131. 🧸 The Teddy-Bear Blanket That Made the Mafia Boss Smile Again

Chapter 11 - The Camera in the Wall

Dominic watched the hallway video three times without moving.

On the fourth, he noticed what the sender wanted him to notice.

The reflection.

In the cracked oval mirror hanging inside Megan’s apartment, visible for less than two seconds when she opened the door for Nancy, there was a tiny black lens embedded in the living room wall behind her.

Not Enzo’s men in the hall.

Inside.

Watching the place where Ollie slept.

Dominic called Silas.

“Find who installed maintenance equipment in Megan’s apartment in the last year.”

“Already running it.”

“Why already?”

Silas hesitated. “Because the video came from an internal Mason ghost server.”

Dominic’s voice dropped. “Internal.”

“Yes.”

“Enzo?”

“No. That’s the problem.”

Dominic looked toward the old chapel altar, now stripped of secrets. “Explain.”

“The server predates Enzo’s recent operations. Old architecture. Early 2000s. Your father’s era.”

“My father watched Megan’s apartment?”

“Not Megan. The building. Multiple apartments. It was a safe house network once.”

Dominic closed his eyes.

The sins of dead men rarely stayed buried. They reproduced under new names, in leases, cameras, shell companies, and families who moved into old surveillance without knowing the walls had memory.

“Who had access?”

“Carlo. Enzo. Father Michael. And one more administrator with no name, just initials.”

“What initials?”

“NP.”

Nancy Price.

Dominic ended the call.

For once, he did not call for a car, issue an order, or let anger choose the next room he entered. He sat alone in the chapel until the light through the dirty windows shifted from gray to gold.

Then he called Megan.

She answered on the fifth ring.

“What happened?”

“You tell me.”

The line went silent.

Megan’s voice changed. “That is a terrible way to start a phone call.”

“I’m learning.”

“Slowly.”

“There was a camera inside your apartment.”

He heard her breath catch.

“What?”

“It may have been part of an old safe-house system tied to my father’s network. I don’t know when Enzo found it or who used it.”

“My apartment.”

“Yes.”

“My child’s bedroom wall.”

“I know.”

“No. You don’t.”

The words landed exactly where they should have.

Dominic gripped the armrest.

“No. I don’t.”

Megan did not respond immediately.

Then she said, “Who else knew?”

“Nancy may have had access.”

Megan laughed once, a sound with no joy in it. “Of course.”

“I am on my way to speak with her.”

“No.”

“Megan—”

“No. I want to be there.”

“That isn’t safe.”

“I am tired of being protected from truths other people caused.”

Dominic closed his eyes. “All right.”

That answer surprised her. He heard it in the pause.

“All right?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“No argument?”

“I can provide one if it comforts you.”

“It would not.”

“Then no.”

Two hours later, Megan entered the safe apartment’s living room wearing jeans, a gray sweater, and the face of a woman who had slept badly and chosen clarity anyway. Ollie stayed with Dr. Hale in the next room, eating applesauce and refusing to release the damaged yellow blanket.

Nancy sat on the sofa.

She looked ten years older than she had that morning.

Dominic positioned his wheelchair near the window, not between them. Megan noticed that too.

Nancy folded her hands.

“I didn’t watch you,” she said immediately.

Megan remained standing. “That’s not the question.”

Nancy flinched.

Dominic said nothing.

Megan continued, “The question is whether you knew cameras were there.”

Nancy nodded slowly.

“Yes.”

The room changed.

Megan’s expression did not.

“When?”

“Not when you moved in. I swear to you. I knew the building had once been used by Carlo. I knew there were old lines in the walls. I thought they were dead.”

“And later?”

Nancy began to cry quietly. “After Ryan died, Enzo asked me whether you still lived there. He said Dominic wanted to make sure the widow wasn’t approached by reporters or federal agents. I checked the old system. It opened.”

Megan sat down as if her legs had stopped agreeing with her.

“You watched us.”

“No. I opened it once. I saw you holding the baby, crying on the kitchen floor. I closed it.”

“But you told Enzo it worked.”

Nancy covered her face.

Megan’s voice shook now. “You told him.”

Nancy whispered, “Yes.”

Dominic’s hand tightened on the wheel.

Megan looked at him. “Don’t.”

He forced his fingers open.

This was not his anger to perform.

Megan turned back to Nancy.

“My husband died. My son was watched. I was nearly framed, threatened, and chased because every person in this story decided some truth was too inconvenient to say out loud.”

Nancy sobbed once.

“I know.”

“No. Knowing would have changed your behavior.”

The words struck with surgical precision.

Nancy bent forward, crying into her hands.

Megan did not comfort her.

That was mercy too, in its harder form.

Dominic finally spoke. “Who are the initials NP?”

Nancy wiped her face. “Not me.”

He frowned.

“My middle name is Rose,” she said. “Nancy Rose Price. I never used Patricia. Carlo knew that.”

Megan turned.

Dominic felt the floor shift again.

“Then who?”

Nancy looked at him with red eyes.

“Your mother.”

Dominic went still.

“My mother was Lucia Mason.”

“Before she married your father,” Nancy whispered, “her name was Natalia Parisi.”

NP.

Dominic looked toward the next room where Ollie laughed at something Dr. Hale said.

His mother had died when he was sixteen, four years before his father. He remembered her as perfume, piano music, and a hand on his forehead during childhood fevers.

Not surveillance codes.

Not safe houses.

Not secret networks.

Nancy reached into her purse and pulled out a thin blue notebook.

“She gave this to me before she died,” she said. “I thought it was prayer notes.”

Dominic took it.

The first page held a list of addresses.

Megan saw hers.

But below it was another name.

Rachel House.

Dominic turned the page.

A note in his mother’s handwriting read: