Chapter 3 - Secrets in the Study
That night, I stepped into the third-floor study—a room no one had been allowed to enter except Rosa and me since Isabella died.
Everything remained exactly as it had been fourteen months ago: the expensive Persian rug, the solid mahogany desk, and the large wedding portrait hanging prominently on the wall. In the picture, Isabella smiled radiantly, her slender frame draped in a pure white wedding dress. Looking into those eyes, I once vowed to level any empire that dared harm her.
Now, however, suspicion began gnawing at my soul.
I approached the heavy wall safe hidden behind the large landscape painting. I entered the fourteen-digit passcode—the birthdays of Isabella and our three children. The heavy steel door clicked open. Inside lay not only financial documents and stock contracts worth billions of dollars, but also an auxiliary drawer that had never been tightly locked.
I pulled it out.
A small black digital voice recorder lay quietly in the corner, alongside a file folder sealed in the envelope of a prominent Manhattan law firm.
My hands trembled slightly as I picked up the recorder. I pressed play.
“...I can't keep lying to you, Dominic,” Isabella’s familiar, gentle voice echoed, laden with muffled sobs. “The documents in this safe... I've read them all. You're not running a legitimate business. You're laundering money for the exact same people who massacred my family years ago. You and them... you're cut from the same cloth.”
Another voice followed in the recording—my own, cold and chillingly ruthless:
“Isabella, shut your mouth and go back to your room with the kids. You don't understand how this world works. If you dare breathe a word of this to anyone, even the police or your family, don't blame me when I can't protect my three little girls' smiles anymore.”
“Are you threatening your own children? Dominic? You've truly lost your mind... Don't you dare use the kids to blackmail me. Tomorrow, I'm taking them away from this house of devils!”
The sound of slamming doors, an angry shout, and a brief scuffle followed before the recording abruptly cut off.
I stood frozen in the middle of the dark room.
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It turned out the ambush at the Queens intersection wasn't merely a random, spiteful hit by the Mendoza cartel against my family. My own compromises in the underworld, my dealings with cold-blooded partners, had turned my wife into a hostage—a target for my enemies, or worse, those manipulating me from the shadows, to strike a devastating blow.
Worst of all... Isabella had planned to take the children and run away that very day. My girls hadn't been in that fateful car for a regular preschool trip; it had been their first and only escape.
