CHAPTER 5 — THE SECRET BENEATH THE RUINS
The world disappeared beneath concrete, dust, and darkness.
For one terrifying second, Elena thought she had died.
Then she heard coughing.
Not her own.
Dominic's.
A narrow beam of sunlight pierced through a crack in the collapsed ceiling, illuminating shattered pipes and twisted steel.
"Are you hurt?" Dominic asked, his voice hoarse.
Elena checked herself. Bruised. Bleeding from her forehead. But alive.
"I'm fine."
Dominic wasn't.
A slab of reinforced concrete had crushed his left leg. Blood soaked through his expensive trousers.
He tried to push it away.
It didn't move.
For the first time since anyone had known him...
The Mafia King was trapped.
Outside, muffled voices echoed through the ruins.
His men were searching.
But another sound reached Elena first.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Someone else had entered the collapsed basement.
A flashlight cut through the darkness.
Victor Kane.
Older than the man in the video.
His silver hair framed a face marked by burns that twisted one side of his smile.
"So," Victor said softly.
"Twenty years."
"And fate finally locks the two of you in the same grave."
Dominic's eyes hardened.
"You should have stayed dead."
Victor laughed.
"I almost did."
He crouched a few feet away, unconcerned by Dominic's pistol aimed directly at his chest.
"You won't shoot."
"You have one bullet."
"And your son still needs you."
Victor's gaze shifted toward Elena.
"You look just like your mother."
Her blood ran cold.
"You knew my parents."
"I knew them better than you ever will."
Victor pulled an old photograph from his coat.
It showed two smiling couples at a summer picnic.
Michael and Eleanor Hayes.
Daniel and Sophia Romano.
Young.
Laughing.
Holding two toddlers.
One of them was Dominic.
The other...
A little girl with dark curls.
Elena.
"They were family," Victor whispered.
"Until greed convinced someone to destroy them."
Elena shook her head.
"No..."
"My father wasn't murdered by the Romanos?"
Victor smiled.
"No."
"He was murdered because he refused to help me steal something worth hundreds of millions."
Dominic stared at the photograph in disbelief.
"My father never told me..."
"He couldn't."
Victor replied quietly.
"Because by the time he learned the truth..."
"I had already started the war."
Before anyone could react...
Victor tossed a small metal key onto the floor.
It landed beside Elena.
"You'll need that."
"For what?"
Victor turned toward the darkness.
"To find your brother."
Silence.
Elena stopped breathing.
"My brother died."
Victor looked back over his shoulder.
"That's what everyone wanted you to believe."
Then he disappeared into the shadows.
Leaving only questions behind.
An hour later...
Dominic's rescue team finally broke through the collapsed tunnel.
As medics lifted the concrete from Dominic's leg, Elena clutched the old brass key in her trembling hand.
Engraved on its side were four simple words.
Locker 214 — Union Station.
She couldn't stop staring at it.
Because Samuel Hayes...
...had been buried twenty years ago.
May you like
Hadn't he?
END OF CHAPTER 5
