Chapter 2 - The Silver Ring
The unwrapped towel revealed a heavy silver ring.
It wasn't a wedding band. It was a signet ring, deeply engraved with a crest of a wolf and two crossed swords.
It was tarnished, the silver practically black in the crevices, but the intricate details were unmistakable.
I looked up at Lorenzo.
The color had completely drained from his face. The powerful, untouchable syndicate boss looked as though the floor had just dropped out from under him.
“Where did you get that?” Lorenzo demanded, his voice barely above a whisper, but vibrating with a terrifying intensity.
My father swallowed hard, his grip on his wooden cane tightening.
“Your mother gave it to me, Lorenzo. Three days before she died.”
The entire restaurant seemed to fall silent. Matteo and the other guards stiffened, their hands drifting instinctively toward their jackets. No one spoke of Lorenzo’s mother. The official story was that she died in a tragic car accident when he was sixteen, forcing him onto the streets before his uncle found him.
“You knew my mother?” Lorenzo asked, his voice cracking.
“I didn't just know her,” Dad said softly, the tears spilling over his weathered cheeks. “I helped her run.”
A reversal.
I stared at my father, completely bewildered. My dad, the gentle baker who made cinnamon rolls and donated leftovers to nursing homes, had helped a mafia boss’s mother run away?
“She came to the bakery one night in the pouring rain,” Dad continued, his voice trembling with the weight of a two-decade-old secret. “She was terrified. She said her husband… your father… was going to kill her.”
Lorenzo’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked in his cheek.
“She hid in our storeroom for two days,” Dad told him. “She gave me this ring. She told me it was the key to proving your father was embezzling from the Five Families. It was her insurance policy. She made me promise to keep it safe until you were old enough to understand.”
“Why didn't you give it to me when I was seventeen?” Lorenzo asked, the betrayal lacing his words. “When I was sleeping behind your bakery, starving?”
“Because you were still a child!” Dad cried. “And your father’s men were looking everywhere for you! If I had given you the ring then, they would have killed you too!”
Lorenzo turned away, running a shaking hand through his dark hair. The revelation that his mother hadn't died in an accident, but had been hunted, was breaking him right in front of us.
“Dad,” I interrupted gently, trying to piece the puzzle together. “What does this have to do with Eric? Why did Eric want the bakery?”
Dad looked at me, his eyes filled with absolute sorrow.
“Because Eric found out about the ring, Becky.”
Answer one.
Eric hadn't been interested in the bakery’s profits. He had been looking for what was hidden inside it.
Open two. How did Eric know about a twenty-year-old mafia secret, and who was he really working for?
“Eric was tearing the storeroom apart for weeks while I was in rehab,” Dad explained. “He couldn't find it because I had taped it to the underside of the floorboards beneath the old proofing oven.”
Lorenzo spun back around, his eyes locking onto my father.
“Who is Eric working for, Walter?”
Dad swallowed. “A man named Silas Romano.”
Lorenzo went completely still.
Matteo swore viciously in Italian under his breath.
“Silas Romano is dead,” Lorenzo said coldly. “My father killed him twelve years ago.”
“No, he didn't,” Dad said, shaking his head. “Eric told me Silas survived. He’s been operating in the shadows, waiting to reclaim his territory. And he needed the ring to prove your father was a traitor to the Commission so he could legally seize your assets.”
The pieces fell into place with sickening clarity.
Eric had married me, played the perfect husband, and taken control of my father’s business all to find a piece of evidence that could destroy the DeMarco syndicate.
“Boss,” Matteo said urgently, stepping forward. “If Romano is alive, and he has Hayes working for him, this restaurant isn't safe. Eric knows we’re here.”
Before Lorenzo could respond, the heavy glass doors of the restaurant shattered inward.
A hail of bullets tore through the front windows, shredding the expensive velvet curtains and showering the tables with jagged glass.
“Get down!” Lorenzo roared, tackling me and my father to the marble floor.
The sound was deafening. Matteo and the guards instantly returned fire, their weapons flashing in the dim light of the restaurant.
I covered my ears, screaming as a bullet shattered a wine bottle just inches from my head.
“We need to move!” Lorenzo shouted over the gunfire.
He didn't wait for my father to struggle to his feet. Lorenzo practically scooped the older man up, throwing Dad’s arm over his shoulder, and dragged him toward the kitchen doors.
I scrambled after them on my hands and knees, the broken glass biting into my palms.
We burst through the swinging doors into the stainless steel kitchen. The cooks had already fled out the back alley.
“Matteo, cover the rear!” Lorenzo ordered, setting my father down behind a heavy steel prep counter.
Lorenzo pulled a sleek black handgun from his shoulder holster, checking the magazine with terrifying, practiced efficiency.
“Are you hurt?” Lorenzo asked, kneeling beside me, his dark eyes scanning my face for any sign of blood.
“No,” I gasped, though my hands were shaking violently. “I’m okay.”
He reached out and gently squeezed my shoulder. “I won't let them touch you, Rebecca. I swear it.”
Suddenly, the kitchen doors burst open.
But it wasn't a hitman.
It was Eric.
He was holding a gun, his hands trembling slightly, his perfectly styled hair now a disheveled mess.
“Give me the ring, Walter!” Eric shouted, pointing the weapon erratically between my father and Lorenzo. “Silas wants the ring!”
“You coward,” I spat, rising to my feet despite Lorenzo trying to hold me down. “You married me for a piece of jewelry!”
Eric laughed, a manic, desperate sound. “I married you because it was the easiest way into the bakery. Silas promised me two million dollars if I found it. You were just the cover story, Rebecca.”
The twelve years of marriage, the shared breakfasts, the supposed love—it had all been a complete, fabricated lie.
I felt a cold, hard rage replace the fear in my chest.
“Shoot him, Lorenzo,” I said, not taking my eyes off my husband.
Eric flinched.
Lorenzo didn't hesitate. He raised his weapon.
But before Lorenzo could pull the trigger, Eric pulled a small, black remote from his pocket and pressed a button.
A massive explosion rocked the alleyway behind the kitchen.
The back wall of the restaurant completely blew out, showering us in brick dust and smoke. The concussive force threw me backward into Lorenzo’s chest.
Through the gaping hole in the wall, I saw three black SUVs screeching to a halt in the alley.
And stepping out of the lead vehicle, wearing a pristine white overcoat, was a man with a jagged scar running down the left side of his face.
Silas Romano.
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He was alive.
And he was looking directly at me.
