Chapter 3 - The Gold Lock of St. Jude
The ride back to Beacon Hill was dead silent.
Marcus drove with one hand on the wheel, the other hovering near his thigh holster. Elias had stayed behind at the warehouse with three capos to clear the body of Paulie Vitucci and assemble the soldiers. The family was mobilizing; word was already spreading through the North End social clubs that the Valente family had broken the truce before the wedding rings were even blessed.
When Roman entered the mansion, the front doors swung open to utter chaos.
The two guards he had posted in the foyer were unconscious on the marble floor, zip-tied with industrial tactical restraints. In the drawing room, Clara Marchetti was curled on the velvet sofa, her apron stained with tears, her fingers shredding a handkerchief.
Serena was standing by the cold fireplace, holding a silver fireplace poker, her hair pulled back, her eyes wild. When she saw Roman enter, the poker clattered to the slate hearth.
"Where is she?" Clara cried out, lunging from the couch toward Roman, collapsing at his knees. "Mr. Bellucci, please! A man came through the garden entrance—he had keys, he had the codes! He took my baby!"
Roman caught Clara by the shoulders, his grip firm, lifting her gently back onto the cushions. "Did you see his face, Clara?"
"He had a mask," she sobbed, her breath hitching in spasms. "But his hands—he was missing fingers! It was the man from the yard! He said if I screamed, he’d drop Ellie into the Mystic!"
Roman looked past Clara directly at Serena.
Serena was pale, but her chin remained high. "Silas wouldn't hurt a child. He loved Tomas. Ellie is his niece."
"Then why did your uncle ride out of Warehouse Seventeen with him thirty minutes ago?" Roman asked, his voice deadly calm as he approached her. Every step he took on the parquet was heavy, deliberate.
Serena blanched. "Antonio? That's impossible. My uncle is in Providence. He’s meeting with the textile unions—"
"Your uncle is in Boston," Roman cut in, stopping inches from her. He reached into his coat and produced the brass key of St. Jude he had pulled from Paulie’s dead fingers. "And Paulie Vitucci is dead on the floor of my vault. He died holding this. The key to Perpetual Sorrows."
Serena looked at the key, her pupils contracting. "That wasn't the key I gave Silas."
"Don't lie to me again!" Roman roared, the sound echoing through the cavernous high ceilings of the estate, causing Clara to flinch into the cushions. It was the first time in his life he had lost his temper in his own home. "A six-year-old girl is gone! My underboss was butchered! And every thread of this bloody tapestry leads directly back to your family!"
Serena did not flinch from his shout. Instead, she stepped closer, pressing her palm flat against the center of his chest, feeling the wild, furious beat of his heart through his wet shirt.
"Listen to me, Roman Bellucci," she whispered, her voice vibrating with an intensity that shocked him into stillness. "If I wanted you dead, I could have put ricin in your wine three weeks ago. If my family wanted your warehouse, we wouldn't have used a sixty-year-old smuggler with missing fingers to drive a flatbed through the front gates. We are being orchestrated."
"By whom?"
"Look at the key," she said, pointing down at the brass cross in his palm. "Look at the stamp on the shank."
Roman held it up to the light of the chandelier.
Near the base of the cross, barely visible beneath a film of grime, was a tiny engraving: *E.B.*
Not his father.
Elias Bellucci.
Roman stared at the initials. The air left his lungs in a cold, hollow rush.
"Tomas Marchetti didn't just rebuild your father’s Lincoln," Serena whispered, her hazel eyes glistening with unshed tears. "He found the remote detonator in Elias's workshop behind the salvage yard. Tomas took that detonator to my father, hoping the Valente family would protect him from Elias. But my father was weak. My father was terrified of an all-out war with the Belluccis, so he compromised. He let Elias run Tomas off the road, provided Elias agreed to a twenty-year border truce."
"You knew this?" Roman asked, his voice shaking with a rage so absolute it turned his vision red at the margins.
"I found the receipts last week," Serena said. "When you asked me to marry you, I took the gold key from my father’s safe. I gave it to Silas because Silas was the only one who had the other half of the proof—the actual bank transfers Elias used to purchase the C4 from the Irish in ninety-eight."
A sudden sound shattered the heavy silence—the shatter of glass from the rear terrace.
Marcus Reed drew his sidearm instantly, moving toward the hallway, but a concussive blast ripped through the French doors, blowing wood splinters and shredded curtains into the living room.
Roman tackled Serena to the floor, covering her body with his own as the sound of automatic gunfire erupted from the garden. Bullets chewed through the antique mirrors, raining silver shards down upon their backs.
Clara screamed, crawling under the dining table.
"Marcus!" Roman shouted through the roar of gunfire, drawing his Sig Sauer and firing three blind rounds through the shattered doorway.
"Two shooters on the patio!" Marcus called back, returning fire with measured, double-tap precision. "Tactical gear! They're not Valente boys, Roman—they’re wearing Bellucci colors!"
Roman looked down at Serena beneath him. Her hands were clutching his lapels, her breath hot against his neck.
"Elias isn't assembling the capos to help you," Serena said, blood trickling from a shallow cut on her forehead where flying glass had struck her. "He’s assembling them to announce your execution. He took Ellie to force Clara to sign a statement blaming you for Tomas's murder. And now he's cleaning the house."
Roman rolled off her, his eyes cold, the hesitation completely purged from his blood.
"Get Clara," Roman ordered Serena, his voice steady as iron. "We take the service tunnel to the carriage house. Marcus! Suppressive fire on the treeline!"
As Serena scrambled toward the trembling housekeeper, Roman rose to a crouch, aiming through the smoke-filled drawing room. A masked shooter stepped through the shredded patio doors, the Raven crest clearly visible on his black tactical vest.
Roman didn't hesitate. He pulled the trigger twice.
The shooter dropped hard.
"Come on!" Roman grabbed Serena’s hand, pulling her toward the kitchen stairs. As they ran, a stray bullet ricocheted off the marble doorframe, clipping Serena’s left shoulder.
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She gasped, stumbling, but Roman caught her around the waist, lifting her off her feet as he kicked open the reinforced steel door that led into the dark belly of Beacon Hill.
***