THE WIFE WHO BOUGHT A GRAVE

The phone clicked dead.

I stared at the television screen. Bellavista—the place where Marco and I met, the place where the entire empire had crumbled two weeks ago—was reduced to smoking black rubble.

Answer one: The New York syndicate wasn't making empty threats. They had eyes on us right now, and they were willing to burn the city to the ground to collect my father's debt.

"I'm not letting you go to that pier," Marco said instantly, shutting off the TV. He pulled his weapon from his shoulder holster and checked the magazine. "I'll call Silas's old crew. We'll fortify the brownstone. They won't get within a mile of this street."

"Marco, no," I grabbed his arm. "They're a syndicate. If we start a war, my mother will be caught in the crossfire. Rosa will be caught in it. You promised we were done with the violence."

"I promised to protect you!" Marco shouted, the fear for my life cracking his composure. "If I hand you over to Dante, you belong to New York. Do you know what they do to women they claim as property?"

I shuddered, but I didn't back down. "We have to give them what they really want."

"They want the tribute money," Rosa said quietly from her chair. "But the accounts are frozen by the DA."

"They don't want the money," I said, my mind racing back to the story Rosa had just told us. "Dante said they are calling in the collateral because Thomas Brooks stole something. The Calabrian Emerald."

"Hannah," Marco sighed in frustration. "Your father fenced that emerald forty-two years ago. It’s gone."

"Is it?" I asked, looking at Rosa. "Rosa. You lived next to my father before I was born. Did he ever have any money? Did he ever act like a man who had sold a priceless gem?"

Rosa frowned, thinking back. "No. Thomas was always broke. He drove the cars to pay for your mother's first apartment. He never had a dime to spare."

Open two: If my father didn't sell the emerald, where did he put it?

I sprinted out of the study and ran down the hall to the guest house where my mother was unpacking her kitchen boxes.

"Mom!" I burst through the door.

My mother dropped a stack of plates into the sink, startled. "Hannah? What's wrong?"

"Dad," I gasped, trying to catch my breath. "Did Dad ever talk about a green stone? An emerald?"

My mother’s face went completely pale. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, her eyes darting nervously toward the window.

"Mom. Please," I begged. "Our lives depend on it."

She let out a heavy, shaky sigh. "He never told me what it was. But the night before he died... the night he saved Marco... he came home covered in rain and blood. He took a sledgehammer to the plaster wall behind the radiator in our old apartment."

"The East Boston apartment?" Marco asked, coming up behind me.

"Yes," my mother nodded. "He hid a small leather box inside the wall, then plastered over it. He told me if I ever needed a miracle, to break the wall. But I was so scared after he died, I never touched it. I thought it was a gun."

Marco and I locked eyes.

"The apartment," Marco said. "The Feds sealed it as a crime scene after Silas broke in, but the tape should be gone by now."

We left my mother with Rosa, locking the heavy deadbolts of the brownstone, and drove Marco's remaining SUV across the city.

The East Boston walk-up looked exactly as we had left it two weeks ago, just a little dustier. The police tape was ripped and hanging from the doorframe.

We walked inside. The living room was still a mess from Silas's search.

"Behind the radiator," I said, pointing to the old iron heating unit in the corner of the living room.

Marco went to the kitchen, grabbed a heavy meat tenderizer mallet from the drawer, and walked over to the radiator. He swung hard, smashing the plaster wall. Dust plumed into the air.

He swung again and again, breaking away chunks of drywall and old lath.

Finally, he reached his hand into the dark cavity between the studs.

When he pulled his hand out, he was holding a small, dust-covered leather ring box.

He handed it to me.

My hands shook as I popped the tiny metal clasp.

Sitting on a bed of yellowed velvet was an emerald the size of a quail's egg. It caught the dim light of the apartment, glowing with a deep, mesmerizing, flawless green fire.

"The Calabrian Emerald," Marco whispered. "It's been sitting in the wall of a cheap apartment for forty years."

"We have it," I said, snapping the box shut. "We can buy my freedom from Dante."

"We aren't going to buy your freedom," Marco said, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the box. "We are going to buy the destruction of the New York syndicate."

Before I could ask what he meant, Marco's phone buzzed again.

It was a text from Rosa.

Tony. The DA, Arthur Vance, just knocked on the door. He says he needs to speak to you urgently about the New York threat.

Marco frowned. "I didn't tell Vance about New York. How does he know?"

Suddenly, the front door of my apartment kicked open.

Three men in sharp New York suits walked in, holding suppressed pistols.