Chapter 4 - The Midnight Audit
By two o'clock in the morning, the atmosphere inside the Caruso mansion had turned from quiet residential management into a full-scale tactical operation.
Four more heavy armored SUVs had arrived at the estate under cover of the pouring rain, parking silently in the rear courtyard. Six men in tailored dark suits—Dominic’s elite private security detail—now stood guard at every entrance, while two forensic specialists wearing white suits set up powerful halogen lamps inside the grand library above.
I sat on the plush velvet sofa in the sitting room, wrapped in a heavy wool plaid blanket that Marco had brought me from the linen closet, holding a steaming mug of black coffee.
My pink satin robe was now hidden beneath an oversized black sweater I had borrowed from the estate staff room, but I still felt cold—a deep, internal chill that had nothing to do with the November wind outside.
Dominic walked into the sitting room, his grey suit jacket removed, his dark shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing powerful, corded muscles and a thin, white scar running along his wrist.
He set a fresh pot of coffee on the low glass table between us and sat down in the wingback chair opposite me.
"You should go to sleep, Miss Bennett," Dominic said, pouring himself a cup. "My team will be working through the night. The third floor guest suites are secure."
"I can't sleep, Mr. Caruso," I replied, taking a sip of the strong coffee. "Sixty years ago, a woman was murdered in this house because she tried to do the right thing. And her family wiped her off the family tree."
Dominic looked at me over the rim of his cup. His dark eyes were intense, analyzing my face with that terrifying, clinical precision.
"My family was built on bloodshed and secrets, Maya," Dominic said quietly, using my first name for the first time. "My grandfather was a tyrant. My uncle Silvio was a sociopath. My father spent his entire life trying to clean up their mess without burning the family business to the ground."
"And you?" I asked, looking directly into his dark eyes. "Which one are you?"
Dominic didn't flinch. "I am the man who cleans up the graves."
He set his cup down and reached into his vest pocket, pulling out a small, heavy silver key that he had recovered from Elena's desk drawer downstairs.
"Elena didn't just record the murders," Dominic continued, leaning forward. "Her diary contains the primary ledger access keys for seven shell corporations registered in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Accounts that my uncle Silvio used to bribe state judges, senators, and police commissioners throughout the sixties and seventies."
"Accounts that are still active?" I asked, my heart skipping a beat.
"Accounts that are currently funding my cousin Julian's faction in New York," Dominic corrected, his jaw tightening into a hard baseline. "Julian has been trying to force me out of the family’s maritime logistics firm for eighteen months. He kept claiming we were short on liquid capital. Now I know where his offshore money is coming from. He found a secondary set of Elena's papers years ago."
I stared at him, my mind quickly connecting the legal and financial dots.
"Julian knew about the hidden room?" I asked.
"He knew the room existed," Dominic said, "but he didn't know where the access point was because my uncle covered it with that massive oil portrait before he died in '82. Julian has been waiting for an opportunity to search this house without my knowledge."
Dominic paused, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a sharp, dangerous clarity.
"Which brings me to an interesting question, Maya," Dominic murmured softly. "Why did my aunt Rosa hire your firm to house-sit this specific estate while I was in New York?"
My breath caught in my throat. "What are you implying?"
"Aunt Rosa is Julian's mother," Dominic said flatly.
The room seemed to drop into absolute silence once again.
May you like
I stared at him, my brain reeling. "Aunt Rosa... she was the one who personally requested me. She gave me explicit instructions to evaluate every room, clean behind every frame, and prepare an inventory of the third-floor storage."
"She didn't hire you to take care of my house, Maya," Dominic whispered, leaning closer, his voice laced with a lethal, smooth baritone. "She hired you as a pawn. She hoped an energetic, detail-oriented residential specialist would move the furniture and find the seam for her son."
