Chapter 7 - THE ENCRYPTED CODE
Dominic didn't look at the monitor.
His eyes never left the micro-SD card in my hand.
“Give it to me,” he whispered.
“Why?” I asked, closing my fingers into a tight fist.
“So you can burn it?”
“So you can protect your father’s empire?”
The sound of boots crunching on gravel echoed from the front porch.
A heavy fist pounded against the oak door.
“Dominic!” Gabriel called out. “Thirty seconds!”
Dominic stepped closer to me.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a rugged tactical laptop.
He flipped it open on the dining table and inserted a high-security card reader.
“Put it in, Mia,” Dominic said.
His voice was calm.
Steady as granite.
“I don’t want to hide anymore.”
“If that drive destroys the Russo family, let it burn.”
“Just don’t look at me as if I’m the monster who murdered your grandfather.”
I stared at his face.
The gray eyes that had terrified half of New York were completely unguarded.
I stepped to the table.
I slotted the micro-SD card into the reader.
The screen flickered.
A prompt appeared: ENTER 16-DIGIT MASTER DECRYPTION KEY.
“It requires an encryption phrase,” I said, looking at the blinking cursor.
Dominic shook his head.
“My father never gave me a code.”
“It’s not your father’s code,” I realized suddenly.
My mind raced back to my childhood.
To the dusty smell of my grandfather’s studio in Woodstock.
The smell of turpentine, linseed oil, and old paper.
He had painted a small inscription on the wooden frame of The Venetian Madonna.
A line of Latin verse he made me memorize before he put me to bed.
“Lux in tenebris lucet.”
The light shines in the darkness.
I typed the letters into the keyboard.
Sixteen characters.
I hit enter.
A green progress bar flashed across the screen.
DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL.
Folders materialized on the desktop.
Thousands of scanned files, wire transfer confirmations, and audio recordings.
At the very top of the list was a file labeled: HARRISON ESTATE SETTLEMENT — 1996.
Dominic leaned over my shoulder to read the document.
His breath was warm against my temple.
As his eyes scanned the text, his body went completely rigid.
“Look at the signatures,” I whispered.
At the bottom of the settlement agreement were three names.
Charles Harrison.
Richard Vance.
And the third name was not Dominic’s father.
It was Alberto Bianchi.
Gabriel Bianchi’s father.
“Gabriel’s father was the one who signed the liquidation order,” Dominic said, his voice laced with disbelief.
“My father didn't burn the house down,” Dominic murmured.
“My father pulled your mother out of the burning nursery.”
My heart stopped.
I scrolled down to an attached police evidence report from October 12, 1996.
There was a photograph of a young man, barely twenty years old, carrying a five-year-old girl wrapped in a wool blanket away from a burning colonial house.
The young man was Dominic’s father.
He had third-degree burns across his arms and neck.
“Your father saved my mother,” I gasped.
A dry sob caught in my throat.
“He saved her,” Dominic said softly.
“And Gabriel Bianchi spent twenty-five years convincing Vincent that my family was responsible, so Vincent would help him finish the job.”
A concussive blast blew the front door off its heavy iron hinges.
The heavy oak slab crashed into the entryway with a deafening splintering roar.
Smoke and blinding light filled the room.
“Move!” Dominic roared.
He tackled me to the floor behind the fieldstone hearth just as a storm of automatic gunfire swept through the living room.
Vases shattered.
The laptop screen exploded into sparking plastic shards.
Dominic reached into his belt and pulled out two smoke grenades.
He popped the pins with his teeth and hurled them into the entryway.
Thick gray smoke billowed through the great room, choking the air.
“Through the kitchen!” Dominic yelled over the gunfire.
“The back root cellar connects to the cliffside trail!”
He hauled me to my feet.
Through the swirling smoke, a figure lunged forward with an iron crowbar.
Dominic parried the blow with his left forearm, bone cracking sickeningly against metal.
He didn't flinch.
Dominic drove his right fist into the man’s throat, dropping him like a stone.
We burst through the kitchen screen door into the freezing downpour.
Behind us, the lodge was already catching fire from incendiary rounds.
We scrambled up the steep rocky ridge behind the house, pine needles slipping beneath our boots.
At the crest of the hill, Dominic pulled me behind a massive granite boulder.
He was panting heavily, clutching his broken left arm against his chest.
Blood was dripping from his knuckles.
Below us, five tactical vehicles surrounded the burning lodge.
And standing on the gravel path, holding an assault rifle, was Vincent.
Vincent looked up at the ridge.
He raised his weapon and fired three rounds into the rock above our heads.
“Dominic!” Vincent screamed, his voice distorted with madness.
“You can’t run forever!”
“The feds have an arrest warrant for you in Manhattan!”
“You’re a dead man walking!”
Dominic didn't answer.
He looked down at me in the rain.
He reached into his pocket and pressed a small, cold brass key into my hand.
“What is this?” I asked, panic rising in my throat.
“The safe deposit box at JP Morgan on Fifth Avenue,” Dominic whispered.
“The original paper files are there.”
“Take Leo’s motorcycle from the shed behind the ridge. Go south.”
“What about you?”
May you like
Dominic’s gray eyes softened with an expression that terrified me more than any bullet.
“I’m going to finish this with my brother.”
