Chapter 14 - THE BROKEN GLASS
The glass was identical to the one Layla shattered in Dominic’s office.
A note rested beneath it.
One mistake cost you a job.
The next will cost you two sons.
Dominic arrived within minutes.
He wanted Layla moved immediately.
She refused until Vincent showed her security footage.
The person who left the glass wore Isabella’s coat.
Dominic drove to his aunt’s house.
She was gone.
Her guards had been drugged.
A second message arrived from an unknown number.
Bring Samuel’s original ledger to the abandoned Gallow hotel.
Come alone.
The hotel had been closed for renovation after inspectors found structural damage.
Dominic recognized the handwriting.
It belonged to his father.
Marcus Gallow was supposed to be dead.
Vincent reopened the death records.
The body buried six years earlier had never been identified through DNA.
Marcus had staged his death.
He had watched Dominic inherit the empire, waiting to return when the Cross family weakened.
Samuel Bennett’s evidence could send him to prison for the rest of his life.
Dominic went to the hotel carrying a false ledger.
Vincent followed from a distance.
Layla remained with the twins under federal protection.
At least, that was the plan.
She discovered a second address hidden in the note’s ink.
Marcus expected Dominic at the hotel.
Isabella was being held elsewhere.
Layla informed the agents and traveled with them to an abandoned church.
They found Isabella tied beneath the altar.
Marcus stood behind her.
He was older, thinner, and far less powerful than the monster Dominic remembered.
“You look like your mother,” he told Layla.
“You killed her.”
“She betrayed me.”
“You tried to kill your own son.”
“I tried to make him strong.”
Layla held up the real ledger.
Marcus’s eyes widened.
“You want this?”
“You want control.”
“I built everything Dominic wasted.”
“You built a grave and called it an empire.”
Marcus raised a gun.
A shot rang through the church.
May you like
He collapsed.
Isabella had freed one hand and taken the weapon from a fallen
