Chapter 6 - The Sins We inherit
The safe room was cold, smelling of damp concrete and fear. Above us, the gunfire had stopped. The silence that followed was somehow worse.
I held Caleb so tightly my arms ached. The society women around me were whispering prayers, their expensive gowns stained with dirt and wine. I didn't care about them. All I could hear was Hector’s voice echoing in my memory—a Cartel boss who had just casually admitted that my husband’s murder was only supposed to be the beginning.
She paid us to kill David’s wife and child, too.
My baby. They had been hunting my baby.
The heavy steel door of the safe room suddenly clanked. The gears turned, and the door swung open.
Matteo stood in the doorway. His suit was ruined, his knuckles bloodied, but his eyes sought only one thing in the dim light. They locked onto me.
He didn't speak to the guests. He walked straight past the weeping millionaires, crouched down in front of me, and gently touched my shoulder.
“Clara,” he whispered, his voice incredibly soft for a man who had just faced down a Cartel hit squad. “It’s clear. They’re gone.”
I couldn't move. I was paralyzed by the retrospective terror of the last eight years. “Did they take her?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Did they take your mother?”
Matteo’s jaw tightened. He nodded once. “She won't ever come near you or Caleb again. I swear it on my life.”
He reached out his arms. Caleb immediately let go of me and threw himself into Matteo’s embrace, burying his face in the mafia boss’s neck. Matteo closed his eyes, wrapping one large hand around the back of my son’s head, holding him as if he were his own flesh and blood.
“Come upstairs,” Matteo said to me. “My father is asking for you.”
I stood up on shaking legs. We left the guests in the basement for the security team to handle and walked up to the main floor. The dining room was a disaster zone of broken crystal, overturned tables, and bullet holes in the walls.
Arthur was sitting on a plush sofa in the adjoining study. A private doctor was wrapping a blood pressure cuff around his arm, but Arthur waved him away when he saw us enter.
“Caleb,” Arthur smiled, holding out his weathered hand.
Caleb ran to him, carefully hugging the old man’s waist. “You didn't look at my drawing yet, Mr. Arthur.”
Arthur chuckled warmly, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out the folded construction paper Matteo had given him during the chaos. “I’m looking at it right now, little man.”
Arthur unfolded the paper. I knew what it was. Caleb drew the same thing every week. A stick-figure drawing of a house with a blue roof, a mom, a little boy, and a tall man with a yellow halo over his head.
David.
Arthur stared at the drawing for a long time. His eyes filled with tears. He looked up at me, the weight of a thousand apologies in his gaze.
“Clara,” Arthur said, his voice thick with emotion. “I am so sorry. If I had known what Beatrice was planning, I would have sent David away. I would have protected him.”
I sat in the armchair across from him, my hands folded tightly in my lap. “Why did she want us dead, Arthur? If David had already given her the emerald, why order a hit on me and my baby?”
Arthur sighed, a ragged sound that rattled in his chest. He looked at Matteo, who was standing by the fireplace, staring at the flames.
“Because David didn't just give her the emerald,” Arthur explained slowly. “He made a copy of her ledgers. He found out she was embezzling from the family to fund Vanessa’s father’s failing empire. David hid the evidence.”
Matteo turned around, his eyes flashing. “Where?”
Arthur looked at me. “He hid it in the one place he knew Beatrice would never look. Somewhere deeply personal to him.”
My brow furrowed. “We didn't have anything personal. We lived in a tiny apartment. We had no safe, no hidden floorboards.”
Arthur leaned forward. “Clara, think. The week before David died, did he give you anything? A gift? A keepsake?”
I closed my eyes, forcing myself back to that terrifying week eight years ago. David had been so anxious, so paranoid. He had come home late one night in the pouring rain. He had kissed my forehead, kissed baby Caleb in his crib, and then…
My eyes flew open.
I reached up to my neck. Beneath the high collar of my servant’s uniform, I pulled out a cheap, wooden rosary. The beads were chipped, the string frayed.
“He gave me this,” I whispered. “He told me it belonged to his grandmother. He told me to never, ever take it off.”
Matteo crossed the room in three strides. He knelt in front of me, his large hands gently hovering over the wooden cross resting on my collarbone.
“May I?” he asked softly.
I nodded, my heart pounding.
Matteo took the wooden cross between his fingers. He pressed his thumb against the back of it, feeling along the seams. With a sudden, sharp crack, the back of the wooden cross popped open. It was hollow.
Matteo reached inside with his pinky finger and pulled out a tiny, tightly rolled piece of microfilm.
The entire room went silent.
David had died to protect this. He had hidden it against my heart for eight years.
Matteo stared at the microfilm, then looked up into my eyes. The intensity in his gaze made the breath catch in my throat.
“This is everything,” Matteo whispered. “This proves her treason against the family. It proves she orchestrated the hits.”
Suddenly, the study doors burst open.
A lone Cartel soldier, bleeding from a shoulder wound, stumbled into the room. He raised a pistol, aiming it directly at my chest.
“Give me the film!” the soldier screamed.
May you like
I screamed, throwing my arms over Caleb.
But before the soldier could pull the trigger, a gunshot rang out from behind him, and Vanessa walked into the room, holding a smoking gun.
