Chapter 2 - The Silent House
The master guest suite on the third floor of the West Wing smelled of lavender, rubbing alcohol, and fresh linen.
Doctor Harrison Vance, an elderly man who had treated the Vale family’s off-the-books injuries for thirty years, closed his leather medical bag with a heavy snap. He stepped away from the four-poster bed where Mia lay hooked to an intravenous saline drip.
"Severe dehydration, three cracked ribs from where someone kicked her while she was down, and advanced stage hypothermia," Dr. Vance said, turning to Dominic, who was standing by the high arched window. "If that child hadn't come to you this morning, Mia’s kidney function would have collapsed by sunset. She’s strong, Dom, but she needs total rest for at least a week."
Dominic looked over at the armchair beside the bed.
Harper was fast asleep, her small face buried in a pile of plush velvet blankets. Her skin was clean now—Claire had personally bathed her and dressed her in a oversized soft cotton sweater—and her small chest rose and fell in a quiet, steady rhythm.
"Is the child hurt?" Dominic asked.
"Psychologically exhausted, but physically fine," Vance replied quietly. "She didn't leave her mother’s side while I inserted the IV. She’s a tough little girl, Dominic. She reminds me of you when you were her age."
Dominic didn't answer. He reached into his pocket and handed the doctor an envelope thick with cash. "Thank you, Harrison. Daniel will escort you out through the private service drive. Say nothing about this to anyone at the hospital."
"I’ve kept your secrets for three decades, Dominic. I’m not about to start talking now," the old doctor said grimly before slipping out the heavy oak doors.
Once the room was quiet, Claire stepped out from the adjacent dressing room carrying a tray with two mugs of black coffee. She set the tray on the side table, handed one mug to Dominic, and looked down at Mia’s sleeping face.
"She tried to tell me three days ago," Claire whispered, her voice tight with suppressed guilt.
Dominic turned his gaze to her. "What do you mean?"
"The afternoon before you came back from Atlantic City," Claire explained, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were still cold. "Mia came into my dressing room. She looked terrified. She told me she had noticed two strange vehicles parked on the fire road near the northern perimeter fence. She said Nathan had instructed her not to mention them to you because they were 'routine security contractors.' She didn't trust him, Dom. She was coming to me to get your private satellite number."
"And Nathan intercepted her before she could call me," Dominic concluded grimly.
"He must have," Claire said, a tear escaping her eye and trailing down her cheek. "I thought she’d gone to see her mother in Pennsylvania because Nathan showed me a text message from her phone. I believed him, Dom. I sat upstairs sipping tea and looking at wedding flowers while she was starving in the dark beneath my feet. If anything had happened to her... to Harper..."
Dominic set his coffee mug down and stepped toward her. He reached out, his long, scarred fingers gently taking her chin, lifting her face until her eyes met his.
"Nathan has been pulling the wool over my eyes for three years, Claire," Dominic said, his voice dropping into a raspy, intense lower register. "He was my brother. He knew every code, every habit, every weakness I had. You didn't fail Mia. You survived a snake who was preparing to murder us all."
"What are you going to do with him?" she asked softly.
Dominic’s face didn't change, but the light in his dark eyes went cold. "Nathan isn't the head of this serpent. He’s just the tongue. The hard drive he plugged into the cellar terminal was transmitting to an IP address routed through a private server in Montreal. Someone paid him millions to buy this house from the inside."
"Who?"
"That’s what I’m going down to the holding garage to find out," Dominic said. He leaned down and pressed a firm, protective kiss against her forehead. "Stay here with Mia and the girl. Keep Marcus inside this room with his gun drawn. No one enters this floor without my personal clearance."
Claire reached up, clutching his wrist tightly. "Dominic... be careful. If Nathan turned on you, how many of the other guards belong to him?"
Dominic pulled a small black remote from his pocket and pressed a button on its side. A soft, high-pitched hum vibrated through the floorboards as heavy steel security shutters slid silently down over every window in the West Wing, sealing the room into an impenetrable fortress.
"Only three men had access to the master security grid," Dominic said quietly. "Nathan, Daniel, and me. Daniel is currently standing outside that door with an automatic rifle. The rest of the staff has been confined to the lower barracks."
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He gently detached her hands from his wrist and pulled his dark suit coat back on.
"I built this house to protect the people I love, Claire," he whispered, stepping toward the heavy oak doors. "It’s time I cleaned out the vermin that crawled beneath it."
