Chapter 3 - THE LOCKET
“Get down!” Matteo roared.
He shoved Lena hard to the linoleum floor and threw his entire body over hers just as the tear gas canister detonated.
Thick, blinding white smoke violently blew out the front windows of the diner.
Glass rained down on Matteo’s back. Patrons screamed, coughing and scrambling toward the kitchen.
“Jimmy! The back door!” Matteo yelled, pulling Lena to her feet.
The air was already turning acidic. Lena’s eyes burned like fire, and her throat seized up. Matteo dragged her blindly through the thick smoke, navigating the layout of the diner purely by memory.
They burst through the swinging metal kitchen doors. Jimmy had already kicked the rear exit open, ushering Mrs. Patterson out into the rainy alley.
Matteo pushed Lena through the door.
“To the truck,” Matteo commanded, his voice tight from the smoke.
They ran through the muddy alleyway toward Matteo’s battered Ford F-150. As they piled in, tires screeched on the street parallel to them. Two black SUVs were blocking the front entrance of the diner.
Vincent’s men had arrived in force.
Matteo slammed the truck into reverse, the tires spinning furiously in the mud, before whipping it around and speeding down the back service road.
Rain battered the windshield.
Lena was gasping for air, clutching her ruined shirt, tears streaming down her soot-stained face.
“Matteo,” she choked out, staring at his bleeding knuckles. “What is happening? We’ve been safe for three years. You said Vincent was doing twenty to life. You said it was over!”
“I was wrong,” Matteo said, his eyes glued to the rearview mirror. His face was a mask of cold calculation, the quiet husband she knew entirely replaced by the ruthless underboss he used to be.
“What did you take from him?” Lena demanded, her voice rising in panic. “The kid said he wanted it back. What did you take, Matteo? Money? A ledger? Drugs?”
“We have to go to the apartment,” Matteo said, ignoring her question.
“They were just in our apartment!” Lena screamed. “You saw the photograph!”
“I know. But they didn't find it. Because they don't know where to look.”
Ten minutes later, Matteo parked the truck two blocks away from their small, rundown apartment building on the East Side.
He pulled a heavy, matte-black Glock 19 from the glove compartment and racked the slide.
Lena stared at the gun. She hadn't seen him hold a weapon in three years. It looked too natural in his hand.
They crept up the fire escape in the pouring rain, slipping through their bedroom window.
The apartment was destroyed.
The mattress was sliced open. Drawers were dumped on the floor. Every picture frame was smashed.
Lena clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle a sob. Her sanctuary. Her ordinary life. It was completely gone.
Matteo didn't hesitate. He walked straight to the small coat closet in the hallway. He tore the baseboard off the wall with his bare hands, revealing a dark gap between the floor joists.
He reached deep inside and pulled out a heavy, fireproof steel lockbox.
He set it on the kitchen counter.
“I need your necklace,” Matteo said, looking at her.
Lena blinked. “What?”
“The necklace I gave you for our first anniversary. The silver one with the tiny bronze key.”
Lena reached under her torn uniform collar and pulled the chain free. She had worn it every day for two years. Matteo had told her it was the key to an old jewelry box his mother owned.
“It opens this?” she asked, her hands shaking as she unclasped it.
“Open it,” he said.
Lena slid the tiny bronze key into the heavy lockbox. It turned with a heavy click.
She opened the lid.
Inside was a stack of bound passports, fifty thousand dollars in banded cash, and a small, worn velvet box.
Lena frowned. She picked up the passports.
She flipped them open.
One for Matteo. One for her. Under fake names.
But there was a third passport.
Lena opened it.
It was for a six-year-old girl. A girl with dark curls and wide, familiar brown eyes.
The name on the passport read: Sofia Marquez.
Lena stopped breathing.
The room began to spin.
“Matteo,” Lena whispered, her voice sounding like it was coming from underwater. “Who is this? Why does she have my last name?”
Matteo looked down at the floor, his broad shoulders rising and falling heavily.
“Open the velvet box,” he said softly.
Lena set the passport down and picked up the small box. She snapped it open.
Inside lay a heavy gold locket. It was tarnished, ancient.
Lena’s thumb brushed over the clasp. She popped it open.
Inside the locket was a tiny photograph of the same little girl. But in this picture, the little girl was clutching a faded, one-eyed stuffed rabbit.
Lena let out a shattered gasp and dropped the locket onto the counter.
“That’s Mr. Hops,” Lena choked out, stepping backward until her back hit the refrigerator. “That was my rabbit when I was a kid. How does she have it?”
She looked at the little girl’s face again.
The brown eyes. The slope of the nose.
It was a mirror.
“Seven years ago,” Matteo said, his voice breaking. “Before we met. You were in that clinic downtown. You went into premature labor.”
“My baby died,” Lena sobbed, clutching her chest. “The doctors told me she was stillborn. I held her wrapped in a blanket. She wasn't breathing.”
“She was heavily sedated, Lena. By a doctor Vincent owned.”
Lena’s knees gave out. Matteo caught her, lowering her gently to the kitchen floor.
“Vincent knew I was falling in love with you,” Matteo whispered, kneeling in front of her. “He knew I was pulling away from the family. He wanted leverage. An insurance policy to make sure I would never, ever cross him.”
“He stole my baby?” Lena wailed, the grief and rage tearing out of her throat like a physical object.
“He gave her to a family on the West Coast,” Matteo said. “They raised her. But Vincent always kept tabs on her. When I left the family three years ago, I didn't know she existed. I only found out two months ago, from a contact inside the prison.”
Matteo pointed to the lockbox.
“That’s what I took from him, Lena. I didn't steal money. I stole the adoption files from his lawyer’s safe. I was going to find her. I was going to bring her to you.”
Lena looked at the passport. Her daughter. Alive. Six years old.
And Vincent was out of prison.
“Where is she now?” Lena demanded, her tears stopping instantly, replaced by a cold, maternal fury.
Matteo looked at the clock on the wall.
“Vincent’s men grabbed her from her foster family yesterday. He’s holding her at the old railyard on 4th Street. He said if I don't trade my life for hers by midnight, he’s putting her on a freighter to Mexico.”
Lena stood up. She walked over to the counter and picked up the heavy gold locket. She clasped it around her neck.
Then she looked at Matteo’s gun.
“Teach me how to take the safety off,” Lena said.
Suddenly, Matteo’s cell phone rang in his pocket.
He pulled it out. The caller ID was blocked.
He answered on speakerphone.
“Hello, little brother,” Vincent’s smooth, aristocratic voice purred through the speaker. “I see you found the lockbox. How does it feel, Lena? To know your precious husband lied to you every night you shared a bed?”
“If you touch one hair on her head,” Lena snarled into the phone, “I will kill you myself.”
Vincent laughed. “Fierce. I like it. But you’re too late. She’s already moving.”
“The deal was midnight, Vincent!” Matteo barked.
“Plans change,” Vincent said. “But don't worry. I’m a fair man. I’ll give you a fighting chance. Go to the alley behind your building. I left a present for you.”
The line went dead.
Matteo and Lena ran to the bedroom window and looked down at the dark, rain-soaked alley.
May you like
Lying in the mud, directly beneath their fire escape, was a large burlap sack.
And the sack was moving.
