Chương 7
A place everyone assumed was empty.
Except apparently it was not.
Margaret touched the side of her cup.
“I think your father knew one day you would need to choose what kind of man you wanted to be.”
Dominic looked at her.
“And you waited until now to tell me?”
Her eyes filled slightly.
“I waited until I knew you would choose something other than revenge.”
Dominic sat in silence after hearing her words.
The kitchen clock above the doorway made a soft clicking sound with every second.
It was a small, ordinary noise, the kind nobody noticed during normal days.
Tonight, it felt impossible to ignore.
“You thought I would choose revenge,” Dominic said.
Margaret looked down.
“I thought you would choose what hurt less.”
The answer bothered him because it was not an accusation.
It was a confession.
He had spent years telling himself that anger made him strong.
That being feared prevented people from taking advantage of him.
That control was safer than trust.
But sitting across from his mother, he wondered how much of that control was actually fear wearing a different face.
“What was in the house?” he asked.
Margaret rubbed her thumb against the edge of the tea cup.
“I don’t know everything.”
“You know something.”
“Yes.”
She looked toward the dark window above the sink.
“Your father was different there.”
Dominic frowned.
“Different?”
“Before the money.”
“Before the company.”
“Before everyone started calling him important.”
Her voice softened.
“He laughed more.”
That surprised him.
Dominic had very few memories of his father laughing.
He remembered his father’s serious face.
His expensive watches.
His phone always ringing.
The way people changed their posture when he entered a room.
He remembered the man everyone feared.
Not the man his mother described.
“He hated that house,” Dominic said.
Margaret shook her head.
“No.”
“He hated what it represented.”
“What?”
She looked at him.
“That he used to be someone else.”
The sentence stayed with him.
Dominic had spent years thinking his father wanted more because he was ambitious.
Maybe that was only part of it.
Maybe his father had been running away from something.
Thomas returned from the office doorway.
“I heard enough to know we need to move quickly.”
Dominic looked at him.
“You were listening?”
Thomas lifted a hand.
“I was standing there.”
“That is how doors work.”
Margaret almost smiled.
Almost.
Thomas noticed.
“Good.”
He picked up his coat.
“I prefer when people remember they are human during disasters.”
Dominic grabbed his keys.
“We go tonight.”
Thomas immediately shook his head.
“No.”
Dominic looked at him.
“No?”
“No.”
Thomas walked toward the table.
“You are angry, tired, and currently convinced moving faster means moving smarter.”
“I need those documents.”
“Yes.”
Thomas nodded.
“But you also need to remember that old houses have owners, records, cameras, neighbors, and problems.”
Dominic stared at him.
“You think someone is watching it?”
“I think someone has already been watching everything.”
The answer made sense.
That was the problem.
Dominic looked toward Margaret.
“Who knows about the house?”
She hesitated.
That hesitation was becoming a language.
“Mom.”
“Your father’s old assistant knew about it.”
“Who?”
“Daniel Mercer.”
The name meant something.
Not because Dominic knew him well.
Because he remembered the name from childhood.
Daniel had been the man who carried his father’s briefcase.
The man who arrived early and left late.
The man who knew where every document was.
“He’s alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Margaret looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t know.”
Thomas exchanged a look with Dominic.
That was not good.
“How do you not know?”
“Because after your father died, Daniel disappeared.”
“People don’t disappear.”
Margaret looked at him.
“Sometimes they do.”
The sentence reminded Dominic that his mother’s life had existed before him.
She had been dealing with things he never saw.
Conversations she never repeated.
Problems she never placed on his shoulders.
That realization made him feel guilty.
Not because she had hidden the truth.
Because she had believed she had to.
They left the mansion after midnight.
The reporters were still outside.
The security team created a path through the gates.
Dominic sat in the back seat while Thomas drove.
Margaret sat beside him.
Ava was asleep against her shoulder.
The child had fallen asleep in the middle of a family crisis.
Somehow, that felt unfair.
Children could sleep because they believed adults would fix things.
Adults lost that ability.
The city moved past the windows.
Restaurants closing.
People walking home.
Cars stopping at red lights.
Normal life continued around them.
Dominic watched a couple arguing outside a grocery store.
A man carrying flowers.
A woman laughing into her phone.
Small moments.
Lives that did not involve hidden accounts or family empires.
For years, Dominic had thought power separated people from ordinary problems.
Now he wondered if it only gave them more expensive versions.
They reached the old neighborhood forty minutes later.
The house looked smaller than he remembered.
That was the first thing he noticed.
As a child, the front steps had seemed enormous.
The hallway had seemed endless.
The backyard had felt like a private world.
Now it looked like a normal house.
Paint fading.
Fence needing repair.
A porch light flickering.
Margaret stood beside him.
“You hate that it looks smaller.”
Dominic glanced at her.
“How did you know?”
“Because you made the same face when you saw your old school last year.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
He looked at the house.
“I thought it would feel different.”
“It always does.”
The front door opened with a key Margaret had kept hidden for years.
The smell inside stopped Dominic.
Old wood.
Dust.
Something familiar he could not immediately name.
Memory did not arrive like information.
It arrived through small things.
The mark on the wall where his height had been measured.
The loose floorboard near the stairs.
The faded stain on the kitchen counter where he spilled grape juice during a family dinner.
May you like
His father had been furious.
His mother had laughed.
