grid.
"You’ve been stepping on my operation for three years, Romano," Director Vance said, tossing a heavy manila folder onto the scorched mahogany desk. "We knew Thorne was using your shipping lines for illegal arms smuggling out of the NJ ports. What we didn't know—what your poor wife stumbled upon fourteen months ago—was that Thorne was using those same containers to traffic classified government defense tech to foreign syndicates."
Dominic stood by the boarded-up window, staring down at the manila folder. His knuckles were raw, stained with powder burns and dried blood. "Isabelle didn't care about guns or government tech. She just wanted out. She wanted to take our girls to a place where men like you and Thorne didn't exist."
"Which is why Thorne had her silenced," Vance said quietly. "And why he kept your daughters terrorized. He needed leverage over you to keep you from auditing the manifest logs."
The door to the study creaked open.
Grace stepped into the room, her tactical vest removed, wearing a simple wool sweater. Behind her walked Olivia, Sophie, and Nora. The three little girls looked tired, their faces smudged with soot, but for the first time in fourteen months, they weren't huddled together in absolute silence.
Nora walked straight across the room, past the federal agent, past the ruined bookshelves, and stopped right in front of Dominic.
She looked up, her amber eyes—so painfully like her mother's—studying his face with an old, heartbreaking wisdom.
"Daddy," Nora whispered, her voice clear and steady in the quiet room. "The bad man in the coat is gone?"
Dominic dropped to his knees, his massive frame folding instantly as he pulled all three of his daughters into his arms. He buried his face in Olivia's dark curls, his shoulders shaking as the dam of fourteen months of silent grief finally, violently broke.
"He's gone, sweetheart," Dominic choked out, his voice thick with tears he had refused to shed for over a year. "He's never coming back."
Olivia wrapped her small arms around his neck, patting his back with surprising gentleness. "We're hungry, Daddy."
A watery, broken laugh escaped Dominic’s lips. He looked up at Grace, who stood by the doorway watching them with a soft, melancholic smile in her gray eyes.
"I think," Dominic whispered, standing up while keeping Nora cradled against his chest, "we have some eggs in the kitchen that need frying."
"Agent Miller's unit is sweeping the perimeter," Grace said quietly, stepping closer. "But Thorne didn't go back to Manhattan. His private jet filed an emergency flight plan out of Teterboro ten minutes ago."
Dominic’s amber eyes hardened instantly, the grief vanishing behind a wall of cold, lethal resolve. "Where?"
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"Zurich," Grace said, handing him a secure satellite phone that was blinking with an incoming encrypted data packet. "And he didn't go alone. He took the backup server drives from the Mott Street club with him. The ones containing the real names."
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