Chapter 4 - TEN MILLION DOLLARS
The next morning Dominic placed a bank document in front of Mom.
Ten million dollars.
She stared.
“No.”
I nearly fell out of my chair.
“Mom.”
“No.”
Dominic looked amused.
“I made an offer.”
“To a room full of adults.”
“She translated the page.”
“She is fourteen.”
“Yes.”
“She cannot receive ten million dollars from a man investigated by federal agencies every other Tuesday.”
Dominic almost smiled.
“Fair point.”
I stared at her.
“Can we negotiate?”
“Lena.”
“We have rent.”
Dominic laughed.
It was the first genuine laugh I'd heard from him.
In the end, the money went into an independently administered education trust and a legal fund supporting manuscript preservation.
Mom accepted only enough to pay our existing debts.
I thought she had lost her mind.
Years later, I understood.
That afternoon I translated another section.
It described something called THE TWELVE CHAIRS.
Not treasure.
People.
Twelve positions inside a secret financial alliance created decades earlier to control construction contracts, unions, ports, political donations, and organized crime without belonging fully to any of them.
Crime families thought they were powerful.
Politicians thought they were powerful.
The Twelve Chairs profited from both.
Carlo Russo discovered the alliance in the 1990s.
He tried to expose it.
His brother Elias joined it instead.
Dominic went still.
“My father died in 2003.”
“How?”
“Stroke.”
I looked at him.
He understood.
“Don't.”
“What?”
“Don't say it.”
“You're thinking it too.”
Dominic stood.
I followed.
“If Dad's heart attack wasn't natural—”
“Lena.”
“And your father's stroke—”
“Enough.”
I became angry.
“Why?”
“Because suspicion is addictive.”
He turned.
“You're good at patterns. That means you have to be more careful than other people.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“Because if you look hard enough, everything becomes one.”
That sounded like something Dad would have said.
For the first time, I wondered how much Dominic and my father had known each other.
So I asked.
Dominic looked away.
May you like
“More than I told you.”
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