Chapter 6 – THE LOCKET FROM OHIO
The silence in the living room felt heavier than the smoke lingering outside.
I stared at the faded photograph inside the locket.
“Your mother?” I whispered.
Dominic’s thumb traced the edge of the tiny picture. His hands, usually so steady, were trembling slightly.
“Yes,” he said softly. “She died when I was very young. I only have a few pictures of her.”
He looked up at me, his dark eyes searching my face for an answer I didn’t have.
“You said your father bought this at a pawn shop in Ohio?”
“That’s what he told me,” I replied, my mind racing. “He gave it to me for my tenth birthday. We lived in a small town called Crestwood. He said he found it in an antique store and thought it looked pretty.”
Dominic closed the locket with a soft click.
“Crestwood, Ohio,” Dominic repeated. The name seemed to carry a strange weight in his mouth.
He stood up, pacing the length of the Persian rug. The exhaustion that had plagued him minutes ago vanished, replaced by an intense, razor-sharp focus.
“Mr. Romano, what does this mean?” I asked, adjusting the blanket over Sophie’s sleeping shoulders.
“My mother grew up in Crestwood,” Dominic said, turning back to me. “She left when she was eighteen to move to Chicago. She met my father a year later.”
He looked at the locket in his hand.
“This specific locket,” Dominic continued, his voice dropping to a murmur, “was custom-made for her by her father. My grandfather. It was supposed to be buried with her. I remember seeing it in the casket.”
A chill ran down my spine.
If it was buried with her… how did my father buy it in a pawn shop twenty years later?
Answer one: My father hadn’t bought it at a pawn shop. He had lied to me about where the locket came from.
Open two: Did my father know Dominic’s mother? Was my family somehow connected to the Romano empire before I even took this job?
“What was your father’s name, Hannah?” Dominic asked gently.
“Arthur Miller,” I said.
Dominic frowned. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number.
“Marco,” Dominic said when his security chief answered. “I know you’re with the medics, but I need a background check. Deep dive. Arthur Miller. Crestwood, Ohio. I want every tax record, property deed, and associate he had for the last thirty years.”
He hung up and looked at me.
“I’m sorry, Hannah. I don’t mean to interrogate you about your father.”
“It’s okay,” I swallowed hard. “I want to know the truth, too.”
For the next two hours, the house was eerily quiet. The police finished processing the scene in the backyard and left, taking Adrian’s body with them.
The sun finally broke through the Chicago skyline, casting a pale, cold light through the shattered windows of the kitchen.
Sophie stirred in my lap, rubbing her eyes.
“Hannah?” she mumbled.
“I’m here, sweetie,” I smiled, smoothing her hair.
She sat up and looked around. She saw her father sitting in the armchair across from us, watching her with a fierce, protective love.
“Daddy,” she said, her voice small. “Is Uncle Adrian gone?”
“Yes, baby,” Dominic promised, moving to sit beside her on the couch. “He’s gone forever. He can never hurt you again.”
Sophie leaned against his chest. “And Mommy’s voice?”
“It was just a trick,” Dominic said softly. “A bad trick.”
Sophie nodded slowly. She seemed to accept it with the resilient, tragic understanding that only children possess.
Suddenly, Dominic’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen. Marco.
Dominic answered. “Tell me.”
He listened for a long minute. His expression didn’t change, but his jaw clenched tighter with every passing second.
“Understood,” Dominic finally said. “Keep it quiet.”
He hung up the phone.
He looked at me. The warmth in his eyes had been replaced by a complicated, guarded sorrow.
“What is it?” I asked, my stomach twisting into a knot.
“Arthur Miller didn’t buy that locket in a pawn shop, Hannah,” Dominic said quietly.
“How do you know?”
“Because Arthur Miller didn’t exist before 1995,” Dominic stated.
I stared at him. “What are you talking about? He was my father.”
“His Social Security number, his birth certificate, his property records in Ohio… they were all created in 1995. The year you were born.”
Dominic leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Your father was in witness protection, Hannah.”
The room started to spin.
My quiet, gentle father? The man who fixed radios and struggled to pay the mortgage? A protected witness?
“Witness to what?” I breathed.
Dominic looked down at the silver locket in his hand.
“Marco ran his fingerprints through the federal database using the medical records from his death. Arthur Miller was an alias.”
Dominic looked up at me.
“His real name was Arthur Bellini.”
My heart stopped.
Bellini.
“Victoria’s uncle,” Dominic whispered. “He was the accountant for the Chicago syndicate thirty years ago. He testified against my father to avoid prison, and the feds hid him in Ohio.”
I couldn’t process it. My father was a mafia accountant? I was related to Victoria?
Before I could ask another question, the heavy wooden doors of the living room burst open.
A young security guard stood in the doorway, panting heavily.
“Boss!” the guard shouted. “You need to come to the front gate. Now.”
“The police are gone,” Dominic said sharply. “Who is it?”
The guard swallowed hard, looking terrified.
“It’s not the police, sir.”
The guard pointed toward the driveway.
“It’s Grace. Your wife. She’s standing at the front gate.”
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