Chapter 15: Dario's POV: What My Father Wrote

Dario's POV

I did not take Callie back to the penthouse.

I took her as far as the elevator, kissed her forehead, and told her I had one more thing to check.

She looked at me for a long second and let me go.

I have never loved her more than I did for that.

The third-floor safe stood open, the way Lowell had left it, with the staged photographs still spread across the steel shelf.

I swept them onto the floor.

Behind them was a second door, set low in the wall, painted the same gray as the rest.

I had never seen it in nine years.

The head of security knelt beside me with a drill.

"Sir, are you sure you want me to do this tonight?"

"Do it."

It took four minutes.

Inside was a metal box with a dusty lid, and under the lid a bundle of ledger pages tied with string.

Under the pages lay an envelope with my name on it.

The handwriting was my father's.

I sat down on the floor of the safe room and opened it.

*Dario,*

*If you are reading this, I am dead, and Lowell has kept his promise to give you this when I was gone.*

*I did not touch that cashier.*

*I never held the bottle, and I never took one dollar from the count room.*

*Your uncle came to my hospital bed the week after it happened.*

*He said you had done it, drunk and angry, and that the cashier would die and you would get life.*

*He showed me your jacket with blood on the sleeve.*

*He said a dying man gets pity from a judge, so I should take the blame to save you.*

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