CHAPTER 7 — THE BROTHER WHO STOOD ACROSS THE STREET
For twenty years...
Samuel Hayes had imagined this moment.
He thought he would run to his sister.
Call her name.
Hold her until neither of them could breathe.
Instead...
He remained inside the black sedan across the street, watching Elena disappear into the afternoon crowd.
His hands trembled.
Not from fear.
From guilt.
He had searched for her for years.
Private investigators.
Old foster-home records.
Hospital employment files.
Every trail ended in silence.
Then, three months earlier, Victor Kane had found him first.
"You want your sister?" Victor had asked.
"Help me destroy Dominic Romano."
Samuel had refused.
Victor only smiled.
"You'll change your mind once you learn who killed your parents."
Now Samuel knew the truth.
Victor had lied.
Again.
He stepped out of the car and hurried after Elena.
"Serena!"
The childhood nickname echoed across the sidewalk.
Elena froze.
Nobody had called her that since she was eight years old.
She slowly turned.
The man standing thirty feet away looked strangely familiar.
Dark hair.
Kind eyes.
A thin scar crossing his left eyebrow.
Her breath caught.
The scar.
Samuel had gotten it after falling from the old oak tree behind their childhood home.
Impossible.
"No..." she whispered.
The man smiled through tears.
"I've been looking for you for twenty years."
Elena shook her head violently.
"My brother died."
"I almost did."
He slowly reached into his coat.
Instead of a weapon...
He held out half of a broken wooden toy airplane.
Elena's knees nearly gave way.
She reached into her handbag.
From a small cloth pouch, she removed the other half.
Two pieces.
One toy.
Broken on the day they promised never to lose each other.
When the halves fit together perfectly...
There was no room left for doubt.
She burst into tears.
Samuel crossed the distance between them.
For the first time in two decades...
Brother and sister embraced.
People walking past smiled politely, unaware they were witnessing a family being restored after twenty years of grief.
Across the city...
Dominic Romano was discharged from the hospital despite doctors' protests.
He had only one destination.
His father's abandoned estate.
Hidden beneath the mansion was a private vault that had remained sealed since his father's death.
Inside...
Old ledgers.
Letters.
Photographs.
And one locked steel case.
His father's final message played on an old digital recorder.
"If you're hearing this, Dominic... then I failed."
"I trusted Victor Kane like a brother."
"He betrayed all of us."
"He murdered Michael Hayes."
"He murdered innocent families."
"And I let the world believe I was responsible because exposing the truth would have started a war that would have consumed every child we loved."
Dominic closed his eyes.
His father had carried that burden until his death.
Then another sentence changed everything.
"Victor wasn't working alone."
Dominic opened another folder.
Inside were names.
Politicians.
Judges.
Police commissioners.
Hospital administrators.
Powerful people who had protected Victor for decades.
This had never been one man's revenge.
It was a conspiracy.
May you like
And someone inside Chicago's government was still helping Victor.
END OF CHAPTER 7
