Chapter 9 - Why Dominic’s brother disappeared at fourteen
Marco Valletti was alive.
That fact had always been public inside Dominic’s family and private outside it.
I met him at a rehabilitation garden connected to a trauma center.
He was thirty-three.
Thin.
Quiet.
He walked with a slight limp and hated enclosed rooms.
Dominic did not bring me.
Rosa did.
That distinction was deliberate.
Marco asked why I wanted to see him.
“Because Dominic told me what happened to you.”
His face tightened.
“He shouldn’t have.”
“He didn’t tell me details.”
“Good.”
I waited.
Then:
“I think what happened to you changed how he reacted to me.”
Marco stared at a fountain.
“Yes.”
He had been abducted at fourteen during a conflict involving their father’s criminal business.
Held for nine days.
Returned alive.
The family retaliated brutally afterward.
Marco remembered that part as clearly as the kidnapping.
“Everyone kept saying Dominic saved me.”
“He didn’t?”
“He tried.”
Marco looked at me.
“But nobody asked what I wanted after.”
Therapy chosen for him.
Security chosen for him.
Schools.
Travel restrictions.
Even who could visit.
All in the name of protection.
Dominic grew into the brother who made sure no one could ever take Marco again.
Which meant, for years, Marco barely belonged to himself.
“That’s why he stopped when you stepped back from him,” Marco said.
I thought of the foyer.
Dominic stopping the moment I recoiled.
“He learned?”
“Eventually.”
Marco smiled faintly.
“I made him.”
That gave me hope and caution at the same time.
Dominic understood consent because someone he loved had forced him to understand what protection becomes when it ignores choice.
It did not make his criminal life good.
It explained one boundary.
Then Marco said something unexpected.
“Mercer knows about me.”
“How?”
His expression darkened.
“Henry Mercer’s father was connected to the men who took me.”
I froze.
Not Henry himself.
His father, Charles Mercer.
Dead six years.
The kidnapping belonged to an older generation of criminal conflict surrounding port access and organized labor.
Dominic’s hatred for Henry was not simply business.
It carried inherited grief.
That made the current situation more dangerous.
If Dominic pursued Mercer, nobody would know where my case ended and his family war began.
I told him that that evening.
He did not deny it.
“I want him gone.”
“I know.”
“For what he did to you.”
“No.”
I held his gaze.
“For what his family did to yours too.”
Dominic looked away.
There was the truth.
“And that,” I said, “is exactly why you cannot act in my name.”
He nodded once.
Not agreement emotionally.
Agreement behaviorally.
That was enough.
Meanwhile Naomi filed an emergency motion challenging Harold’s temporary control petition.
Evidence:
Forged service.
Conflicts of interest.
Financial incentive.
Documented abuse.
Maria’s objection.
The court scheduled a hearing within ten days.
Harold responded by claiming I had been manipulated by Dominic.
Predictable.
He submitted photographs of me entering the Valletti mansion.
Security stills.
A statement from one of his associates claiming I appeared “drugged or disoriented.”
I had not been.
Then he produced something more dangerous.
A recording of Dominic threatening him against the marble column.
There it was.
Exactly the evidence Mercer hoped to create.
Naomi listened once.
Then asked me:
“Did Dominic prevent you from leaving?”
“No.”
“Did he demand money or property?”
“No.”
“Did he pressure you into a relationship?”
“No.”
“Did he provide independent counsel?”
“Yes.”
“Did you move out when you asked?”
“Yes.”
“Then we prove facts.”
No fairy tale.
No monster-turned-prince defense.
Just evidence.
Then she showed me Harold’s final filing.
He claimed I suffered from dependent personality disorder and had transferred emotional dependence from him to Dominic.
The diagnosis came from Dr. Stephen Bale.
I had never met Dr. Bale.
He had never evaluated me.
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And he had been paid $25,000 by Caldwell Marine three days before signing the declaration.
Cliffhanger: Harold’s strongest argument that Serena was incapable of managing her own life relied on a psychiatric opinion written by a doctor who had never met her.
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