Chapter 3 - THE ESTATE
I didn’t have a choice. When Antonio Russo tells you to get in the back of his armored SUV, you get in.
The drive to Staten Island was silent. Maria sat beside me, her frail hand resting reassuringly over mine. Antonio sat in the front passenger seat, a looming silhouette against the passing streetlights.
My mind spun. My name on his dead father’s watch? It was impossible. My father was a retired mechanic in Ohio. We had no connection to the Brooklyn mafia. Someone was trying to frame me, or worse, tie me to the assassination attempt on Maria.
We pulled through towering iron gates into a sprawling, heavily guarded estate.
Inside, the house was a fortress of marble and mahogany. Antonio directed us into a massive library. He poured a glass of water, handed it to his mother, and then turned to me.
He tossed the silver pocket watch onto the mahogany desk.
“Read it,” he commanded.
My hands shook as I picked it up. It was heavy, antique silver. I turned it over. Scratched into the smooth metal on the back, the letters fresh and jagged, were the words: Ask Sophie.
“I swear to you,” I said, my voice cracking, “I have no idea what this means. I’m just a waitress trying to make rent.”
“Someone wanted you dead tonight, Mother,” Antonio said, ignoring my plea. “And they wanted to make sure we questioned the waitress who served you the bread. Why?”
Maria touched her chest, her breathing shallow. “Antonio, stop interrogating her. She saved my life. Look at the watch closely. Don't you see the dent?”
Antonio frowned, picking it up.
“Your father was carrying that watch the night his car was run off the bridge,” Maria said, her voice laced with sudden grief. “It was lost in the river. We never recovered it.”
A heavy silence fell over the library.
“If Marco left this,” Antonio said slowly, “then Marco knows who killed my father twenty years ago.”
Before anyone could speak, the heavy oak doors of the library slammed open.
A man staggered into the room. He was a few years younger than Antonio, wearing a soaked leather jacket. His face was bruised, and a dark, terrifying stain of fresh blood soaked the collar of his white shirt.
“Dante,” Maria cried out, rushing toward him.
Antonio’s estranged brother. I had seen him in the tabloids. He had walked away from the family business years ago.
Dante leaned against the doorframe, gasping for air. He looked at Antonio, his eyes wild.
“They know,” Dante choked out, clutching his side. “They know about the vault, Tony. And they sent Marco to silence me.”
Antonio caught his brother before he hit the floor. “Sophie!” he barked. “You’re a nurse. Fix him!”
I dropped to my knees, pressing my hands against Dante’s bleeding collarbone. As I tore his shirt open to get to the wound, something slipped from his inner pocket and fell onto the Persian rug.
May you like
It was a crumpled, faded photograph.
I glanced down at it and my breath caught in my throat. It was a picture of a younger Maria Russo. But standing right beside her, holding a baby, was my grandmother.
