Chapter 2 - The Coffin of Ashes
The rain had turned into a slashing sleet by the time the armored Cadillac Escalade tore through the wrought-iron gates of the Duca ancestral estate in Westchester County. The grounds were an expanse of ancient oaks and rolling hills shrouded in dense, suffocating fog.
Matteo did not take the driveway to the main mansion.
He directed Mara down the winding, gravel path that led to the family mausoleum—a neo-Gothic structure of white Carrara marble standing silent against the backdrop of the dark forest.
“What are you doing?” Mara asked, checking the sidearm holstered beneath her armpit. “Your mother is at the manor house. Her security detail registered her arrival two hours ago.”
“Let her wait,” Matteo replied, his voice dead and cold. “Before I look into my mother’s eyes, I need to look into Elena’s grave.”
They stepped out into the freezing mud. The wind tore at Matteo’s long wool coat, but he felt nothing. He carried a heavy iron crowbar from the trunk in his bare right hand. Mara followed three paces behind, her flashlight cutting a harsh, white tunnel through the mist.
Matteo punched the master code into the electronic brass keypad of the mausoleum door. The lock clicked, releasing the heavy bronze gate with a long, metallic groan that sounded like a dying breath.
The air inside smelled of damp stone, old incense, and the lingering residue of funeral lilies long turned to dust.
In the center of the vaulted chamber rested the elevated sarcophagus of polished black granite. On the face of the stone, carved in elegant Roman letters, was the inscription:
*ELENA MARIA DUCA*
*BELOVED WIFE, DEVOTED MOTHER*
*“Until the Shadows Flee.”*
Matteo stared at the letters. For sixteen months, he had visited this room every Sunday. He had knelt on the cold stone floor until his knees bled, pressing his forehead against the freezing granite, begging the universe for just one more minute to hold her hand, to apologize for the petty arguments, to tell her that Leah had spoken her first complete sentence.
He had cried until his tear ducts were raw. He had contemplated suicide on the third month, sitting on the very bench where Mara now stood guard, his service pistol resting in his lap, stopped only by the thought of his orphaned daughter.
“Help me with the lid,” Matteo said. His voice was completely devoid of inflection.
“Matteo, exhumation without a warrant—”
“Now, Mara.”
Mara did not argue further. She set her heavy tactical flashlight on the edge of a nearby pedestal and jammed the pry bar into the seam between the black granite lid and the sarcophagus base. Matteo gripped the opposite edge with his bare hands, his muscles straining against the two-hundred-pound stone slab.
With a grinding screech that set Matteo’s teeth on edge, the granite gave way. It slid three feet to the side, thudding heavily against the support pillars.
Inside lay the mahogany casket, its brass handles tarnished by the subterranean dampness.
Matteo didn't hesitate. He wedged the crowbar under the master latch of the coffin lid. The wood groaned, splintering around the brass screws. With a violent heave, he wrenched the lid open.
Mara swung the beam of the flashlight down into the interior.
Matteo braced himself for the sight of horror—for a decomposing corpse, for skeletal remains, for anything that would anchor his sanity back into the world of natural law.
The satin interior was immaculate.
There was no body.
In place of Elena’s remains lay four rectangular blocks of lead ballast, each stamped with the logo of the Duca Maritime Shipping Fleet. They were wrapped neatly in industrial bubble wrap, secured with heavy yellow cargo straps to match the exact weight of a one-hundred-and-fifteen-pound woman.
And lying atop the highest lead bar, placed precisely where Elena’s chest should have rested, was a single, fresh, red Baccara rose.
Beside the rose was a silver burner phone.
Matteo’s breath caught in his throat. He reached into the casket, his fingers brushing against the cold plastic of the phone.
The moment his fingers touched the casing, the device began to vibrate.
The screen illuminated in the dark interior of the tomb. An incoming call from an unlisted, encrypted number flashed on the tiny digital screen.
Mara drew her weapon, sweeping the shadows of the mausoleum. “Matteo. Don't touch it. It could be triggered.”
Matteo ignored her. He snatched the phone from the empty coffin and swiped the green icon. He held the speaker to his ear, his breathing ragged.
“Who is this?” he demanded.
A silence stretched for three agonizing seconds. Then, a voice came through the speaker—low, trembling, and unmistakably raw with terrified emotion.
“Matteo... you shouldn't have opened the crypt.”
It was Elena.
It was not a recording. It was not a synthesized voice. He knew the specific, breathless lilt at the end of her consonants better than he knew his own pulse.
“Elena?” Matteo collapsed against the edge of the granite sarcophagus, his legs nearly giving out beneath him. “Elena! Where are you? What is this? Why did you do this to me? I buried you! I washed Leah’s tears every night for sixteen months!”
“Matteo, listen to me,” she sobbed, the sound muffled as if she were speaking into a cloth or hiding in an enclosed space. “Every word you speak on this line is being monitored. Your mother didn't hide me to punish you. She hid me because the car crash wasn't an accident. They tried to poison me, Matteo. They were trying to reach Leah through me.”
“Who?” Matteo roared, his voice bouncing off the marble vaults of the dead. “Who tried to poison you?!”
“The people you sit with at the board table every Tuesday,” Elena whispered, her voice fracturing with sheer panic. “The syndicate within Duca Pharma. Julian knows I discovered the truth about the trial batch. If they know I’m alive, they won't just kill me this time. They will take Leah to secure the patents. Caterina did this to save our daughter!”
“Where are you, Elena? Tell me where you are!”
“Look behind you,” the voice whispered.
Matteo spun around toward the entrance of the mausoleum.
Through the iron grating, headlights suddenly cut through the Westchester fog. Two black SUVs had quietly navigated the gravel path without their sirens, boxing the Escalade into the cul-de-sac of the cemetery.
The doors of the SUVs clicked open in unison. Armed men in tactical gear stepped out into the freezing rain.
May you like
And walking between them, holding a black umbrella against the storm, was Donna Caterina Duca.
***