Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Miami
The silence that followed the gunfire was deafening, broken only by the wail of police sirens approaching the museum.
Sarah brushed pulverized plaster from her dress and stood up on shaking legs. She had spent seven years organizing Dominic’s life—booking his flights, managing his investments, buying his anniversary gifts for a woman who was actively plotting to destroy him. She felt sick.
Dominic pushed himself off the floor. He ignored the bleeding cut on his cheek. He walked directly to Robert, grabbed the lawyer by the lapels of his tuxedo, and slammed him against the undamaged wall.
“Tell me everything,” Dominic snarled. “Right now.”
Robert didn’t fight back. “Twenty-three years ago, you had a brief relationship with a girl in college. Elena. When she got pregnant, she was terrified of your world. She ran. Antonio found her two years later, right before she died of leukemia. He took the child. Isabella.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” Dominic’s voice cracked.
“Because the Moretti family had just declared war on us,” Robert said, breathless against the wall. “Antonio knew that an infant daughter would be the ultimate leverage. They would kidnap her to force him to surrender the ports. So, he faked his death to draw the Morettis' fire away from you, and he took Isabella to the shadows to raise her safely.”
Dominic let Robert go. He turned his back, running a hand through his hair. The empire he had built, the marriage he had maintained, the grief he had carried for his father—it was all built on a foundation of massive, intricate lies.
Sarah stepped forward. There was no time for trauma. She was the personal assistant. Her job was to fix things.
“Dominic,” Sarah said, her voice steady and commanding. Both men looked at her. “The police will be here in less than two minutes. The museum is surrounded. If you get tied up in interrogations, Camille’s people will have a head start in Miami. We need to leave. Now.”
Dominic looked at her, his eyes finding focus. “How?”
“The service elevator connects to the subterranean parking garage,” Sarah recited from memory. “I have the keys to the catering van. I can drive us to Hanscom Field. I’ve already sent a secure text to the pilot of the company Gulfstream. He’s prepping for an emergency takeoff.”
Robert stared at her, astonished. “When did you do all that?”
“While you were being shot at,” Sarah replied flatly. “Move.”
They hurried through the labyrinth of the museum’s back corridors, avoiding the panicked crowds and first responders. Within ten minutes, they were in the back of a floral delivery van, speeding through the dark streets of Boston.
Inside the Gulfstream jet, the atmosphere was suffocating.
Sarah opened her encrypted laptop. She tapped into the Caruso enterprise’s master servers.
“Camille had full access to your personal accounts,” Sarah noted, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “I’m freezing them. I’m also locking her out of the corporate mainframe.”
“She doesn’t care about the money right now,” Dominic said, staring out the pitch-black window of the plane. “She wants my father. And she wants the girl.”
“Robert,” Sarah asked, looking up from the screen. “What is the exact address of the safe house in Miami?”
Robert hesitated, glancing at Dominic. Then he gave her an address in Coral Gables.
Sarah ran the property records through a backdoor database. “It’s listed under a shell corporation. But Robert... there was a massive power surge at that grid sector ten minutes ago. The security system was tripped. Someone breached the perimeter.”
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Dominic unbuckled his seatbelt and walked to the weapons locker at the back of the cabin. He opened it, revealing an arsenal he hadn't touched since his twenties. He pulled out a sleek, suppressed Glock 19.
He looked at Robert. “If my father is dead when we land, I’m putting the first bullet in Camille. And the second one in you.”
