Chapter 5 - THE SECRET THOMAS HUGHES TOOK TO HIS GRAVE
Dante moved so fast Clara barely saw it.
One moment Carlo was sitting calmly at the table.
The next Dante had him by the front of his suit.
Nico stepped forward.
“Dante.”
Rosa struck the table with her good hand.
“Enough!”
Dante’s face was inches from his uncle’s.
“What did you say?”
Carlo did not look frightened.
That frightened Clara more.
“I said Thomas knew.”
“You’re lying.”
“Ask your mother.”
Dante turned.
Rosa had gone pale.
“Ma?”
She closed her eyes.
Dante released Carlo.
The older man calmly straightened his jacket.
Dante stared at Rosa.
“You knew Thomas Hughes?”
“Yes.”
Clara felt as if the floor had disappeared.
“My father?”
Rosa looked at her.
“Before you were born.”
“Why didn’t you say anything when I came here?”
“Because your father left that life.”
“What life?”
Rosa took a slow breath.
“Thomas was never a criminal.”
Carlo gave a quiet laugh.
Dante glared.
Rosa continued.
“He kept financial records for Salvatore. He was young. Smart. Your father had just married your mother. They needed money.”
Clara’s throat tightened.
Everything she thought she knew about her father suddenly felt incomplete.
“He became a teacher afterward.”
“Yes.”
“Why did he leave?”
Rosa looked at Dante.
“Gabriel.”
Dante turned away.
Clara had heard the name only once.
The oldest Marino brother.
Dante had said he “had” brothers.
Not had.
Rosa continued.
“Gabriel was twenty-two when he was killed.”
Dante stared toward the dark windows.
“I was fifteen.”
Rosa’s voice softened.
“Your father told you it was the Lucchesi family.”
“It was.”
“No.”
Dante slowly turned.
Rosa’s eyes filled.
“That was what Salvatore told everyone.”
Carlo sat silently now.
Watching.
Clara hated the satisfaction in his face.
Dante approached his mother.
“Who killed Gabriel?”
Rosa’s lips trembled.
“I don’t know.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“You just said—”
“I know Salvatore lied. I don’t know who actually gave the order.”
“How?”
“Thomas found payments.”
Clara leaned forward.
“What payments?”
“Money moved through one of Salvatore’s shipping companies. Two payments. Both to men who were seen near the restaurant where Gabriel died.”
Dante’s eyes shifted to Carlo.
Carlo raised his hands.
“Not me.”
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“For how long?”
“Twenty years.”
Dante almost laughed.
It was a terrible sound.
“Twenty years.”
Carlo leaned forward.
“Your father was not a man people accused without proof.”
“He’s dead.”
“And Thomas?”
The room went silent.
Clara’s heart pounded.
“What about my father?”
Carlo looked at her.
“He disappeared from New York six weeks after Gabriel’s murder.”
“He moved to Pennsylvania.”
“Yes.”
“He became a teacher.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Carlo shrugged.
“Perhaps he was afraid.”
Clara hated him in that moment.
Not because she knew he was guilty of anything.
Because he enjoyed opening wounds.
Dante saw it too.
“Get out.”
Carlo smiled.
“You invited me.”
“I’m ending the invitation.”
“You need me.”
“No.”
“The organization does.”
Dante stepped closer.
“There won’t be an organization if you keep testing me.”
Carlo’s smile vanished.
For the first time, Clara saw the real hostility beneath the polished exterior.
He stood.
“Your father understood something you never did.”
“What?”
“Fear works.”
Dante’s face went cold.
Carlo looked toward Clara.
“Be careful, Miss Hughes. Men like Dante always believe they’re different from their fathers.”
Then he walked out.
No one spoke for nearly a minute.
Finally Dante turned toward Rosa.
“You should have told me.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“I was fifteen then.”
“And thirty-two now.”
“Exactly.”
Rosa looked tired.
“Your father spent his whole life making you believe strength meant knowing everything and forgiving nothing.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“I’m not him.”
“Then prove it.”
The words landed.
Clara saw them.
Dante walked out.
She started after him.
Rosa caught her wrist.
“Give him a minute.”
Clara looked at her.
“You really knew my father?”
Rosa nodded.
“What was he like?”
A smile touched Rosa’s face.
“Annoyingly decent.”
Clara almost cried.
“That sounds like him.”
“He hated Salvatore’s business.”
“Then why work for him?”
“You were coming.”
Clara froze.
“What?”
Rosa smiled sadly.
“Your mother was pregnant.”
Clara sat slowly.
“He needed money.”
“Yes.”
The explanation was painfully ordinary.
Exactly like her father.
He had entered a dangerous world because he wanted to provide for his child.
“He never told me.”
“He wanted you far from us.”
Clara looked toward the door Dante had gone through.
“That worked well.”
Rosa laughed weakly.
Clara spent another hour with her.
Then she went looking for Dante.
She found him in the old greenhouse behind the east wing.
The air smelled of wet soil and rosemary.
Dante stood beside a cracked stone fountain.
“You shouldn’t be outside alone,” Clara said.
“I have guards.”
“I don’t see them.”
“That’s the point.”
Clara stopped beside him.
“You knew my father worked for yours.”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“The background check.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t know.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Dante turned.
“I saw what you did with my mother. I saw your employment history. Your finances. Your father’s illness.”
His expression softened.
“You had nothing to do with him working for my family thirty years ago.”
“So you decided it didn’t matter.”
“Yes.”
Clara looked down.
“Maybe you were right.”
“That sounded painful.”
“It was.”
Silence stretched between them.
Clara finally asked, “What was Gabriel like?”
Dante’s eyes changed.
“He was everything I wasn’t.”
“At fifteen?”
“At any age.”
He leaned against the stone wall.
“He laughed too loudly. Trusted everyone. Wanted out of the family business.”
“Your father didn’t approve.”
“No.”
“What happened that night?”
Dante stared at nothing.
“We were supposed to have dinner.”
Clara waited.
“I was angry with him.”
“About?”
“He told me he was leaving New York.”
Dante’s voice remained controlled.
“I accused him of abandoning us.”
Clara understood what came next before he said it.
“I didn’t go to dinner.”
His fingers tightened.
“He went alone.”
“Dante—”
“The restaurant exploded forty minutes later.”
Clara closed her eyes.
“I spent seventeen years believing the Lucchesi family killed him.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know anything.”
Clara stepped closer.
“You know you were fifteen.”
He looked at her.
“You know missing dinner didn’t cause his death.”
“That sounds like something therapists say.”
“I’m not that kind of therapist.”
“Convenient.”
“It’s also true.”
Dante looked away.
“My father made me stand beside Gabriel’s coffin and told me grief was useless unless I turned it into strength.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say to a child.”
“I wasn’t a child after that.”
“Yes, you were.”
He looked at her sharply.
Clara did not back down.
“For whatever it’s worth, I think Gabriel would hate that you blamed yourself.”
“You never met him.”
“No.”
A small smile appeared.
“But I’ve met his mother.”
That almost got him.
His mouth moved slightly.
Then his phone rang.
Nico.
Dante answered.
“Yes.”
He listened.
His face transformed.
“When?”
Another pause.
“Don’t touch anything.”
He ended the call.
Clara’s stomach tightened.
“What?”
“The lab results.”
They hurried inside.
Nico and Julian were waiting in the office.
A medical toxicology report lay on the desk.
Clara read it first.
Her chest tightened.
The old aspirin bottle did not contain aspirin.
It contained a prescription anticoagulant at a dosage strong enough to dramatically increase bleeding risk in someone with Rosa’s medical history.
Dante read the conclusion twice.
Then looked at Clara.
“Someone poisoned her.”
Clara could no longer tell him he was only suspicious.
“Yes.”
Rosa entered behind them in her wheelchair.
“What?”
Clara immediately regretted saying it aloud.
Dante knelt in front of his mother.
“Someone switched your medication.”
Rosa stared at him.
“Carlo?”
“We don’t know.”
Julian spoke from the screen.
“The pharmacy label is counterfeit.”
Nico added, “And we found Dr. Vance.”
Dante stood.
“Where?”
“He booked a flight to Lisbon this morning.”
Clara’s pulse jumped.
“Did he leave?”
“No.”
Nico looked toward Dante.
“Federal agents detained him at JFK on an unrelated tax warrant Julian flagged.”
Clara looked at Julian.
The lawyer smiled faintly.
“Evidence.”
Dante glanced at Clara.
She smiled back.
“Better than kidnapping.”
He ignored her.
Nico’s phone buzzed again.
He looked down.
Then his expression went blank.
“What?” Dante asked.
Nico turned the phone.
It displayed a photograph taken from outside the Marino estate.
Clara was in the picture.
Walking beside Rosa.
Across the bottom, someone had written four words.
THE THERAPIST GOES FIRST.
Dante took the phone.
His face became something Clara had never seen before.
Not anger.
Fear.
He looked at her.
“You’re leaving tonight.”
Clara stared back.
“No.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“And this isn’t an answer you control.”
“They threatened you.”
“They threatened Rosa first.”
“Clara.”
“You hired me to help her walk.”
“I hired you to keep her alive.”
“Then let me do my job.”
Dante stepped closer.
“This is not your fight.”
Clara’s voice softened.
“It became my fight when someone entered my bedroom.”
“That’s exactly why you’re leaving.”
“And then what?”
He stopped.
“They threaten the next person? The next nurse? Rosa?”
Dante looked furious.
Clara continued.
“I spent three years watching my father die from something neither of us could fight. I know what helpless feels like.”
Her throat tightened.
“I’m not choosing it again.”
Dante stared at her for a long moment.
Then quietly said, “If something happens to you—”
“What?”
He could not finish.
That frightened Clara more than the photograph.
Because she suddenly understood.
May you like
The threat mattered to Dante for reasons that had nothing to do with her employment contract.
And judging by the way he looked at her, he had just realized the same thing.
