Chapter 6 - THE NIGHT TWO PEOPLE DIED
Three years earlier, Dominic Castellano had died in a private hospital room at Saint Catherine's.
The official cause was cardiac arrest following complications from surgery.
Roarke had been twenty-nine.
His father had been sixty-one.
The death had left him in control of a criminal empire he had spent years trying to avoid inheriting.
Adeline remembered that week differently.
Her mother had been unusually frightened.
She had come home late.
She'd locked the front door twice.
And for the first time in Adeline's memory, she'd told her daughters not to answer the door to strangers.
Two days later, she was hospitalized.
The doctors diagnosed a rapidly progressing illness.
Within months, she was gone.
Adeline had been too overwhelmed by grief to question anything.
Now, sitting across from Roarke, she remembered something else.
Her mother's final words.
"Keep the little one away from the men in dark coats."
Adeline had assumed she was delirious.
Roarke listened.
Then asked:
"Did your mother leave any records?"
"Just her nursing license, some photographs, and a few personal things."
"Do you still have them?"
"Yes."
He nodded.
"Would you be willing to let an independent investigator review them?"
Adeline looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because I think your mother may have witnessed something connected to my father's death."
She stared.
"Are you saying she was murdered?"
Roarke shook his head.
"I'm saying we don't know enough to make that claim."
Adeline looked down.
For three years, she had blamed herself for not being able to save her mother.
Now a powerful stranger was suggesting the past might contain questions nobody had asked.
She felt anger rise through her exhaustion.
"If you think someone hurt her, I want the truth."
Roarke nodded.
"So do I."
Then Adeline looked at him.
"And if the truth leads back to your family?"
May you like
He didn't hesitate.
"Then it leads back to my family."
