Chapter 4 - THE COAT
“Elena dropped it,” Dominic repeated, the words dripping with poison in the quiet, dark kitchen.
Matteo froze.
For five years, everyone in the family believed Elena DeLuca’s death was a tragic accident. Black ice on a winding road. A lost control. A tragedy that left Matteo a widower and Ava without a mother.
But Dominic was wearing her necklace.
“You,” Matteo whispered, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. “You touched her car.”
Dominic’s smile widened. He didn’t deny it. He didn’t need to. The twisted pride on his face said everything.
“She was going to tell the family about my side businesses, Matteo,” Dominic sneered. “She found my accounts. I couldn’t let a bored housewife ruin my empire. So, I cut the brake lines. It was remarkably easy.”
Ava, huddled behind me in the shadows, let out a tiny, heartbroken gasp. She had heard him. She had heard her uncle confess to murdering her mother.
I grabbed Ava tighter, pressing a hand gently over her mouth to keep her quiet.
Matteo’s hands were shaking. The gun aimed at Dominic trembled for the first time.
“Put the gun down, Matteo,” Dominic commanded, feeling his advantage. “Give me the ledger, and I’ll walk out of here. If you don’t, your beautiful fiancée dies, and then I’ll hunt down the kid.”
Alessandra was sobbing, her eyes locked on Matteo.
For months, I had thought she was vain and shallow. But in that moment, facing absolute death, she did something I never expected.
She stopped struggling.
She looked at Matteo, her tear-streaked face hardening with sudden, unexpected resolve.
“Don’t do it, Matteo,” Alessandra choked out.
Dominic yanked her hair, forcing her head back. “Shut up!”
“Protect Ava!” Alessandra screamed, squeezing her eyes shut. “Don’t give him anything!”
Matteo didn’t lower his gun.
But he didn’t aim for Dominic’s chest, either.
Matteo aimed lower.
BANG.
The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed stainless-steel kitchen.
Matteo shot Dominic directly in the right kneecap.
Dominic shrieked in agony, his leg buckling instantly beneath him. He collapsed to the floor, releasing Alessandra as his hands flew to his shattered knee.
“Run!” Matteo roared at Alessandra.
She didn’t hesitate. She scrambled away from Dominic, crawling across the slippery tiles toward us. I reached out, grabbing her arm and pulling her behind the heavy steel prep table next to Ava.
Dominic writhed on the floor, cursing violently. He blindly raised his pistol and fired in our direction.
The bullet sparked against the steel table, missing us by inches.
But it didn’t hit the wall.
It hit the heavy, industrial gas lines running behind the commercial stoves.
A loud, violent HISS immediately filled the room. The sharp, rotten-egg smell of natural gas flooded the kitchen air instantly.
“He hit the main line!” the pastry chef yelled, still crouching near the ovens.
Matteo backed away, covering us with his weapon.
“Dominic!” Matteo yelled over the hissing gas. “It’s over!”
Dominic was laughing through his pain, a deranged, terrifying sound. He hauled himself up against the walk-in refrigerator door, leaving a smear of dark blood on the steel.
“It’s never over, Matteo!” Dominic shouted, raising his gun again.
But the gas was too thick.
If either of them fired another shot, the spark from the muzzle flash would ignite the room, blowing the entire back half of the estate to ash.
Matteo knew it. Dominic knew it.
Dominic sneered, lowering his gun. He grabbed his wet, dark wool coat from the prep table and hobbled toward the service exit, dragging his ruined leg.
“I’ll find the ledger myself!” Dominic spat, disappearing into the dark hallway.
“Dad!” Ava cried out, coughing as the gas filled her lungs.
“We have to move. Now!” Matteo ordered.
He holstered his gun and ran to us. He pulled Ava up, keeping her tight against his side. Alessandra was coughing violently, struggling to stand.
I grabbed Alessandra’s waist, supporting her weight. She looked at me, shocked that the maid she had tormented was the one holding her up.
“I’ve got you,” I said, coughing into my shoulder. “Keep moving.”
We pushed through the swinging doors, leaving the hissing, toxic kitchen behind, and sprinted down the narrow staff corridor toward the east wing.
“The laundry chute!” I gasped, pointing to the heavy metal door built into the wall. “It goes straight to the sub-basement. The cellar.”
Matteo ripped the metal door open. A rush of cold, damp air blew up from the darkness below.
“Ava first,” Matteo said.
He lifted his daughter and gently slid her into the smooth metal chute. She disappeared into the dark with a soft swoosh.
“Alessandra, go,” Matteo ordered.
Alessandra climbed in, sliding down after Ava.
Matteo looked at me. The distant sound of Dominic’s men shouting echoed down the hallway. They were closing in.
“Go, Sophie.”
I didn’t argue. I climbed into the chute and let go.
I slid through the darkness for three seconds before landing softly in a massive pile of linen sheets in the sub-basement laundry room. Ava and Alessandra were already climbing out of the bins.
A second later, Matteo dropped down beside us.
He stood up, pulling a flashlight from his jacket pocket. The beam cut through the pitch-black basement.
“Are you hurt?” Matteo asked, sweeping the light over us.
Ava shook her head. But Alessandra groaned, leaning heavily against a washing machine.
“My side,” she gasped, clutching her red dress.
I shined the light on her.
When Dominic had grabbed her, he hadn’t just held a gun to her head. In the struggle, his knife had sliced through her gown, leaving a deep, bleeding gash across her ribs.
“She’s bleeding badly,” I said.
I didn’t wait for permission. I ripped off my white apron, folded it tightly into a thick square, and pressed it hard against her side.
Alessandra hissed in pain, grabbing my wrist.
“Hold it there,” I instructed firmly. “Keep the pressure on.”
She stared at me, her arrogant facade completely broken. “Thank you, Sophie.”
I just nodded.
Matteo moved toward the heavy wooden door of the wine cellar.
“We can lock ourselves in the cellar,” Matteo said. “The door is reinforced steel disguised as wood. It will hold until the police arrive.”
We rushed into the vast, cavernous wine cellar. Thousands of dusty bottles lined the brick walls. Matteo slammed the heavy door shut, throwing the massive iron deadbolt.
We were safe. For now.
I sat Alessandra down on a wooden crate. Ava huddled next to her father, shivering in the damp cold.
I looked down at my hands. They were covered in Alessandra’s blood.
But as I wiped them on my black skirt, I realized I was holding something else.
When Dominic had fired his gun in the kitchen, he had swung his arm wildly. The gold chain wrapped around his wrist had snagged on the corner of the prep table.
It had ripped off.
In the chaos, I had picked it up without thinking.
I held up Elena’s emerald necklace in the beam of Matteo’s flashlight.
“Mr. DeLuca,” I said softly. “He dropped this.”
Matteo walked over. His face was a mask of restrained agony as he gently took the necklace from my hands. He ran his thumb over the emerald, the last piece of the wife he had loved so deeply.
But as his thumb brushed the back of the gold setting, he stopped.
He frowned.
He turned the necklace over in the light.
The thick gold clasp at the back of the chain wasn’t just a lock. It was hollow.
Matteo pulled a small pocket knife and wedged the tip into the clasp. It popped open with a tiny click.
Inside the hollow chamber was a microscopic SD card.
Matteo stared at it.
“Dominic didn’t kill her because she found his accounts,” Matteo realized, his voice trembling with a horrifying new truth.
“What?” I asked.
“Elena didn’t just find his accounts,” Matteo whispered. “She made copies. And she hid them inside her own necklace to give to the police.”
Dominic hadn’t just taken the necklace as a trophy. He had taken it because it held the evidence that could destroy him. And he had been wearing it for five years, right under Matteo’s nose.
Suddenly, a loud, echoing BANG reverberated against the heavy steel door of the wine cellar.
We all froze.
Someone was on the other side.
“Boss!” a voice shouted through the thick wood. “Boss, it’s Dante! Open the door!”
Relief washed over me. Dante had survived.
Matteo reached for the deadbolt.
But Ava grabbed his arm.
“Dad, wait,” Ava said, her voice shaking.
She pointed to the small security monitor mounted on the wall above the wine racks. It was connected to the estate’s backup generator, showing a grainy black-and-white feed of the hallway outside the cellar.
Dante was standing at the door.
But he wasn’t alone.
Standing right behind Dante, holding a gun to the back of the security chief’s head, was a tall, older man wearing a long tan trench coat.
I stared at the screen. My heart stopped beating.
The older man was holding a rosary in his left hand.
A wooden rosary, with a silver cross.
The cross was missing its bottom edge.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, stepping back until I hit the brick wall.
Matteo looked at me. “Sophie? Do you know him?”
May you like
Tears blurred my vision. My chest tightened so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“That’s the man,” I choked out, pointing at the monitor. “That’s the man who murdered my father.”
