Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO NEVER ASKED FOR ANYTHING
“I need you to look into somebody,” Dominic said.
Victor Hale’s expression did not change.
“Who?”
“Sophia Carter.”
For the first time in the conversation, Victor hesitated.
“The housekeeper?”
“Yes.”
Victor folded his hands over the silver handle of his cane. He did not need the cane, Dominic suspected. He carried it because people underestimated older men who leaned on something.
“What exactly am I looking for?”
“Everything.”
“Financials?”
“Yes.”
“Family?”
“Yes.”
“Criminal history?”
“If there is one.”
Victor’s gray eyes sharpened. “Are you worried she’s involved with the leak?”
Dominic stared through the office windows toward the rain-dark lawn.
“No.”
That answer bothered him more than if he had said yes.
Dominic trusted almost nobody.
Yet when he pictured Sophia Carter, he did not picture secrets exchanged in parking garages. He pictured a woman quietly polishing a dining table at six in the morning because Lily had awakened early and Sophia had been too embarrassed to ask whether she could arrive late.
He pictured her apologizing when Lily left a plastic giraffe on his desk.
He pictured Lily dragging a blanket three rooms because she thought he was cold.
“No,” Dominic repeated. “I want to know why a thirty-one-year-old woman with a child works six days a week in a house that pays her less than she could make somewhere else.”
Victor’s eyebrows rose.
“You pay your employees very well.”
“I know what I pay.”
“Then perhaps she needs the job.”
“Everybody needs something.”
Victor stood.
“That sounds like your father.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
Victor noticed.
Unlike most people, he was old enough not to care.
“That wasn’t a compliment,” he added.
Two hours later, Sophia entered Dominic’s office carrying a tray with black coffee.
She wore a plain gray uniform and had tied her brown hair at the nape of her neck. A small bruise colored the inside of her wrist.
Dominic noticed immediately.
He noticed everything.
Sophia set the cup down.
“Anything else, Mr. Moretti?”
“What happened to your wrist?”
Her hand moved instinctively behind her back.
“Nothing.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
She looked at him then.
Not frightened.
Not exactly.
Guarded.
“I bumped it.”
“On what?”
A pause.
“The laundry cart.”
Dominic leaned back.
Sophia endured his stare for three seconds before looking away.
People usually broke after one.
“You can go.”
She nodded.
At the door, she stopped.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“Yes?”
“Lily didn’t bother you last night, did she?”
The question surprised him.
“No.”
“She told me she found you sleeping downstairs.”
“I remember.”
Sophia looked embarrassed. “She has this habit of taking care of people. I’m trying to teach her boundaries.”
Dominic glanced at the velvet blanket still folded on a chair beside his desk.
He had ordered nobody to remove it.
“She doesn’t need to apologize.”
Sophia looked at him strangely.
Then smiled.
It was small.
Warm.
Dangerous.
Dominic hated how easily he noticed it.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
That afternoon Victor returned carrying a thin folder.
Dominic expected paper.
Bank statements.
A background report.
Instead Victor shut the office door and said, “We have a problem.”
Dominic’s attention sharpened.
“What?”
“Sophia Carter doesn’t exist before six years ago.”
Dominic became still.
Victor placed several documents on the desk.
“Social Security record starts in Missouri. Employment record begins around the same time. No high school transcripts. No college records. No childhood addresses. Nothing.”
“Fake identity?”
“Possibly.”
Dominic opened the folder.
The photograph attached to Sophia’s license was recent.
“Lily?”
“Birth certificate lists Sophia Carter as mother. Father blank.”
Dominic’s voice cooled.
“Keep digging.”
“There’s more.”
Victor slid another page across the desk.
“Sophia withdrew twelve thousand dollars in cash three weeks ago.”
Dominic frowned.
Her annual salary did not make that easy.
“Where did she get it?”
“That’s the interesting part. Three days before the withdrawal, twenty thousand dollars appeared in her account.”
“From who?”
“Cash deposit.”
Dominic looked toward the hallway.
A child laughed somewhere downstairs.
His chest tightened.
Victor said quietly, “You asked me to investigate her. I’m telling you not to let the blanket distract you.”
Dominic’s eyes turned hard.
“Leave.”
Victor did.
That evening Dominic remained in his office long after dinner.
He told himself he was reviewing shipment records.
Instead he stared repeatedly at Sophia’s file.
At 10:14 p.m., voices rose near the service entrance.
Dominic stood.
Sophia’s voice came first.
“Please leave.”
A man answered.
“You don’t get to tell me when I leave.”
Dominic walked into the corridor.
Sophia stood near the rear door with Lily behind her legs.
Across from them was a man in his early thirties wearing a black leather jacket.
His hand was wrapped around Sophia’s bruised wrist.
Dominic stopped ten feet away.
The temperature in the hallway seemed to drop.
“Take your hand off her.”
The stranger turned.
He recognized Dominic.
Everyone did.
His grip released immediately.
“I didn’t realize—”
“I don’t care what you realized.”
Sophia pulled Lily behind her.
“Mr. Moretti, please. This is private.”
Dominic ignored her.
“What’s your name?”
The man swallowed.
“Evan.”
“Last name.”
“Sloane.”
Something moved in Dominic’s memory.
Sloane.
He had heard that name recently.
Victor’s investigation into the intercepted shipments had identified a logistics subcontractor.
Sloane Freight.
Dominic looked at Sophia.
She had gone pale.
Evan noticed.
And smiled.
That smile was a mistake.
“She didn’t tell you?” he asked Dominic.
Sophia whispered, “Evan, don’t.”
“Tell me what?”
Evan laughed bitterly.
“That your sweet little maid used to be my wife.”
Silence.
Lily pressed herself against Sophia’s legs.
Dominic’s gaze dropped to the child.
Then returned to Evan.
“You’re Lily’s father?”
Sophia answered before Evan could.
“No.”
The force of the word surprised everyone.
Evan’s face changed.
“Careful, Sophie.”
Dominic heard it.
Sophie.
Not Sophia.
Evan stepped closer.
“She owes me money.”
“No,” Sophia said. “I paid what you demanded.”
“That bought you a month.”
Dominic’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“You’re blackmailing her.”
Evan looked toward him.
“You don’t know what she did.”
Sophia’s breathing quickened.
“Please go.”
Evan leaned toward her.
“I’ll go when you give me the rest.”
Lily suddenly spoke.
“You make Mommy cry.”
The room froze.
Evan glanced down.
“Stay out of this.”
Dominic moved before anyone else could react.
One second Evan was standing.
The next his back struck the wall, Dominic’s forearm across his throat.
Dominic did not shout.
He never needed to.
“You speak to that child again,” he said softly, “and you will spend the rest of your life wishing you hadn’t.”
“Dominic,” Sophia whispered.
He looked at her.
She was terrified.
But not of Evan.
Of what Dominic might discover.
Evan smiled despite the pressure against his throat.
“Ask her what her real name is.”
Sophia closed her eyes.
“Ask her why she ran six years ago.”
Dominic released him.
Evan coughed.
Dominic stepped back.
“What is your real name?”
Sophia did not answer.
Evan wiped his mouth.
“I’ll save you the trouble.”
He looked directly at Dominic.
“Her name is Sophie Mercer.”
Dominic’s blood turned cold.
Mercer.
The same last name belonged to Theodore Mercer.
The man whose organization had been anticipating Dominic’s shipments for two months.
Evan smiled.
“And her father works for the people trying to destroy you.”
Then he walked out into the rain.
Sophia remained completely still.
Lily clung to her skirt.
Dominic looked at the woman whose child had covered him with a blanket the night before.
“Tell me he’s lying.”
Sophia’s eyes filled with tears.
May you like
She whispered the one answer Dominic had spent his entire life fearing.
“He isn’t.”
