Chapter 6: What Webb Sold
The Connecticut property sat at the end of a private road behind a stone wall and a gate that required two separate codes to open.
Elena Moretti had chosen it herself eight years ago for exactly that reason.
She had also, at some point, filled the kitchen with enough food for a small army and left a handwritten note on the counter that said: *Make yourself at home.
I mean it.
— E.*
Sophia read the note twice.
"Your sister knows we're here?" she asked.
"I called her on the way."
"What did you tell her?"
"The truth."
Sophia set the note down.
"All of it?"
"Enough of it."
Lily had fallen back asleep in the car and was now installed on the large sofa under a blanket that smelled of cedar and lavender, rabbit tucked under her chin.
The house was warm.
The gate was closed.
Two of Caruso's men were outside.
Sophia stood at the kitchen counter with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea she had made herself without asking where anything was, because she was the kind of person who found things rather than waited to be shown.
Dominic sat across from her at the kitchen table with Webb's files open on his laptop.
"Tell me what you found," she said.
He turned the laptop toward her.
The email chain was four months old.
Webb to an address that Dominic's tech team had traced to a shell company with Vescari fingerprints all over it.
The early messages were vague — account structures, staffing changes, nothing that crossed a clear line.
Then, in the third week, a name.
Her name.
*S.
Carter.
Junior accounts, Manhattan.
Former personal connection to DM.
Currently unaware she is known to us.
Confirm interest.*
The reply had come within an hour.
*Confirmed.
Continue monitoring.
Do not engage directly.*
Sophia read it twice.
Her mug went down on the counter very carefully.
"He sold me," she said.
"He sold information about you.
He may not have understood what they intended to do with it."
"Does that matter?"
"No," Dominic said.
"It doesn't."
She scrolled further.
The messages continued for three months.
Webb reporting on her work schedule, her hours, her performance reviews.
At one point, a message that made Dominic's jaw tighten every time he read it: *Subject has no known support network.
No family in the city.
One dependent, female, approximately five years of age.*
Sophia stopped scrolling.
"They know about Lily."
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"At least three months."
She was quiet.
Her hands were flat on the table now, very still, the way hands go still when the person they belong to is working very hard to stay composed.
"Why?" she said.
"What do they want?"
"Me," Dominic said.
"They've wanted leverage over me for six years.
Since the war started.
They've tried money, they've tried threats, they've tried going after my business interests." He paused.
"They've never found anything personal enough.
Until now."
"Because of Lily."
"Because of Lily."
She looked at him across the table.
"You said you ended things to protect me.
To make sure I couldn't be used against you."
"Yes."
"And it didn't work because Webb found me anyway."
"Yes."
"So the six years," she said slowly.
"The things you said to me.
The way you ended it.
All of that — and we ended up here regardless."
There was no good answer to that.
He didn't try to give one.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"For how I did it.
I told myself it was the only way.
I told myself it was clean.
It wasn't clean.
It was cruel, and I knew it was cruel while I was doing it, and I did it anyway."
Sophia looked at her mug.
"You told me I was entertainment," she said.
"I believed you for about a week.
Then I stopped believing you and started being angry instead.
The angry was better."
"Good."
"Don't agree with me.
It's irritating."
"I know."
She almost smiled again.
Stopped herself again.
"What happens now?" she said.
"Webb goes to my legal team tomorrow morning.
The forged signature, the communications with the Vescari intermediary, the three other women he removed — all of it.
He'll be charged.
The Vescari connection makes it more complicated, but it also makes the case stronger."
"And the Vescaris themselves?"
Dominic was quiet for a moment.
"That's a longer conversation."
"I'm not going anywhere."
He looked at her.
"The Vescari organization has been weakening for two years.
Enzo Vescari is old and his sons don't agree on anything.
The man outside your building tonight was a message, not an action.
They wanted me to know they had found you.
They wanted me afraid."
"Are you?"
"Yes," he said.
"But not of them."
She looked at him.
"Lily took three trains and a bus across the city alone," he said.
"She walked up to the most feared man on Long Island and asked him why he fired her mother.
She has your stubbornness and my complete disregard for reasonable risk, and that combination is genuinely terrifying."
Sophia's composure cracked.
Not completely.
A small fracture, visible only in the way she pressed her lips together and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"She's five," she said.
"I know."
"She told me she went to ask the boss to give me my job back.
She said she had a plan."
"What was the plan?"
"She was going to offer him her rabbit as payment." Sophia's voice caught slightly.
"She loves that rabbit more than anything she owns.
She was going to give it up for me."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"She didn't have to," Dominic said.
"She was more effective than the rabbit would have been."
Sophia laughed.
It was short and surprised and real, and it changed the entire room.
Then she stopped laughing and looked at him with something that was not quite forgiveness and not quite its opposite.
"I need to sleep," she said.
"And tomorrow I need answers about what comes next.
Real answers.
Not managed ones."
"Real answers," he agreed.
She stood up.
Paused at the doorway to the hall.
"Dominic." She didn't turn around.
"The crease.
Between her eyebrows."
"Yes."
"I was going to tell you.
Eventually.
When she was older and could understand." A pause.
"I want you to know I wasn't keeping her from you as punishment.
I just didn't know how to—" She stopped.
"I didn't know how to find the version of you that would want to know."
He didn't answer immediately.
"You found him," he said.
"She did."
Sophia walked down the hall.
Dominic sat at the kitchen table for a long time after that, with Webb's files open in front of him and the sound of the house settling around him in the dark.
His phone buzzed.
A message from Caruso: *Webb is asking to speak with you directly.
Says he has information about the Vescari timeline.
Says it's worse than what's in the files.*
Dominic stared at the message.
Then he typed back: *Tomorrow.
Eight a.m.
Bring him to the office.*
He closed the laptop.
From the sofa, in the dark of the living room, a small voice said: "Is Mama going to be okay?"
Lily was watching him from under her blanket, rabbit pressed to her chest, completely awake.
"Yes," he said.
"Promise?"
He looked at this child with his eyes and her mother's stubbornness and a rabbit she had been willing to give up for someone she loved.
"Promise," he said.
Lily considered this.
"Okay." She pulled the blanket higher.
"You can stay if you want.
The couch is big."
Dominic looked at the couch.
"Go to sleep, Lily."
"You didn't say yes."
"Go to sleep."
A pause.
May you like
Then, very quietly: "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
