Chapter 3 - THE SILVER LOCKET
I stared at the tiny photograph inside the tarnished silver locket.
My breath caught in my throat. I remembered that day. It was my seventh birthday. My mother had saved up for a month to buy a small strawberry cake, and she had taken that exact photo with a disposable camera.
“That’s me,” I whispered, reaching out with a trembling hand to touch the cold metal of the locket. “How did your wife get this?”
Gabriel Corsi’s dark eyes searched my face, looking for any sign of deception. “Sofia found it three days before she died. She told me she was going to meet someone who had answers about her past. Someone from the West Side.”
The West Side. Where my mother and I had lived in a tiny, freezing apartment until she passed away.
“She was looking for me,” I realized, tears spilling over my eyelashes. “Sofia was looking for me.”
Little Leo squirmed against my chest, letting out a soft, contented coo. He pressed his small cheek against my collarbone. He wasn't just reaching for a stranger. He was reaching for the woman who looked, sounded, and felt exactly like the mother he had lost.
“She did find you, Elina,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping to a raspy whisper. “Or at least, she found your mother’s old landlord. Sofia called me that night, crying. She said she had a sister. She said she was coming to this restaurant to find you.”
Carlo, still kneeling on the floor, wept into his hands. “She never made it, Mr. Corsi. They ambushed her car two blocks from here.”
I felt a cold wave of horror wash over me. I had been working a double shift that night ten months ago. I remembered hearing the sirens down the street. I remembered Carlo locking the doors and turning off the lights, telling us there had been a gang shooting.
My sister had died trying to reach me.
Gabriel gently took the silver locket and turned it over in his large palm.
“There is an engraving on the back,” he said quietly, holding it out for me to see.
I leaned closer. Scratched into the silver, in my mother’s unmistakable handwriting, were the words: To my only daughter, Elina.
“If Carlo took Sofia at birth to protect her,” Gabriel said, his voice turning deadly cold as he glared down at the restaurant owner, “why did Sofia’s locket say only daughter? Why did your mother believe she only had one child?”
Carlo’s face turned completely white. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“Because you didn't take her to protect her,” Gabriel realized, stepping toward the older man with lethal intent. “You stole her.”
Before Gabriel could reach Carlo, a sharp, electronic feedback noise pierced the silence of the restaurant.
Everyone froze.
Marco, the tall bodyguard in the black suit, immediately spun around, his hand flying to the earpiece in his right ear.
“Boss,” Marco said, his voice tight with sudden, absolute panic. “We have a frequency interference. Someone is transmitting an open mic signal from inside this room.”
Gabriel stopped. His mafia instincts instantly took over, the grieving husband disappearing behind the cold, calculated eyes of a boss.
“Sweep the room,” Gabriel ordered.
The two bodyguards immediately began tearing apart the tables, checking under the booths, pulling down the light fixtures.
But the electronic whining noise only grew louder as Marco stepped closer to me.
Marco stopped right in front of me. He looked at me, then slowly lowered his gaze to the baby resting against my chest.
Without a word, Marco reached out and grabbed the thick, padded collar of Leo’s tiny winter coat.
“Hey!” I protested, pulling the baby back protectively.
“Hold still,” Marco commanded. He pulled a pocket knife from his belt and sliced through the thick wool lining of the baby’s coat.
He dug his fingers into the padding and pulled out a small, black plastic disc with a blinking red light.
May you like
It was a listening device.
And it was sewn directly into the lining of the mafia boss’s son’s clothes.
