When He Finally Smiled
Chapter 07 - When He Finally Smiled
Dominic did not take the key at first.
He stared at it in Nancy’s open palm as though it were more dangerous than the poison, the threat, or the evidence hidden in a child’s blanket.
A brass key on a red ribbon.
Small enough to disappear in a pocket.
Heavy enough to rearrange twenty years.
Megan watched his face and understood something she did not want to understand: powerful people were not always less broken. Sometimes they were only better funded in the construction of their walls.
“What does it open?” Dominic asked.
Nancy shook her head. “He didn’t tell me.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“He said I would know when.”
“My father died when I was twenty-two.”
“I know.”
“You kept this for twenty years.”
Nancy’s voice trembled. “Yes.”
Dominic’s eyes sharpened. “Under whose instruction after he died?”
Nancy looked down.
And there it was.
The small hesitation that could ruin a life.
“Enzo told me the key was grief talking,” she said. “He said giving it to you would drag you into old paranoia. He said your father had been sick in his mind before he was killed.”
Dominic took the key then.
Not gently.
Megan almost expected him to wheel himself out immediately, issuing orders, breaking the night open by force. Instead he sat with the red ribbon across his palm and did not move.
“What did my father say exactly?”
Nancy closed her eyes, searching memory.
“He said, ‘When my boy remembers joy, he’ll be strong enough to survive the truth.’”
Megan looked at Dominic.
He looked away.
The room became almost unbearably quiet.
Ollie, asleep in the clinic room, made a faint sound through the half-open door. Megan rose automatically to check him.
Dominic’s hand moved on the wheel.
Not enough to stop her.
Enough to reveal the impulse.
She noticed. “I’m just going to my son.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She went into the side room.
Ollie slept on a narrow examination bed, cheeks flushed, one hand curled around the cloth lion. Without the intact yellow blanket, he looked smaller. Megan tucked the blanket remnant around him and sat for a moment with her hand on his back.
When she returned, Dominic was speaking quietly with Nancy.
“Where did my father go that day?” he asked.
Nancy wiped her face. “The old chapel on Mercy Street.”
“That property is gone.”
“No,” she said. “The church closed. The building is still there. Your father bought it under a trust.”
Dominic’s eyes moved to the brass key.
Megan folded her arms. “Of course there’s an old chapel.”
Dominic glanced at her.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just very convenient, dramatically speaking.”
“This is not drama.”
“You own a secret chapel, your father left a mystery key, and my toddler carried encrypted evidence in a teddy blanket. Dominic, at some point we have to admit the situation has committed to a tone.”
Nancy made a strangled sound.
It might have been a sob.
It might have been a laugh.
Dominic looked at Megan for one long second.
Then, impossibly, the corner of his mouth moved.
There it was again.
Not softness exactly.
Recognition.
Megan’s chest tightened in a way that made her angry with herself.
Dominic saw that too.
His expression closed almost immediately.
But Nancy had seen it.
So had Dr. Hale.
So had Luke, who looked as if he might need several weeks to recover from witnessing it.
Dominic cleared his throat. “We go to Mercy Street.”
Megan said, “I’m not going.”
Every person in the room looked at her.
She lifted her chin. “I am taking my son somewhere safe. You can go chase ghosts and old keys with your men. I have spent enough of my life inside problems with the Mason name on them.”
Dominic nodded once.
That surprised her.
“You’re right.”
She blinked.
He continued, “Luke will take you wherever you choose. Not one of my properties. Not one of my hotels. Somewhere you decide. He will remain outside unless you ask otherwise.”
“Luke works for you.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not independence.”
“No. It’s the closest safe thing I can offer in the next thirty seconds.”
Megan looked at him.
He did not command. Did not bargain. Did not use the child’s safety to pull her closer.
For Dominic, that restraint looked like labor.
Megan hated that she respected it.
“I’ll go to my aunt’s,” she said. “Outside Macon.”
Dominic nodded. “Luke.”
Luke stepped forward. “Yes, sir.”
“No one follows except you.”
“Yes.”
“If she tells you to leave, you call me and leave.”
Luke paused.
Dominic looked at him.
Luke corrected himself immediately. “Understood.”
Megan went to gather Ollie.
As she lifted her son, he woke just enough to look toward the doorway.
“Dom?”
Megan froze.
Dominic froze.
Ollie’s eyes were half closed. “Dom smile?”
Megan whispered, “Go back to sleep, baby.”
Ollie settled against her shoulder.
Dominic looked as if the child had placed a hand directly over an old wound.
Megan walked toward the clinic exit.
At the doorway, she turned back.
“Dominic.”
He looked up.
“If the chapel proves Ryan was telling the truth…”
“It will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Enzo.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.” His fingers closed around the key. “But I know myself before my father died. And I know who I became after Enzo raised what was left.”
Megan did not know what to say to that.
So she said the only honest thing she had left.
“Don’t become worse trying to punish him.”
Dominic looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said, “I don’t know how to promise that.”
Megan nodded.
Because at least it was true.
She left with her sleeping child.
Dominic waited until the door closed before turning to Silas.
“Mercy Street.”
Silas, still under suspicion and knowing it, said nothing except, “Yes, sir.”
Three cars left the clinic before sunrise.
One carried Megan south toward Macon.
One carried Dominic toward the old chapel.
The third, unknown to all of them, followed from two blocks behind with its headlights off until the streetlights ended.
Inside it, Enzo Bellaro touched the black onyx ring on his smallest finger and made a phone call.
“The child has the blanket,” he said. “But Dominic has the key.”
He listened.
May you like
Then he smiled.
“No. Don’t stop them. Let them open it.”
