Chapter 1 - TWO BLINKS
At 2:17 in the morning, Dominic Moretti watched a housemaid take his twin brother’s motionless hand between both of hers and say, “I know you can understand me.”
The surveillance monitor on Dominic’s desk showed Mateo exactly as he had appeared for nearly two years: supported by pillows in a medical bed, dark hair beginning to gray at the temples, his body still below the shoulders after the bullet that damaged his spinal cord. The second injury from the ambush had taken his speech. Doctors believed his mind remained intact, but reliable communication had proven difficult enough that even specialists had eventually started using cautious words like inconsistent and limited.
Evelyn Parker apparently had not been told to give up.
She sat closer to the bed, her plain gray uniform wrinkled from the night shift, a faint streak of flour still visible on one sleeve from helping the cook earlier. “If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize and go back to folding towels badly,” she whispered. “Blink twice if you understand me.”
Mateo blinked twice.
Dominic stopped moving.
For one irrational second, he thought chance had arranged it. A dry eye. A reflex. Something his exhausted brain wanted to turn into a miracle because the alternative was admitting how desperately he still wanted his brother back.
Evelyn appeared to distrust miracles too.
“Again,” she said. “One blink for no. Two for yes. Do you understand?”
Two deliberate blinks.
The chair beneath Dominic scraped backward.
Three weeks earlier, Evelyn Parker had entered the Moretti estate carrying one suitcase and a résumé so ordinary that Dominic almost rejected her before the interview began. Thirty-two. Unmarried. Former patient-support work at St. Catherine’s. Four unexplained years out of the workforce. Applying for a live-in housekeeping position on the overnight rotation.
“Why here?” Dominic had asked.
“Because you pay well.”
Vincent Hale, Dominic’s chief lieutenant, laughed from the corner.
Dominic did not. “People usually lie more elegantly to me.”
Evelyn glanced around the dark-paneled office. “Do you want elegance or honesty?”
“Honesty.”
“My father was sick for years. The bills outlived him. I need housing and steady work. You need somebody willing to clean at night. That’s the transaction.”
Dominic had hired her partly because fear did not make her dishonest. When he asked whether she knew who he was, she answered, “Everyone knows who you are.”
“And you aren’t frightened?”
“Oh, I’m frightened,” Evelyn said. “But being frightened and being useless are different things.”
That sentence returned to him now as he crossed the mansion toward Mateo’s private wing.
He had installed the cameras because somebody was leaking information. Three separate movements had been compromised in four months. A warehouse had been emptied hours before Dominic’s people arrived. A meeting location became unsafe after only a handful of people knew it. Most recently, a legitimate property inspection had drawn men associated with Roland Blackwood, the rival Dominic blamed for the ambush that destroyed Mateo’s life.
Dominic no longer trusted coincidence.
He trusted records, surveillance, and fear.
Mateo was also the easiest person in the house to exploit. Nurses, therapists, guards, housekeepers and senior men moved through his rooms daily. Dominic ordered tiny cameras placed inside the private wing without telling anyone outside the two technicians who installed them. He expected to catch somebody photographing documents, using a hidden phone, or searching Mateo’s rooms.
Instead he found Evelyn giving his brother a language.
By the time Dominic reached the bedroom, she was saying, “Do you hate when people call you poor Mateo?”
Two blinks.
Evelyn smiled. “Good. I hate it too.”
Dominic opened the door.
Her smile vanished. Mateo’s eyes shifted toward him immediately.
“What are you doing?”
Evelyn stood halfway, startled, but did not release Mateo’s hand. “Talking to your brother.”
“He cannot talk.”
“I noticed.”
Dominic took another step, anger covering something much harder to control. His hand moved instinctively beneath his jacket.
Evelyn’s eyes dropped to the movement.
“No.”
The word stopped him more effectively than a shout.
Dominic stared at her. “Excuse me?”
“If you come toward him armed and furious, we learn nothing except that he knows when you’re angry.”
“You have no idea what—”
“Then fire me in the morning.” She pointed at the floor beside Mateo’s bed. “Right now, put your hand away and get down where he can see you clearly.”
Nobody ordered Dominic Moretti to kneel.
Politicians waited outside his office. Men twice Evelyn’s size changed tone when he entered a room. Vincent had once joked that the only thing Dominic bowed to was a low ceiling.
But Mateo was looking at him.
Not through him.
At him.
Dominic lowered his hand from beneath his jacket. Then he went down on one knee beside the bed.
Mateo’s eyes settled on his face.
The effect was immediate. The tension around his eyes eased.
Dominic’s throat tightened.
“Mateo?”
Two blinks.
Something in Dominic’s face broke before he could stop it.
“Can you understand everything I’m saying?”
Two blinks.
Dominic looked down.
For two years, he had spoken beside this bed. He had complained about doctors. Discussed security with Vincent. Admitted fear on nights he thought Mateo was asleep. Once, after too much whiskey, he had apologized for changing the convoy route before the ambush even though every report said the attack would have happened regardless.
Mateo had heard him.
Evelyn seemed to understand exactly where Dominic’s mind had gone. “Don’t make this about everything you missed yet,” she said quietly. “Make it about what he can tell you now.”
Dominic looked at her, but there was no challenge in her face anymore. Only urgency.
“How do you know this works?”
“My father lost speech near the end of his illness. I worked with rehabilitation staff who used yes-or-no systems with patients who couldn’t speak. Blinking isn’t perfect. Fatigue matters. Questions matter. We need somebody qualified to assess him properly.”
“Then why did his doctors say he couldn’t do this?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer frightened him more than an accusation.
Dominic looked back at his brother. “Mateo, are you tired?”
One blink.
No.
“Do you want to keep going?”
Two.
Evelyn exhaled. “Simple questions.”
Dominic knew which question he wanted to ask. He also knew it could poison everything if he pushed too fast.
Evelyn asked first. “Mateo, does the person leaking Dominic’s movements work inside this house?”
Two blinks.
Dominic went completely still.
“Someone under my roof?”
Two blinks.
The fireplace cracked softly behind them.
Dominic’s first instinct was movement. Lock doors. Wake guards. Drag every person in the estate into the great hall and make fear do what fear had always done for him.
His second reaction was colder.
Mateo had been silent for two years.
If the traitor knew what Mateo had seen before the ambush, panic could become more dangerous than betrayal.
Dominic made the third reaction a decision.
“Nobody knows about this tonight.”
Evelyn nodded once.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I bring in someone independent. Not one of Mateo’s current doctors.”
Another two blinks came from the bed.
Dominic almost smiled.
“Apparently he approves.”
Evelyn looked at Mateo. “Your brother is bossy.”
Two blinks.
Dominic actually laughed, one short sound that disappeared almost as soon as it arrived.
They spent another twenty minutes establishing what Mateo could answer reliably. His responses were consistent when questions were concrete and short. He correctly identified the month, the house, childhood details only the twins knew, and which hand Dominic had broken when they were thirteen.
Then Dominic asked, “Did you know who betrayed us before the ambush?”
Mateo blinked twice.
The warmth left the room.
“Did you try to tell me?”
Two blinks.
Dominic’s hand closed around the bedrail.
Evelyn watched Mateo carefully. His eyes were tiring.
“One more,” she said. “Then stop.”
Dominic nodded.
He looked at his brother. “Does the person’s name begin with A through M?”
Mateo blinked once.
No.
“N through Z?”
Two blinks.
Dominic began narrowing slowly, dividing the alphabet the way Evelyn instructed.
Eventually he reached one letter.
“V?”
Mateo blinked twice.
Dominic did not move.
There were several people in his world whose names began with V.
But only one had stood beside him for twelve years.
May you like
Only one had been in the convoy planning room the night everything changed.
Vincent Hale.
