Chapter 2 - THE SILVER WATCH
Lorenzo looked at Rosie one last time.
“Don’t let her leave.”
The heavy mahogany doors of the private dining room hadn’t even fully closed before Mateo shifted his weight.
The underboss didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t have to.
He simply stepped into the only exit path from the alcove.
His broad shoulders completely blocked the doorway.
Dante scrambled out of the room, looking like a man who had just outrun a train. The silence he left behind was suffocating.
Rosie’s heart hammered against her ribs, but she kept her hands folded neatly in front of her black uniform jacket.
She had spent years making herself invisible.
Now, the most dangerous man in Chicago was looking at her like she was the only person in the room.
Lorenzo Bianca didn’t yell.
He didn’t threaten her.
Instead, he reached into his tailored suit jacket and placed an object on the polished oak table.
A vintage silver pocket watch.
The metal was heavily tarnished, etched with intricate vines that looked like they had been worn smooth by decades of anxious thumbs.
“Salvatore Rossi is a difficult man,” Lorenzo said, his voice smooth and conversational. “He has been bleeding my supply chains for six months. I have sent three men to negotiate with him.”
Lorenzo took a slow sip of his whiskey.
“Two came back with broken jaws. The third did not come back at all. Yet you, a banquet manager, just made him agree to deliver forty thousand dollars in truffles before sunrise. With no surcharge.”
“I do my job, Mr. Bianca,” Rosie said. Her voice only trembled slightly.
“You threatened his pride in perfect Palermo slang,” Lorenzo corrected gently. “And you invoked a very specific curse about a butcher and a blind pig.”
Rosie swallowed hard.
“My grandmother used to say it.”
“I know.”
Lorenzo tapped the crystal tumbler against the table.
“Because your grandmother was Elara Viti.”
The air left Rosie’s lungs.
She hadn’t heard that name spoken aloud since she was sixteen years old, standing in the rain at a small Catholic cemetery.
“How do you know my grandmother’s name?” Rosie demanded.
The fear was suddenly gone, replaced by a fierce, protective heat.
Lorenzo didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he pressed the latch on the silver pocket watch.
The cover popped open with a soft click.
He turned it around and slid it across the long table toward her.
“Look at it, Miss Hastings.”
Rosie hesitated, then took three steps forward.
She looked down at the open watch face.
There was no clock inside.
It was a miniature, faded sepia photograph.
A young woman with dark hair, a soft waist, and Rosie’s exact almond-shaped eyes stood in front of a bakery storefront.
The woman was smiling.
And standing right next to her, holding her hand, was a young Lorenzo Bianca.
“She didn’t just teach you how to curse,” Lorenzo said quietly. “She taught you how to survive. Because fifty years ago, Elara Viti was the only reason I survived.”
Rosie stared at the photo.
Her grandmother had always claimed she came to America alone. That she had no one.
Answer One, Open Two.
“I don’t understand,” Rosie whispered, her fingers hovering over the watch. “She never mentioned you.”
“She wouldn’t,” Mateo said from the door. His voice was gravel rough. “It would have gotten her killed.”
Lorenzo stood up.
“Dante didn’t lose two million dollars today, Rosie. The money wasn’t stolen from a warehouse.”
He walked toward her, stopping just inches away.
“The money was inside a shipment of flour. A shipment routed through the old bakery your grandmother left you in her will.”
Rosie froze. The abandoned bakery on the West Side. She hadn’t been inside in months.
“If you know this,” Rosie said, “why are you telling me?”
Lorenzo’s dark eyes locked onto hers.
“Because an hour ago, someone broke into that bakery. And they left something behind.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a child’s drawing.
It was a crayon sketch of a red house.
But in the corner, written in messy, six-year-old handwriting, was a name.
Leo.
May you like
Rosie’s breath hitched.
Leo was her nephew. Her sister’s boy.
