Chapter 2 - The Ring I Had Buried
Marco pressed one finger to his lips.
Nobody breathed.
The stranger outside knocked again.
"Catherine Winters. I know you're in there."
My son buried his face against my neck.
I looked toward Alessandro.
He shook his head.
Don't answer.
The stranger continued.
"I have a message from David."
My heart pounded so hard it hurt.
Every instinct in me wanted to open that door.
Every warning in Alessandro's eyes told me not to.
Then the stranger said something no one outside my family should have known.
"Tell Catherine the blue cup is still under the sink."
My knees weakened.
The blue cup.
David and I had owned a ridiculous chipped coffee mug when we first married.
After the handle broke, he refused to throw it away.
He kept spare keys inside it under the kitchen sink.
After his death, I had moved apartments.
Before leaving, I had found the cup and cried for an hour.
No police officer knew that.
No funeral director knew.
No mafia boss should know.
"Who are you?" I called.
Alessandro swore under his breath.
The voice answered.
"Someone your husband trusted."
"What's your name?"
"Open the door."
Marco stepped in front of me.
"Bad answer."
The stranger laughed softly.
"Marco Bellini. Still suspicious."
Marco's face hardened.
Then gunfire erupted somewhere down the corridor.
The doctors ducked.
Logan screamed again.
Marco shouted, "Move!"
Everything happened at once.
A guard dragged a cabinet in front of the main door.
Another opened an internal service entrance.
The senior doctor protested.
"That leads to restricted surgical access."
"Good," Marco replied.
Alessandro attempted to sit up.
Pain tore through him.
The monitor alarmed.
The nurse pushed him back.
"You are not going anywhere."
He stared at her.
"Watch me."
Despite having died once that night, Alessandro somehow intimidated everyone into movement.
Within seconds he was transferred onto a mobile bed.
I followed with Logan.
We moved through a narrow staff corridor while distant shots echoed behind us.
I couldn't stop thinking about the man outside.
David sent me.
Was David alive tonight?
Had he known I was at the hospital?
Had he known Logan was here?
Questions slammed into each other.
We entered an elevator normally reserved for surgical transport.
Marco hit the basement level.
I stared at him.
"Where are we going?"
"Private exit."
"Take me to the police."
"No."
"You don't get to decide."
"If ordinary police could protect you, David wouldn't have disappeared."
That silenced me.
Alessandro lay pale beneath a blanket.
His eyes remained open.
"Give her the ring."
Marco looked at him.
"You sure?"
Alessandro nodded.
Marco handed it to me.
I held it beneath the elevator light.
The engraving was exactly what I remembered.
C.W.D.
Catherine Winters David.
It had been a joke between us.
The jeweler had asked what initials David wanted engraved.
David said, "Put hers first. She'll be right even after I'm dead."
I had rolled my eyes.
Now the memory made me sick.
I turned the ring.
There was something else.
A tiny groove near the inner edge.
Not damage.
A seam.
I looked up.
"What is this?"
Alessandro answered.
"David modified it."
"Why?"
"Open it."
I pressed my thumbnail against the groove.
A thin inner layer released.
Inside the ring was a microscopic storage chip.
I stared.
"What is on it?"
"Part of what got him killed."
"He's not dead. You said—"
"I said he survived the crash."
The wording hit me.
"You don't know if he's alive now."
"No."
The elevator doors opened.
We entered a basement loading area.
A black SUV waited beside a medical transport van.
Marco's men swept the area.
"Clear."
I refused to move.
"Tell me everything before I go anywhere."
Marco looked annoyed.
Alessandro did not.
He seemed to understand that after two years of lies, I had reached my limit.
"David uncovered a network called Meridian."
"Company?"
"Not exactly."
"What is it?"
"A partnership. Former intelligence contractors. Financial intermediaries. Police officials. Judges. Criminal organizations. They sell access."
"Access to what?"
"People."
I stared.
He continued.
"Phone locations. Medical records. sealed court files. Witness addresses. Bank accounts. Anything worth buying."
My hand tightened around Logan.
"And David was investigating them."
"Yes."
"Why fake his death?"
"Because he learned Meridian had identified his family."
The answer should have reassured me.
Instead rage spread through my chest.
"He let me bury him."
"He believed it was the only way to keep you alive."
"He could have contacted me."
"Any contact could have exposed you."
"I was his wife."
"I know."
"No. You don't."
My voice cracked.
"You don't know what it was like explaining to a six-month-old why Daddy never came home. You don't know what it was like losing our apartment. You don't know what it was like waking up every morning reaching for someone who wasn't there."
Alessandro accepted every word.
Then he said quietly, "You're right."
That disarmed me more than an argument would have.
Marco opened the SUV.
"We need to leave."
I got inside because bullets were still being fired somewhere above us and because Logan had begun shaking.
That was the only reason.
At least, it was what I told myself.
We drove underground through a secured hospital exit.
Baltimore passed beyond tinted windows.
Logan eventually fell asleep against me.
Captain Bear was pressed beneath his chin.
I examined the ring repeatedly.
David had touched it after his funeral.
That thought alone seemed impossible.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"A safe house," Marco said.
"I don't want a mafia safe house."
"It's not exactly on Airbnb."
I glared at him.
He almost smiled.
Alessandro's eyes remained closed.
For the first time, he looked less like a criminal legend and more like a wounded man barely staying alive.
I noticed his hand.
There was dried blood around his knuckles.
"Why was Logan on your chest?"
His eyes opened.
"What?"
"My son. How did he get into your room?"
"I don't know."
Marco answered.
"Security footage showed him walking out of the supply room around 2:11."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"How did he reach the VIP wing?"
"Service elevator."
"He can't reach half the buttons."
Marco's expression changed.
"We noticed."
Cold crept over my skin.
"Someone helped him."
"Possibly."
I pulled Logan closer.
"Why?"
Nobody answered.
We arrived at a waterfront townhouse before dawn.
The place looked nothing like I expected.
No gold furniture.
No armed statues.
Just clean rooms, thick windows, and too many locks.
A private doctor arrived to stabilize Alessandro.
Marco placed two men outside.
I sat at the kitchen table with Logan sleeping beside me.
An hour later, Alessandro entered wearing a black shirt over fresh bandages.
He looked terrible.
I didn't care.
"You owe me answers."
He sat across from me.
"Yes."
"Start with the crash."
He did.
David's "accident" had been staged on a rural road outside Baltimore.
A corpse from an unidentified federal case had been placed inside the vehicle.
Dental records had been altered.
The intoxicated driver was real but had been manipulated into taking responsibility for a collision he barely remembered.
The funeral home received sealed federal instructions not to open the coffin.
My stomach turned.
"Who had enough power to do that?"
"Someone inside David's own unit."
"Name."
"We don't know."
"David didn't tell you?"
"He had a suspicion."
"Who?"
Alessandro stared at the ring.
"His supervisor."
"Name."
"Jonathan Vale."
I knew that name.
David had mentioned him.
Not as a supervisor.
As an older colleague who helped him find the engineering job.
A mentor.
Jonathan had attended David's funeral.
He had hugged me beside the grave.
He had given me an envelope with five hundred dollars and told me David had been proud of me.
I stood.
"I'm going to be sick."
I reached the sink.
Nothing happened.
I gripped the counter until my hands hurt.
Then Alessandro said, "There's something else."
I turned.
"Of course there is."
"David didn't disappear alone."
My heart slowed.
"What does that mean?"
"He had help from someone you knew."
"Who?"
Before he could answer, Logan stirred.
"Mommy?"
I rushed to him.
"I'm here."
He rubbed his eyes.
"Where Daddy?"
I froze.
"What?"
He pointed toward the hallway.
"Daddy was here."
Every adult in the room went still.
I crouched.
"Sweetheart, Daddy isn't here."
Logan frowned.
"Yes."
"When?"
"Hospital."
My stomach tightened.
"Did you see Daddy at the hospital?"
He nodded.
"He opened closet."
Marco swore.
I grabbed Logan gently by the shoulders.
"What did Daddy say?"
My son yawned.
"He said go find sleeping man."
Alessandro stood.
Pain made him grip the table.
"What else?"
Logan thought hard.
Then he reached inside the pocket of his hoodie.
He pulled out a folded piece of paper.
My hands shook as I opened it.
The handwriting was David's.
No question.
Three words had been written across the page.
DON'T TRUST ALESSANDRO.
I looked up.
Alessandro was already staring at me.
Then I turned the paper over.
May you like
There was one more line.
HE KNOWS WHERE I AM.
