Chapter 5 - THE BRACELET
The silence in the wine cellar was suffocating.
I stared at the grainy security monitor, the image of the man with the broken silver rosary burning into my retinas.
Five years ago, my father had been shot in the alley behind our family bakery. The police called it a random mugging gone wrong. The only detail I ever had was from a homeless man who witnessed it—he said the killer walked away calmly, wrapping a wooden rosary around his knuckles.
And now, that same man was standing outside the DeLuca family wine cellar.
“Sophie,” Matteo said quietly, stepping closer to me. “Are you certain?”
“I’m certain,” I whispered, my whole body trembling. “The broken cross. The way he holds it. It’s him. But why? Why is he here with Dominic’s men?”
Matteo looked at the screen, his jaw set in a hard, unforgiving line.
“Because your father wasn’t just a baker, Sophie.”
I turned to look at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”
Matteo sighed, a heavy, tired sound.
“Your father, Arthur Carter, was a brilliant man with numbers,” Matteo explained, his voice gentle despite the chaos outside. “Before he opened the bakery, he worked as an independent forensic accountant. My father—the old boss—hired him to audit the family’s legitimate businesses.”
My mind spun. “My dad worked for the mafia?”
“He worked for the legal side,” Matteo corrected. “But he was too good. Arthur found a discrepancy in the shipping ledgers. Massive amounts of money being siphoned off into offshore accounts. He brought the evidence to my father.”
I looked at the emerald necklace in Matteo’s hand, the pieces clicking together with sickening clarity.
“Dominic,” I realized.
Matteo nodded. “Dominic was stealing from the family. When he found out your father had exposed him, Dominic didn’t just run. He hired an assassin to silence him. The mugging was a hit.”
A sob ripped from my throat. My dad. My kind, flour-dusted dad, murdered for doing his job.
“I didn’t know until two years ago,” Matteo said softly. “When I found out Dominic ordered the hit, I tried to find your family. I wanted to make amends. I found out you were struggling to pay your sister’s tuition. So, I created the fake scholarship she received.”
I stared at him in absolute shock. “The Madison Grant? That was you?”
“Yes. And I instructed my household manager to offer you a job here, paying triple the market rate. I wanted you close, where my men could protect you, in case Dominic ever returned to tie up loose ends.”
The arrogant mafia boss. The man I had served coffee to, kept my eyes down for, cleaned up after. He hadn’t just been my employer. He had been my silent guardian for almost a year.
Before I could process the magnitude of his confession, Dante’s voice echoed through the heavy door again.
“Boss! Open the door! They’re going to kill me!”
On the monitor, the assassin with the rosary pressed the barrel of his gun harder into Dante’s skull.
“Matteo,” Alessandra gasped from the floor, clutching her bleeding side. “You can’t open it. If you do, he kills all of us.”
“If I don’t, Dante dies,” Matteo said, his hands clenching into fists.
“Dad, look!” Ava pointed at the monitor.
Dominic limped into the frame, leaning heavily on a cane he must have grabbed from the coatroom. His right leg was wrapped in a bloody bandage. He looked pale, deranged, and utterly furious.
Dominic leaned close to the camera lens above the door.
“I know you’re watching, Matteo,” Dominic sneered into the camera. “You have a choice. Open the door and give me the ledger. Or watch your most loyal dog die on camera. You have thirty seconds.”
Dominic stepped back. The assassin cocked his gun.
“We need another way out,” I panicked, looking around the brick walls. “Is there a back exit?”
“No,” Matteo said grimly. “It’s a vault. There’s only one door.”
“That’s not true,” I said, a sudden memory flashing through my mind.
Months ago, I had been tasked with organizing the oldest vintages in the very back of the cellar. I remembered finding a heavy iron grate set high into the brick wall, covered in decades of dust and cobwebs.
“The old coal chute,” I said, running toward the back of the cellar.
Matteo followed with the flashlight.
I pointed up to the ceiling in the far corner. A rusty iron square was bolted into the brick.
“This house was built in the 1920s,” I explained rapidly. “They used to deliver coal straight into the basement from the courtyard. If we can get that grate open, it leads outside to the gardens.”
Matteo handed me the flashlight. He climbed up onto a sturdy oak wine rack, reaching the iron grate. He grabbed the rusted latch and pulled with all his strength.
The metal groaned, shrieking against the brick, but it didn’t budge.
“It’s rusted shut,” Matteo grunted, his muscles straining.
“Ten seconds, Matteo!” Dominic’s voice boomed from the hallway.
“We need leverage,” I said, looking around frantically.
I saw a heavy, cast-iron crowbar resting near a stack of wooden wine crates. I grabbed it and climbed up the rack, handing it to Matteo.
He wedged the crowbar under the latch and threw his entire body weight into it.
CRACK.
The rusted lock shattered. The iron grate swung open, revealing a narrow, dark tunnel slanting upward. Cold, fresh night air and the smell of rain immediately poured into the cellar.
But as the wind rushed in, something fluttered down from the dark tunnel.
A piece of paper.
It drifted down, landing softly on the dusty floor at my feet.
I shined the flashlight on it.
It was a piece of construction paper.
It was a child’s drawing of a house, colored in bright, messy crayons. A stick figure family stood in the front yard. Underneath, written in clumsy, childish handwriting, were the words:
To Daddy. From Ava.
But the drawing wasn’t just old.
It was covered in a fresh, smeared bloody handprint.
Ava gasped, seeing it. “That’s… that’s the drawing I kept in my bedside table.”
I looked at Matteo in absolute horror.
“They didn’t just search her room,” Matteo whispered, looking up at the dark chute.
He realized the trap instantly.
“Dominic didn’t want the ledger,” Matteo said, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly cold register. “He knew I didn’t have it.”
“Then what does he want?” I asked.
“He wants Ava.”
Matteo looked back at the security monitor. Dominic wasn’t looking at the door anymore. He was smiling, looking directly into the camera.
“Checkmate, brother,” Dominic mouthed on the screen.
The assassin with the rosary didn’t shoot Dante. He simply lowered his gun and stepped away.
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Because Dominic already knew we were going to open the coal chute.
And he had sent his men to the courtyard to wait for us at the top.
