SHE LOCKED US IN WITH A MONSTER

The ring gleamed against the stark white hospital sheets.

Inside the hollowed-out gold band wasn’t a diamond. It was a tiny, hand-carved wooden bead from a Catholic rosary.

Anthony racked the shotgun. The sound echoed like thunder over the rain pouring through the shattered window.

“Step away from my mother, Daniel,” Anthony growled.

Daniel sneered, but he backed away from Rosa’s unconscious body.

Maria rushed forward, dropping her handgun to check Rosa’s pulse. “She’s alive, but her heart rate is dropping fast. He gave her the concentrated dose.”

Salvatore didn’t look at his brother. He didn’t look at the shotgun. He stared at the wooden rosary bead sitting inside his late wife’s ring.

“Anthony,” Salvatore’s voice broke. “What is this?”

Anthony kept his weapon aimed squarely at Paul and Daniel.

“Anna knew,” Anthony said, his voice heavy with thirty years of grief. “She knew our father didn’t die in 1993. She knew he faked his death to avoid federal prosecution for his illegal drug trials.”

Salvatore’s hands began to shake. “Anna told me she bought that electric blanket to keep me warm.”

“She bought the blanket to hide the transmitter,” Anthony corrected. “Our father was dosing you, Sal. Slowly. Testing a new cell-regeneration compound. The modified controller in that blanket emitted a low-frequency wave that activated the drug in your bloodstream while you slept.”

I felt physically sick. The old man hadn’t just experimented on his family; he had turned his son’s bed into a laboratory.

“Anna figured it out,” Anthony continued. “She found his ledger. She knew if she went to the police, our father’s men would kill you and the boys. So she hid the ledger in a safe deposit box. And she hid the key right in front of him.”

Anthony nodded toward the bed.

“The rosary bead,” I realized aloud.

“It’s a micro-key,” Anthony confirmed. “Custom made. Anna wore it on her finger to her grave.”

Salvatore looked up, absolute horror dawning in his eyes. “To her grave. Anna died of ovarian cancer eleven years ago.”

“She didn’t have cancer, Dad,” Paul said from the corner, his voice devoid of any empathy. “Grandpa gave her a synthetic mimic. He killed her because she got too close.”

Salvatore let out a sound I will never forget. It wasn’t a yell. It was the sound of a man’s soul tearing in half.

He lunged out of the bed.

He didn’t care about the weakness in his legs. He didn’t care about the poison in his veins. He hit Paul with the force of a freight train, driving his oldest son into the drywall.

Paul gasped for air as Salvatore’s hands closed around his throat.

“You knew?” Salvatore wept, his thumbs pressing into his son’s windpipe. “You knew your mother was murdered by my father, and you dug up her grave to steal her ring for him?”

Paul clawed at his father’s hands, his face turning purple.

Daniel saw his chance.

While Anthony was distracted by Salvatore’s explosive violence, Daniel pulled a compact revolver from his jacket.

But he didn’t aim it at Anthony.