Chapter 3 - The Seventh Secretary
Don read the message twice.
Then he looked at the windows.
“Down.”
Elena barely moved before he pulled her behind the desk.
A crack split the glass.
The lamp beside them exploded.
Sofia screamed.
Don covered Elena with his body as another impact struck the window.
“Stay down.”
The office doors burst open.
Marco and the other guards rushed inside.
“Roof across the bay,” Don ordered. “Find him.”
Two men ran.
Marco closed the blinds.
Elena realized Don was bleeding.
“Your shoulder.”
“Glass.”
“You're bleeding.”
“I've had worse.”
“That's a ridiculous standard.”
Even now, his mouth twitched.
Sofia crawled toward them.
“They know.”
Don looked at the phone.
“No. One person knows.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because if the organization knew, we wouldn't have received a warning.”
Elena understood.
Someone was watching independently.
Someone who wanted Don afraid.
Or wanted him alive long enough to suffer.
The building entered lockdown.
Don refused a hospital.
A private doctor removed glass from his shoulder while Elena sat outside the conference room holding the black dossier.
She could have left.
Don even told her to.
A car waited downstairs.
A guard would take her anywhere.
Instead Elena said, “If I leave, whoever killed my mother wins.”
Don studied her for a long moment.
“You sound like Matteo.”
“Is that good?”
“It got him killed.”
“Then maybe he needed someone clumsy enough to survive.”
Don almost smiled.
They moved to a secure Rossy property outside Chicago.
For two days Elena and Sofia reconstructed the financial trail while Don quietly investigated Vittorio.
The deeper they went, the stranger the evidence became.
Vittorio had hidden records.
He had intimidated employees.
He had paid witnesses.
But the money suggested something unexpected.
He had also been moving millions away from Belladonna Holdings.
“He was stealing from them,” Elena said.
Sofia shook her head.
“Or protecting money from them.”
Don stood behind them.
“Vittorio has controlled our finances for twenty years. If he wanted to steal, he had easier methods.”
“So why hide it from you?” Elena asked.
Don had no answer.
On the third night, Vittorio arrived voluntarily.
He was sixty-three, silver-haired, immaculate, and furious.
“You've been searching my accounts.”
Don stood across the library.
“You've been lying to me for seven years.”
Vittorio saw Sofia.
Pain crossed his face.
“You should have stayed gone.”
“That's what you told Anna too?” Elena demanded.
Vittorio looked at her.
He seemed to age instantly.
“You're Anna's daughter.”
“You knew my mother.”
“Yes.”
“You knew how she died.”
“Yes.”
Don stepped forward.
“Who killed Matteo?”
Vittorio sat.
“I spent seven years preventing you from asking that question.”
“Why?”
“Because Matteo was right.”
“About you?”
“No.”
Vittorio looked toward Elena.
“About your father.”
Don froze.
“My father died twelve years ago.”
“No,” Vittorio said.
“Your father disappeared twelve years ago.”
Don's expression became lethal.
“I buried him.”
“You buried a body identified by dental records I provided.”
Elena whispered, “Oh my God.”
Vittorio looked broken.
“Salvatore Rossy is alive.”
Don crossed the room and seized his uncle by the collar.
“You're lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“Why would my father fake his death?”
“Because he was building something the Rossy name could not openly control.”
Belladonna.
Vittorio explained.
Salvatore Rossy had believed legitimate business made the family weak. Don and Matteo wanted to move away from organized crime.
Their father considered that betrayal.
So he vanished publicly and rebuilt his criminal network secretly.
Matteo discovered it.
Anna Moretti traced the money.
Both died the same night.
“Why didn't you tell me?” Don asked.
“Because you were twenty-nine and furious at the world. You would have hunted him.”
“I should have.”
“And died.”
Vittorio stood.
“I chose one nephew over the other because one was already dead.”
Don hit him.
Once.
Vittorio fell against the table.
Nobody intervened.
Elena stepped between them.
“Enough.”
Don stared at her.
“You don't get to decide that.”
“No. But your brother died finding evidence, not throwing punches. Maybe finish what he started.”
That reached him.
His fists slowly unclenched.
Vittorio wiped blood from his mouth.
“Your mother said something similar.”
Elena turned.
“You spoke to her that night?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
Vittorio's eyes lowered.
“She told me she had made a copy.”
“Of what?”
“The ledger proving Salvatore ordered the murders.”
“Where?”
“She wouldn't tell me.”
Elena thought of her childhood.
Her mother’s apartment.
Old books.
A sewing box.
A cheap piano Elena had hated practicing.
Then she remembered.
The piano.
After Anna died, Elena had sold almost everything.
But she had kept the piano.
It sat in a storage unit in Milwaukee.
Don saw her expression.
“What?”
“I think I know where she hid it.”
They left before dawn.
Don insisted on going.
So did Sofia.
Marco drove.
The storage facility looked exactly as Elena remembered: concrete hallways, fluorescent lights, metal doors.
Unit 318.
Elena unlocked it.
Her childhood waited beneath white sheets.
She pulled the cover from the piano.
Dust floated.
Don stood beside her.
“Where?”
“My mother taught me one song.”
Elena sat.
She pressed middle C.
Nothing.
She pressed it harder.
The key lifted.
Something clicked beneath it.
A compartment opened.
Inside was a small brass key and a folded note.
Elena recognized her mother's handwriting.
For Elena, when the truth becomes safer than silence.
Her hands shook.
Don unfolded the note.
Only one address appeared.
Sofia searched it.
“It's a bank.”
Milwaukee Central Trust.
Vittorio, who had remained behind under guard, called.
Don answered.
His face changed.
“What?”
Vittorio spoke urgently through the phone.
Don looked at Elena.
“Someone accessed Anna's old safe-deposit records ten minutes ago.”
Elena gripped the brass key.
“Who?”
Don listened.
Then slowly lowered the phone.
“The authorization was issued under my name.”
A sound came from the storage hallway.
Metal scraped against concrete.
Marco reached for his weapon.
Unit 317 opened.
A man stepped out.
He looked directly at Don.
May you like
And said:
“Your father wants his key back.”
