Chapter 2 - THE SILVER ROSARY
“Close the gates.”
The command didn’t echo. It didn’t have to. Dante Moretti’s voice hit the floor of the dining room like a physical weight, pinning every person to their chair.
Two men in dark suits stepped seamlessly out of the shadows near the walls. One walked to the heavy mahogany double doors, the deadbolt clicking shut with a sharp, metallic thud. The other pressed a hand to his earpiece, nodding once.
Nobody breathed.
Isabella’s champagne gown rustled as she took a frantic step toward Dante. Her elegant mask was cracking, her composure shattering under the weight of his stare.
“Dante, you cannot do this,” she whispered, casting a desperate glance at the twenty-eight guests frozen at the table. “You are terrifying our friends over the delusions of an old woman and a maid looking for a payout.”
Dante didn’t look at her.
His dark eyes stayed fixed on me.
“Claire,” he said, his tone terrifyingly level. “Translate.”
My hands were shaking so hard I had to grip the back of Rosa’s velvet chair. I was a housekeeper. I scrubbed baseboards so my father could afford to walk again. I had no business standing in the crossfire of a Connecticut mafia family’s civil war.
But I looked down at Rosa.
Her seventy-two-year-old hands were trembling, but her chin was high. She had been trapped in silence, manipulated by the woman standing three feet away from her.
She needed a voice.
Rosa lifted her hands again.
“She says it was raining,” I translated, my voice wavering before I forced it steady. “She woke up because her window was left open. She walked down the hall to close it, and she looked out toward the guesthouse.”
“She’s senile!” Isabella snapped, her voice rising an octave. She looked around the table, seeking allies among the politicians and businessmen.
Nobody met her eyes. In Dante Moretti’s house, you didn't place a bet until you knew who was holding the gun.
“Keep going, Claire,” Dante ordered.
“She saw a light on in Nico’s room,” I continued, watching Rosa’s fingers move. “She saw Isabella walk out the side door. And she saw what Isabella was holding.”
Isabella let out a sharp, theatrical laugh. “A shadow? You’re destroying our engagement over a shadow my half-blind mother-in-law thinks she saw in the rain?”
Rosa shook her head violently.
She reached into the pocket of her tailored cardigan.
She pulled something out and slammed it onto the white tablecloth.
It was a heavy, tarnished silver rosary.
Dante reached out and picked it up. As he stared at the cross dangling from his fingers, the color drained completely from his face.
“Where did you get this, Ma?” Dante whispered.
He didn’t wait for my translation. The grief in his voice was thick enough to choke on.
I leaned over. I recognized that rosary. I had dusted Nico’s memorial shrine in the library every Tuesday. That rosary was supposed to be draped over his urn.
“I found it on the grass,” Rosa signed, and I translated aloud. “Outside his door. The morning they found him.”
“You told the police you were in the city that night,” Dante said, his eyes rising slowly to meet Isabella’s. “You told me you were at your sister’s apartment.”
Isabella took a step back, her heel catching on the thick Persian rug. “Dante, I can explain. It’s not what it looks like.”
“Then what is it?” Dante’s voice cracked like a whip. “Because it looks like you were in my brother’s room twenty minutes before he stopped breathing, and you dropped his rosary running away.”
Isabella’s eyes darted wildly around the room. She was trapped. But a trapped animal is the most dangerous kind. She pointed a manicured finger directly at my face.
“She’s lying! The maid is lying about the translation! Rosa didn’t say any of that!”
Before I could defend myself, a sound broke the tension.
It wasn’t a scream. It wasn’t a gunshot.
It was a small, muffled sob.
It was coming from the heavy brass air vent set into the oak wainscoting near the floor.
I dropped to my knees without thinking, ignoring the shocked gasps of the guests. I pulled at the heavy brass grate. It was loose.
Inside the dark, dusty shaft of the ventilation system, a pair of terrified brown eyes looked back at me.
May you like
A little boy, no older than six, was huddled in the dark.
And clutched tightly to his chest, he was holding a crumpled piece of paper.
