Chapter 7 - The Architecture of the Frame
A low, guttural sound tore from Dominic’s chest—a dry, ragged sob of pure, unadulterated agony that rattled through the copper pans hanging from the ceiling.
He didn't pull back from Lucia. He threw his broad arms around her small, trembling body, hauling her four-year-old frame into his chest, burying his face into the warm, flour-dusted curls at the nape of her neck. He held her with a desperate, crushing ferocity, his shoulders shaking with silent, violent heaves, his hands cradling her small head as if he could physically shield her from the memory of the blood.
"No, Lucia... no, my little star," Dominic wept, his deep voice muffled against her pastel dress. "It wasn't Daddy. I swear to you on your mother’s soul... I swear on every drop of blood in my body... it wasn't me. Daddy was in the airplane. Daddy was trying to come home."
Lucia did not push him away, but her small body remained tense in his arms, her hands resting flat against his muscular back, her small mind struggling to reconcile the warm, weeping man holding her against his heart with the cold shadow who had stood over her mother with a smoking barrel.
Across the room, Rosa Bennett had collapsed onto the wooden stool beside the pantry door, her hands clutched over her heart, her face the color of wet clay.
"The coat..." Rosa whispered, her voice cracking with sudden, horrifying comprehension. "Dominic... the black cashmere coat. The one your father gave you for your thirtieth birthday."
Dominic lifted his head from Lucia’s shoulder, his gray eyes red-rimmed, burning with a terrifying, apocalyptic fire through his tears. "What about it, Rosa?"
"Two days before the shooting," Rosa stammered, her chest heaving as she pointed a trembling finger toward the basement hallway. "You called from the city office. You asked me to have your formal travel coats sent to the master cleaners in Manhattan before the Florida trip. The car came to the service gate. A courier from the logistics firm."
Dominic’s teeth ground together with an audible, bone-crushing snap. "I never ordered my coats sent to Manhattan, Rosa. I had my luggage packed in the city."
"The courier had your signed manifest, Dominic!" Rosa cried softly, tears streaming down her weathered cheeks. "He had your seal on the clipboard! He took three suits, the black cashmere coat, and the backup signet ring from the wall safe in your study—the one you kept for formal state dinners!"
Clara Vance stepped forward from the butcher-block island, her hands covered in flour, her gentle voice cutting through the horror with quiet, surgical clarity.
"Who had access to the study safe, Mr. Russo?" Clara asked.
Dominic slowly turned his head to look at her.
The young maid stood beside his two other daughters, her eyes clear, sharp, and entirely devoid of the trembling panic she had shown five minutes ago. In that single moment, Dominic saw past the gray uniform and the flour stains; he saw a woman whose instincts were remarkably steady in the presence of blood and betrayal.
"Only three people in the state of New York knew the combination to that safe," Dominic said, his voice dropping into a register of pure, glacial death that made the air in the kitchen freeze. "My underboss, Marco. My brother, Julian. And the head of the Long Island security detail."
"Julian is in Milan," Rosa whispered, her eyes wide with mounting dread. "Marco was with you in Teterboro. That leaves..."
"Silvio," Dominic breathed.
The name fell into the flour like an unexploded bomb.
May you like
Silvio Moretti.
His first cousin. The man who had commanded the estate’s private security cadre for eight years. The man who had conveniently survived the raid on the conservatory because he had been "checking the northern perimeter cameras" when the breach occurred. The man who had stood beside Dominic at Isabella’s funeral, handing him a clean linen handkerchief while the dirt was shoveled onto the casket.
