Chapter 5 - THE BLOODY COAT SMELLED LIKE THE WAREHOUSE
The dining room felt entirely devoid of air.
Carmine did not ask Benny to repeat himself.
He walked past Odette and went straight down the stairs to the staff kitchen.
Nell was standing exactly where he had left her.
“We are leaving,” Carmine said.
He didn't wait for her to ask questions.
He grabbed her coat from the staff rack, draped it over her shoulders, and ushered her out the back door into a waiting armored SUV.
Benny drove.
“Where are we going?” Nell asked.
Her voice was small in the massive, quiet car.
“A safe house in the French Quarter,” Carmine said.
He looked at her.
“Someone broke into your boarding house. They left a bloody coat on your bed.”
Nell closed her eyes.
She didn't scream.
She had lived in survival mode for too long.
“Whose blood?”
“I don't know yet,” Carmine said.
They arrived at a discreet, luxury townhouse above a closed antique shop on Royal Street.
It belonged to the Orsini family.
Nobody knew about it except Carmine and Benny.
Once inside, Carmine poured two glasses of water.
He handed one to Nell.
She took it, her hands steadying.
Benny’s phone buzzed.
He answered it, listened for a moment, and hung up.
He looked at Carmine.
“The boys at the boarding house checked the coat. It’s a dockworker’s jacket.”
Carmine stopped.
“A dockworker?”
“It has a name tag stitched into the collar, Boss. Marcus Vance.”
Carmine’s mind snapped the pieces together.
Marcus Vance.
The 59-year-old dockworker who had his leg broken by a falling crate at Warehouse 2 the previous week.
The man Carmine had ordered paid $2,400 just yesterday.
“Bellarose hurt my worker to send a message to me,” Carmine said softly.
His voice was colder than the ice in Nell’s glass.
“Why?” Nell asked. “What does a dockworker have to do with my father’s bakery?”
Carmine sat down in the velvet armchair opposite her.
“Warehouse 2 is where Bellarose’s imported goods are stored. My family manages the logistics. The crate that fell on Marcus wasn't an accident. Bellarose dropped it on him.”
“But why?”
Carmine looked at the antique coffee table.
He pulled the Bellarose contract from his inner jacket pocket.
He threw it onto the table.
“Because Bellarose wants this contract signed. He wants exclusive distribution rights through my warehouses. If I sign this, I legitimize his empire. I wash the money he stole from your father twenty years ago.”
Nell stared at the contract.
“Then don't sign it.”
“I wasn't going to.”
Carmine leaned forward.
“But Bellarose is pushing hard. He’s leaving my father’s watch, your mother’s rosary, and a bloody coat. He’s trying to tell me he owns the past, the present, and the future.”
Carmine opened the thick contract.
He flipped to the last page.
He stared at the signature line.
He went completely still.
Nell noticed.
“What is it?”
Carmine didn't answer.
He stared at the ink.
Conrad Bellarose had signed the document.
But there was a second signature on the guarantor line.
A signature required for any massive deal involving Orsini territory.
It was signed by Salvatore Orsini.
Carmine’s uncle.
The gray-haired man who had laughed at Nell the night before.
Carmine closed the folder slowly.
“Bellarose isn't acting alone,” Carmine whispered.
He looked at Benny.
“My uncle is partnering with him.”
Benny swore under his breath.
“Sal? He’s your blood, Boss.”
“He’s a traitor,” Carmine said flatly.
Suddenly, the heavy front door of the townhouse splintered inward.
The sound of a battering ram echoed through the quiet street.
Wood shattered across the hardwood floor.
Benny drew his weapon instantly.
Carmine grabbed Nell and pulled her behind the heavy mahogany bookcase.
Four men in dark tactical gear poured into the room.
They didn't shout police warnings.
They raised suppressed submachine guns and opened fire.
Glass shattered. Plaster rained down from the ceiling.
Carmine returned fire with deadly accuracy, dropping the first man through the doorway.
Benny laid down covering fire, forcing the others to take cover in the hallway.
“They didn't come to negotiate,” Benny yelled over the gunfire.
Carmine looked at Nell.
She was terrified, but she wasn't crying.
She was looking at the floor near the dead hitman’s body.
A small piece of paper had fallen from the hitman’s tactical vest.
Nell crawled forward, ignoring the bullets tearing through the drywall above her head.
She snatched the paper and crawled back.
She unfolded it.
Her breath hitched in her throat.
Carmine looked at it.
It wasn't a hit list.
It was a child’s drawing.
Done in bright, faded crayons.
A picture of a bakery, a tall man, and a little girl.
“I drew this when I was six,” Nell whispered, her hands shaking violently.
She flipped it over.
On the back, written in faded pencil, was a list of ingredients.
The exact measurements for the pecan pie filling she had made the night before.
“They didn't come to kill you, Carmine,” Nell said, looking up with absolute horror.
May you like
“They came for the recipe. And they came for me.”
TITLE: MY UNCLE’S SIGNATURE WAS WRITTEN IN RED INK
