Chapter 3 - The Secret Behind the Wooden Box
Damiano moved before Lucia did.
He crossed the kitchen in darkness, struck the hallway wall with one shoulder, and reached the stairs while Stefano shouted orders behind him.
"Lina!"
Lucia ran after him.
Damiano took the stairs two at a time.
The scream had come from the second floor.
A door slammed.
Then silence.
He reached Lina's room.
Empty.
Window closed.
Bed disturbed.
Teddy bear on the floor.
Damiano saw the service door at the end of the hallway moving.
He ran.
A shadow disappeared down the servants' staircase.
Damiano followed.
At the bottom, a man turned.
Damiano recognized him.
Marco DeLuca.
Inner guard.
Another lion pin.
Marco raised a pistol.
Damiano hit his wrist before he could fire.
The weapon struck the floor.
Marco swung.
Damiano ducked and drove him against the wall.
"Where is she?"
Marco spat blood.
"Too late."
Damiano hit him again.
"Where?"
A small voice came from beneath the staircase.
"Here."
Damiano froze.
Lina crawled from behind a cabinet.
Marco stared at her.
She wasn't supposed to be there.
Damiano understood.
The scream had been deliberate.
A recording.
They had wanted him upstairs.
"Stefano!"
Men flooded the corridor.
Marco was restrained.
Lucia grabbed Lina and held her so tightly the child protested.
Damiano searched Marco.
Another burner.
A key.
And a photograph.
The photograph showed the middle drawer of Damiano's walnut desk.
The wooden box.
Now he understood the message.
The child opens what he cannot.
Not Lina.
Another child.
A child connected to something inside that box.
Damiano went upstairs.
Lucia followed despite his orders.
He unlocked the study.
The desk drawer was open.
The wooden box was gone.
For the first time that night, Damiano looked genuinely afraid.
Lucia saw it.
"What was inside?"
He turned.
"Sit down."
She didn't.
"Tell me."
Damiano removed the pocket watch from his jacket.
"My father gave me this when I was sixteen."
Lucia waited.
"He wasn't a good man. But once, before he died, he tried to do one good thing."
Damiano explained.
His father had secretly supported a young woman named Elena Moretti, who had worked for the family.
She had a son.
The boy's father had been Damiano's older half-brother, a man killed before Damiano turned fifteen.
That child was therefore Falcone blood.
A possible heir.
Damiano's father had hidden him.
After his father's death, Damiano continued protecting the boy anonymously.
The orphanage in Yonkers.
Forty thousand dollars every month.
Lucia stared.
"The boy is still there?"
"No."
"Where?"
Damiano looked toward the hallway.
"He's twenty-two now. His name is Gabriel Moretti. He's studying medicine in Boston."
"And Carlo knows?"
"He shouldn't."
"But he does."
"Yes."
The wooden box had contained Gabriel's original birth certificate, letters from his mother, and the only documents proving his connection to the Falcone family.
Salvatore didn't want Gabriel dead.
He wanted him to disappear.
Because a dead heir could become a martyr.
A missing heir could become leverage.
Lucia looked at Lina.
"What does this have to do with my daughter?"
Damiano was silent.
Lucia stepped closer.
"Seven years ago, you let a stranger with a baby into your house without asking a single question."
He looked at her.
"Why?"
There it was.
The question she had never asked.
Damiano answered.
"Your husband saved Gabriel's life."
Lucia stopped breathing.
"Antonio?"
Damiano nodded.
Years earlier, Antonio Bellini had been working construction near the Yonkers orphanage.
He had accidentally witnessed men searching for Gabriel.
Antonio had helped move the boy before they found him.
Later, Damiano had learned what he'd done.
Then Antonio died in the construction accident.
"Was it really an accident?" Lucia whispered.
Damiano couldn't lie.
"I don't know."
Her face broke.
For seven years, she had believed her husband died because a safety harness failed.
Now she understood why Damiano had given her shelter.
It had not been charity.
It had been a debt.
"I should have told you."
"Yes."
"I thought silence protected you."
Lucia looked at Lina.
"Silence never protects people forever."
Damiano accepted that.
A phone rang.
Marco's burner.
Stefano answered and handed it to Damiano.
No caller ID.
Damiano listened.
Salvatore Conti laughed softly.
"You finally opened the box, metaphorically speaking."
"Where's Carlo?"
"Close."
"Where's Gabriel?"
A pause.
"Now that's the question."
Damiano's blood went cold.
Salvatore continued.
"Your father spent his final years protecting blood. You spent eleven more doing the same. All that money. All that secrecy. And still, one trusted man with a burner phone was enough."
"What do you want?"
"Everything your family owns south of the Bronx. The docks. The trucking contracts. The investment fund."
"And Gabriel?"
"He lives."
"Proof."
A voice came through the phone.
Young.
Angry.
"Don't give him anything."
Gabriel.
Then a blow.
The line went quiet.
Salvatore returned.
"Tomorrow. Midnight. Pier 19."
The call ended.
Stefano looked at Damiano.
"It's a trap."
"Yes."
"You can't go."
Damiano looked at Lina.
She was sitting on the floor, holding her teddy bear.
The smallest person in the room had already saved him once.
He thought about his father.
About debts.
About inherited violence.
"No," Damiano said.
"I'm going."
May you like
But this time, he would not go where the enemy expected.
And this time, he would not go alone.
