Part 4: The Rat in the Shadows
Three days passed in a blur of forced luxury. Emma ate meals prepared by a five-star chef, wore clothes that cost more than her annual salary, and walked the endless hallways of the Russo estate. But she was a prisoner, no matter how gilded the cage was.
Dominic was rarely around during the day. She would catch glimpses of him through the glass walls of his study, surrounded by maps, ledger books, and men with grim expressions. He looked stressed, the dark circles under his eyes deepening with each passing hour. The tension in the house was palpable; the guards were on high alert, their hands never far from their holsters.
On the fourth night, Emma couldn't sleep. The silence of the mansion was too heavy, too loud compared to the ambient noise of city traffic she was used to. She slipped out of her room, wearing a oversized grey cashmere sweater and thick socks, and walked down the grand staircase in search of the kitchen to get a glass of water.
As she passed Dominic’s study, she noticed the door was cracked open. A single lamp was lit inside, casting a warm amber glow across the room.
She stepped closer, intending to just glance in, but stopped when she heard his voice. He wasn't talking on the phone. He was speaking to Leo.
"We found the courier," Leo was saying, his voice tight. "He was hiding out in a motel near Cicero. Before he... passed out, he gave up a name. It wasn't one of Moretti’s men who paid him to drop that black envelope at Miss Hale's door."
Emma held her breath, pressing her back against the wall outside the door.
"Who was it, Leo?" Dominic’s voice was dangerously calm—the kind of calm that preceded a hurricane.
"It was Thomas Vance, Boss."
Emma’s heart stopped. Thomas Vance.
Thomas was her former boss at the logistics firm where she had worked as a data-entry clerk six months ago. He was the one who had fired her out of nowhere, claiming the company was downsizing, right before her bank account began to mysteriously drain due to "administrative errors" she could never seem to fix.
"Vance is a middle manager for a shell company," Dominic said, his pen tapping rhythmically against the wooden desk. "He doesn't have the balls to steal from Victor Moretti, let alone frame an innocent girl for it. Who does Vance work for?"
"That's the thing, Boss," Leo sighed. "Vance has been skimming money from Moretti's illegal gambling operations for over a year, using his company's logistics software to hide the trail. When Moretti started noticing the missing funds, Vance panicked. He needed a scapegoat. Someone with zero connections, zero power, and someone whose electronic signature he could easily forge. He chose Emma. He used her old employee credentials to log into the encrypted accounts, making it look like she was the one transferring the funds to an offshore account."
"And where is the money now?"
"In a secure hard drive. Vance has it. He's planning to flee the country tomorrow morning from O'Hare. He sent that note to Emma's door to trigger Moretti into killing her, which would close the case permanently and give Vance the perfect cover to disappear with forty million dollars."
Emma put a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. Forty million dollars. She had been ruined, humiliated at a grocery register, and hunted by the mob, all because her cowardly ex-boss wanted to steal a fortune and use her corpse as a shield.
Suddenly, the study door swung open completely.
Emma jumped back, her eyes wide as she looked up at Dominic. He stood in the doorway, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened. He didn't look surprised to see her.
"How much of that did you hear?" he asked gently.
"All of it," Emma whispered, her voice shaking with raw, volatile fury. "Thomas... he did this to me? He destroyed my life? I couldn't buy food, Dominic! I lost my apartment because of him!"
Dominic stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him to give them privacy. He reached out and placed his hands on her shoulders, grounding her. "I know, Emma. I know."
"What are you going to do?" she demanded, tears of anger finally leaking from her eyes. "Are you going to let him get on that plane?"
Dominic’s eyes turned to cold stone. "No one steals from my city, frames an innocent woman under my watch, and gets on a plane. Leo is assembling a team. We move on Vance’s safehouse in twenty minutes."
"I'm coming with you," Emma said immediately, her jaw setting into that familiar, stubborn line.
Dominic frowned. "Absolutely not. It's dangerous, Emma. There will be guns. There will be blood."
"He ruined my life, Dominic!" she cried out, her pride roaring back to life with a vengeance. "He watched me drown for six months while he sat on forty million dollars! I am not staying here like a helpless victim while you go solve my problems. I want to look him in the eye when he loses everything."
Dominic stared down at her. He saw the fire in her eyes—the same fire he had seen at the supermarket when she refused to let the world see her cry. He realized then that keeping her locked away in this mansion wasn't protecting her; it was suffocating her.
He let out a slow, defeated breath. "If you come, you stay in the car with Leo. You do exactly what you're told. No arguments. Do you understand?"
May you like
Emma wiped her tears away with the back of her sleeve and nodded. "I understand."
"Then get your shoes," Dominic said, a dangerous, beautiful smile finally breaking across his face. "Let's go take back what's yours."
