Chapter 9 - The Secret in the Silver
The next morning, the estate was on maximum lockdown.
Black SUVs with tinted windows lined the driveway. Men with submachine guns stood every twenty yards along the tree line. The sky was overcast, threatening snow, adding to the suffocating sense of impending violence.
Leo sensed the tension. He refused to leave my side, trailing behind me like a little shadow.
While Ricardo was occupied in the lower levels dealing with the captured assassin, Leo led me by the hand toward his father's private gallery—a room I had been strictly forbidden to enter.
"Leo, no," I whispered, trying to pull him back. "Your father said this room is private."
"Sparkly," Leo insisted, pulling harder. "Mama's sparkly."
He pushed open the heavy mahogany door, which had been left unlatched by the cleaning staff.
The room was bathed in soft, filtered light from a skylight above. Glass display cases held rare antiquities, ancient Roman coins, and priceless Renaissance jewelry.
Leo ran straight to a low glass vitrine near the far corner. Inside rested a heavy antique silver locket, engraved with an intricate family crest of a phoenix rising from ash.
"Open," Leo pleaded, jumping up and down. "Mama said it sings!"
I looked around nervously. The house was tense; the last thing I needed was to be accused of theft. But the pure wonder in Leo's eyes melted my resolve.
The case was unlocked. I reached inside, lifted the cool, heavy silver piece, and examined it.
It was exquisite, late 19th-century Italian craftsmanship. There was a tiny notch near the clasp.
"See?" Leo clapped. "Open!"
I pressed the small catch. The locket popped open.
Inside, there was no portrait of Elena, nor was there a music box mechanism.
Tucked into a hollowed-out velvet compartment was a modern micro-SD card and a folded scrap of paper covered in tight, frantic handwriting.
My breath stalled.
I unfolded the paper. The ink was faded, written in elegant script:
*Ricardo—If you are reading this, I am already dead. It wasn't the Rossis. Look inside the house. The viper drinks your wine and sits at your right hand. Vincent has been feeding coordinates to the Chicago syndicate for eighteen months. Protect our son.*
*—Elena.*
The world seemed to spin on its axis.
Elena Moretti hadn't been killed by rival mobsters in an open war. She had been executed because she discovered a traitor in their midst. And the traitor was Vincent—the man who held the keys to the entire Moretti security grid.
"Clara?" Leo asked, tugging on my sweater, sensing the sudden terror radiating from my body. "Is Mama singing?"
"No, sweetheart," I whispered, my hands trembling violently as I shoved the paper and the micro-SD card back into the silver locket and snapped it shut. "Mama left a message for Papa."
Before I could turn around, the heavy door of the gallery clicked shut.
The lock turned from the inside.
Standing in the shadows near the entrance was Vincent. He held a silenced semi-automatic pistol pointed directly at my chest.
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"You really should have stayed in the kitchen, Clara," Vincent said with a cruel, dead-eyed smile. "Curiosity kills more than just cats."
***