Chapter 2 - THE SILVER ROSARY IN THE MATRIARCH'S HANDS
Enzo Bellini didn't return to his mistress's hotel room.
He stood in the sterile, brightly lit corridor of the hospital, staring at the closed door of his wife's room.
Anthony’s words echoed in his mind.
Someone close to your family knew Elena was in danger—and made sure Bianca called you at exactly the right time.
He didn't call his security team. He didn't call his underboss.
He walked toward the hospital chapel on the ground floor.
He knew exactly where his mother went when she was trying to control a situation she had no business touching.
Claudia Bellini was sixty-eight years old.
She wore a dark tailored coat, her silver hair perfectly styled. She sat in the front pew of the empty chapel, her head bowed, a silver rosary slipping rhythmically through her fingers.
She didn't look up when Enzo's heavy footsteps echoed against the stone floor.
“Is my granddaughter safe?” Claudia asked.
Her voice was calm. Unshaken.
Enzo stopped at the edge of the pew.
“How did you know she was a girl?” Enzo asked quietly. “We haven't told anyone the gender yet.”
Claudia’s fingers paused on a silver bead.
“A grandmother knows these things, Enzo.”
“Elena is bleeding, Mother. She might lose the baby.”
“I know.”
Enzo’s jaw tightened.
“You knew,” he repeated. “And yet you called Bianca.”
Claudia finally turned her head. Her dark eyes, exactly like her son's, were entirely devoid of guilt.
“I didn't call her,” Claudia corrected. “I simply sent her a message. I told her that if she wanted to secure her place in your life, tonight was the night to demand your attention.”
Enzo stared at the woman who had raised him.
He had spent his life defending her against his father's cruelty. He had bought her houses, protected her from rivals, and demanded his men treat her like royalty.
“You wanted me to leave my pregnant wife.”
“I wanted you to leave Anthony DeLuca’s daughter,” Claudia said coldly.
She stood up, the silver rosary dangling from her wrist.
“I warned you seven years ago, Enzo. That woman is a DeLuca. Her father slaughtered your uncle. She is poison to this family.”
“She is my wife.”
“She is a distraction!” Claudia’s voice echoed sharply. “She has made you soft. You negotiate when you should strike. You hesitate. And tonight, when she called her father, she proved exactly where her loyalties lie.”
Enzo felt a cold knot form in his chest.
“How do you know she called Anthony?”
Claudia smiled. A thin, bloodless curve of her lips.
“Because I have eyes on Anthony’s house. I have had them for four years. The moment his cars moved toward St. Catherine's, I knew.”
Enzo took a step closer.
“You put a hit out on my father-in-law?”
“No,” Claudia said softly. “I put an insurance policy on your legacy.”
She reached into her dark coat and pulled out a small, heavy object.
She held it out to him.
It wasn't a gun. It wasn't a phone.
It was a heavy brass hotel key.
Room 412.
“What is this?” Enzo demanded.
“Bianca is waiting for you,” Claudia said. “But she isn't alone.”
Enzo didn't take the key.
“Who is with her?”
“The men who are going to ensure Anthony DeLuca never leaves this hospital alive.”
Enzo stopped breathing.
His mother had orchestrated a massacre. She had used Elena's medical emergency to draw Anthony out of his heavily fortified estate and into a public hospital, where her loyalists were waiting to strike.
And she had used Bianca to lure Enzo away so he wouldn't be caught in the crossfire.
“You set my wife up to be a widow and an orphan on the same night,” Enzo whispered.
“I secured your throne,” Claudia corrected.
She stepped closer, pressing the brass key against his chest.
“Go to the hotel, Enzo. Let my men finish this. When it's over, you can return to your grieving wife and play the comforting husband. She will have no one left to turn to but you.”
Enzo looked at the key.
Then he looked at the silver rosary wrapped around his mother’s wrist.
The same rosary she had used to pray for his father's soul after she had poisoned him twenty years ago.
He had always pretended he didn't know the truth about his father's death.
Tonight, pretending was no longer an option.
Enzo didn't take the key.
He reached out, his large hand wrapping around his mother’s wrist. He squeezed, hard enough to make her gasp, and snapped the silver chain of the rosary.
The silver beads scattered across the chapel floor like falling hail.
“My throne,” Enzo said, his voice dropping to a lethal, terrifying register, “belongs to the father of that little girl upstairs.”
Claudia’s face went pale.
“Enzo—”
“If a single shot is fired in this hospital,” Enzo promised, “I will personally bury you next to the husband you murdered.”
He turned his back on her and sprinted out of the chapel.
He didn't run toward the hotel.
He ran back toward the maternity ward.
But as he reached the elevator banks, the heavy steel doors slid open.
Standing inside, holding a silenced pistol and a blood-stained white coat, was one of Anthony’s security men.
The man didn't raise the gun at Enzo.
He simply looked at the Mafia boss and said five words that made Enzo's blood run cold.
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“They took her, Mr. Bellini.”
TITLE: The Blood on the White Silk Scarf
