Chapter 4 - THE PEARL ROSARY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BURIED
Carmine stared at the pearls resting in his palm.
“Buried?”
Nell stumbled backward until her back hit the kitchen counter.
“My mother died five years after the fire. We buried her in St. Louis Cemetery Number 3.”
She covered her mouth.
“He dug up her grave.”
Carmine closed his fist around the rosary.
The pearls dug into his skin.
Conrad Bellarose hadn't just recognized Nell.
He had been watching her.
He had desecrated a grave simply to leave a message that he could touch her past whenever he wanted.
“Benny!” Carmine’s voice echoed up the stairs.
Within seconds, Benny Santino appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Boss.”
“Lock down the estate. Pull the footage from the front gates. I want to know exactly how Bellarose got in.”
Benny hesitated.
“Boss, he didn't come through the front gates.”
Carmine’s eyes narrowed.
“Explain.”
“He came through the service entrance. Someone opened it for him.”
Benny looked uncomfortably at Nell.
“I checked the security logs. The override code belonged to Odette.”
Nell gasped.
Odette Puit had been the housekeeper for 22 years.
She was strict, demanding, and fiercely loyal to the Orsini family.
Or so they thought.
Carmine walked silently up the stairs.
He found Odette in the formal dining room, straightening the chairs from the night before.
Her hands were trembling slightly.
“Odette,” Carmine said.
She stopped.
She didn't turn around immediately.
When she did, she looked exhausted.
“Yes, Mr. Carmine.”
“Why did you let Conrad Bellarose into my house?”
Odette smoothed her black skirt.
“He is a business associate of yours, sir. He said he had an appointment.”
“You lied for him.”
“I did not.”
Carmine walked to the head of the table.
He didn't raise his voice.
He just looked at her with the weight of thirty years of family history.
“Odette. You helped my mother raise me. You know I don't ask questions twice.”
Tears welled in the older woman’s eyes.
She reached into her apron pocket.
She didn't pull out a weapon.
She pulled out a small, folded piece of paper and laid it on the mahogany table.
Carmine unfolded it.
It was a photograph of a young man sitting in a jail cell.
Odette’s son.
“He got into trouble three years ago,” Odette whispered, her voice breaking. “Gambling debts. Bellarose bought the debts. He told me if I didn't give him access to the house, my son would be killed in prison.”
Carmine stared at the photograph.
“Access for what?”
“He wanted to know about the girl,” Odette cried, pointing toward the floor where Nell was. “He told me to watch her. To report everything she did.”
Carmine felt a cold fury settle in his chest.
“You sold out a girl who scrubs your floors to protect your son.”
“I’m a mother, Mr. Carmine! What would you have done?”
Carmine looked at the photograph again.
He turned it over.
There was no writing on the back.
But he noticed something stuck to the edge of the paper.
A tiny piece of torn, yellowed cardboard.
He peeled it off.
It was half of a train ticket.
Dated twenty years ago.
The exact date the Fontaine bakery burned down.
Carmine held it up.
“Where did this come from, Odette?”
Odette wiped her eyes, looking confused.
“I don't know. It was in the envelope Bellarose gave me this morning.”
Carmine’s mind raced.
Bellarose was leaving breadcrumbs.
The watch. The rosary. The train ticket.
He wasn't just threatening Nell.
He was mocking Carmine’s father.
Suddenly, Benny burst into the dining room.
He was out of breath.
“Boss. We have a problem.”
“What is it?”
“We just sent a team to Nell’s boarding house to pack her things like you asked.”
Benny swallowed hard.
“The room was tossed. Destroyed.”
Carmine’s jaw tightened.
“Did they find anything?”
“They found a heavy winter coat laying on her bed,” Benny said.
“And?”
Benny looked sick.
May you like
“It was soaked in blood, Boss.”
TITLE: THE BLOODY COAT SMELLED LIKE THE WAREHOUSE
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