THE WIFE WHO BOUGHT A GRAVE

The restaurant devolved into organized chaos in seconds.

Rocco’s guards flipped heavy mahogany tables, barricading the front entrance. Marco grabbed my arm, his grip firm but careful, and pulled me toward the kitchen hallway.

"You can't stay here," Marco said, his voice low and urgent. "If Elena sees you with us, she'll know you're the leak. She’ll send men to your mother’s apartment before you even make it home."

"What about you?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs. "She’s your stepmother. Will she hurt you?"

Marco gave a dark, humorless smile. "Elena doesn't care about me. She cares about the inheritance. If my father dies tonight, she gets everything. Go out the delivery door, Hannah. Go straight to Rosa. Do not pack bags. Do not wait."

He handed me a heavy, black wool coat from the employee closet. "Wear this over your uniform. Keep your head down."

I took the coat, my hands shaking. Answer one: Elena wasn't here just to enforce her rule. She was here to execute Rocco before he could reunite with his true wife and invalidate her claim to the empire.

I pushed through the metal delivery doors into the freezing Boston night. The alley smelled of rain and garbage. I pulled the oversized coat tight around my shoulders and ran.

I didn't stop running until I reached my apartment building in East Boston. It was a crumbling brick walk-up, the kind of place where the heating pipes banged all night and nobody asked questions.

I bypassed my own floor and sprinted up the stairs to apartment 4B.

I pounded on the door. "Mrs. Ferraro! Rosa, it's Hannah! Open up!"

I heard the slow, shuffling of her slippers. The deadbolt clicked.

Rosa stood in the doorway, wearing her faded floral nightgown. She was seventy years old, her silver hair braided neatly over one shoulder. When she saw my panicked face and the oversized men's coat, her warm smile vanished.

"Hannah, bambina, what is wrong?" she asked in her thick Calabrian accent.

"We have to leave," I gasped, pushing into her apartment and locking the door behind me. "Right now. Someone is coming."

Rosa didn't panic. She didn't scream. She simply looked at my face, read the absolute terror in my eyes, and walked slowly toward her small kitchen.

"Is it Elena?" Rosa asked quietly.

I froze. "You... you know she’s watching you?"

"Of course I know," Rosa said, reaching into a ceramic flour jar on her counter. "Thirty years I have watched the men in the dark sedans park across the street. I am old, Hannah. I am not stupid."

Open two: If Rosa knew she was being watched, why did she never run? Why did she stay in this tiny apartment for three decades?

She pulled a small, worn leather pouch from the bottom of the flour jar. She wiped the white powder from it and handed it to me.

"I stayed because she told me if I ever left Boston, she would kill my Tony," Rosa said, answering my unspoken question. Her voice broke on her son's name. "She took my boy. She told me he was dead, but a mother knows. I stayed so he would always know where to find me."

Tears pricked my eyes. "Rosa. Tony... Marco. He is alive. I just saw him."

Rosa’s breath hitched. The leather pouch slipped from her fingers, hitting the linoleum floor. She grabbed the edge of the counter, her knuckles turning white around the thin scar on her hand.

"He is alive?" she whispered, tears spilling over her wrinkled cheeks. "My boy is a man?"

"He's thirty-four," I sobbed, hugging her tightly. "He's beautiful, Rosa. And he loves you so much. We have to go to him."

"Yes," Rosa cried, quickly wiping her face. "Yes, we go. But first, my coat."

She walked toward the closet in the hallway. I bent down to pick up the leather pouch she had dropped.

As my fingers brushed the leather, I heard a sound that made my blood run cold.

The heavy, metallic scrape of my own apartment door opening two floors below us.

I crept to Rosa’s window and peeked through the blinds. Down on the street, parked directly in front of the building, was a black sedan. Two men in dark suits were standing by the entrance.

They weren't here for Rosa. They had gone into my apartment.

"Mom," I whispered in pure horror. My mother was down there, sleeping in her bedroom, recovering from chemo.

I turned back to Rosa. She was standing by the closet, holding her heavy wool coat. But she wasn't putting it on.

She was staring at the floor.

Lying on the hallway runner, partially covered by the shadows, was a heavy gold rosary.

I recognized it instantly. It was my mother's. She kept it on her bedside table. She never took it out of her room.

"Rosa," I said, my voice shaking. "How did my mother's rosary get in your hallway?"

Before Rosa could answer, the door to her bedroom—a room I thought was completely empty—slowly creaked open.

Stepping out of the shadows was a man I recognized from the restaurant. It was Silas. Rocco's head bodyguard. The man who was supposed to be protecting Rocco right now.