THE WIFE WHO BOUGHT A GRAVE

Marco didn't look at the bodyguards blocking the restaurant doors. He didn't look at me. He kept his dark eyes locked entirely on his father, his chest rising and falling with a heavy, suffocating weight.

"Marco," Rocco DeLuca repeated, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly whisper. "Who told you to stay away from your mother?"

"Your wife," Marco said.

The name hung in the quiet dining room like a physical blow. Rocco stepped back, his expensive leather shoes scraping against the hardwood floor.

Elena DeLuca. Rocco’s second wife. The woman who came from Boston’s wealthiest political family, the woman who had merged her family’s legitimate power with Rocco’s underworld influence thirty years ago.

"Elena?" Rocco breathed, his face losing its color. "Elena told you Rosa was dead. She told me Rosa abandoned us."

"She didn't tell me my mother was dead," Marco corrected, his voice trembling with years of suppressed rage. "She told me that if I ever tried to contact her, if I ever walked into East Boston and let Rosa see my face, she would have her killed."

Rocco stared at his son. "You believed her? Over me?"

"I was six years old, Dad!" Marco yelled, the quiet, composed heir finally breaking. "Elena put me in a black car, drove me to a cemetery in the rain, and showed me a headstone with my mother’s name on it! She told me she bought the grave early, just in case I couldn't follow instructions."

Answer one: Marco stayed away to keep his mother alive, terrified by his stepmother's threat.

Open two: If Elena had the power to kill Rosa, why didn't she just do it thirty years ago? Why keep her alive in a run-down apartment?

I stood frozen near the coffee station, clutching the silver pot so tightly my knuckles ached. My mind raced. Mrs. Ferraro—Rosa—had lived above us for five years. She was sweet, fragile, and completely alone. The idea of this powerful, terrifying woman holding a death sentence over her head made me sick.

Rocco turned to his head bodyguard, a massive man named Silas.

"Get the cars," Rocco ordered, his voice suddenly void of all emotion. "We are going to East Boston. Right now."

"No!" Marco lunged forward, grabbing his father's arm. "Dad, if you show up there with five SUVs, Elena's watchers will see you. They’ve been monitoring that building for twenty-eight years. You'll sign her death warrant."

"I am the head of this family!" Rocco roared, shaking Marco off. "My wife does not run my streets!"

"Your wife controls the politicians who keep you out of federal prison," Marco shot back. "And she controls the men watching Rosa."

Marco reached into his tailored black jacket. He pulled out a heavy, tarnished silver pocket watch. The metal was scratched, the glass cracked down the center. He held it out to his father.

"Do you recognize this?" Marco asked.

Rocco looked at the watch. He swallowed hard. "That was my father’s watch. I gave it to Rosa the day we were married."

"Elena took it from her the night she forced her out," Marco said softly. "Elena gave it to me on my eighteenth birthday as a reminder. She said as long as I kept the watch closed, my mother got to keep breathing."

Rocco reached out with a trembling hand and took the watch. He traced the cracked glass. The terrifying mafia boss had vanished, replaced by a broken man realizing his entire life was built on a hostage situation.

"Miss Brooks," Marco said, turning to me. His dark eyes were urgent. "You said you visit her every Sunday. Does she have a home phone?"

"She doesn't," I said quickly. "She can't afford one. I let her use my cell phone when she needs to call the pharmacy."

"If we go there, they'll see us," Marco paced the floor. "But they don't know who you are. They just think you're a neighbor."

Rocco looked up from the watch. His eyes locked onto mine. The intensity in them made me take a step back.

"Hannah," Rocco said, using my first name for the first time. "I will give you fifty thousand dollars right now if you walk out the back door of this restaurant, go to that apartment, and bring Rosa to the safehouse in the North End."

Fifty thousand dollars. It was more money than my mother and I had seen in our entire lives. It would pay off the medical debt. It would buy back my grandmother's ring.

But before I could agree, the heavy oak doors at the front of the restaurant rattled.

Someone was trying to open them. But Marco's men had locked them.

Silas, the head bodyguard, pressed his earpiece into his ear. He listened for three seconds, and all the blood drained from his face.