Chapter 2 - THE SILVER WOLF
Children have to be taught pity. To Sophie Bennett, the overturned silver frame on the oak cabinet was not a monument to my shattered soul; it was simply an object that had fallen asleep. Her innocence was a sharp blade, cutting through the heavy, suffocating atmosphere of the Romano estate.
“It’s okay if it hurts,” Sophie said, her small voice cutting through the hiss of the fireplace. “When I scrape my knee, Mommy kisses it. Does someone kiss the picture?”
Maya gasped, stepping forward as if to physically shield me from the child’s words. “Sophie! That is enough. We are leaving the dining room right now.”
But as Maya leaned over to lift her daughter from the forbidden chair, Sophie resisted, squirming away. In the struggle, the collar of Sophie’s pale blue dress slipped. A heavy silver chain tumbled from beneath the fabric, swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
At the end of the chain hung a pendant.
My heart, which had beaten with a steady, deadened rhythm for two years, suddenly stopped.
I stood up. The chair scraped violently against the marble floor, a sound like a gunshot in the quiet room. My guards, Dante and Silas, instantly went on high alert, their hands hovering over the concealed weapons in their jackets.
“Mr. Romano, I am so sorry,” Maya stammered, misinterpreting my reaction. She scooped Sophie into her arms, her eyes wide with genuine terror. “She’s just a child, she doesn’t understand—”
“Stop,” I commanded. My voice was dangerously low, a register I reserved for the men who owed me money or their lives.
I walked around the massive dining table. Maya trembled, taking a step back, clutching her daughter to her chest. I did not look at Maya’s terrified face. My eyes were locked entirely on the piece of silver resting against Sophie’s collarbone.
It was a wolf. A silver wolf howling at a crescent moon, its eye embedded with a tiny, chipped sapphire.
It wasn't just any pendant. It was a custom piece, one of only five ever made in a private forge in Sicily. I knew this because I had commissioned them myself ten years ago. I had given them to the five men I trusted most in this world. My inner circle. My capos.
Three of those men were dead. One was standing outside the estate gates right now.
And the last one… the last one was Julian. My right hand. The man who had held me together when my wife and daughter were killed in that fiery car crash on the coastal highway.
“Where did she get that?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper, yet it filled the room.
Maya swallowed hard, her knuckles turning white as she held Sophie. “It… it belonged to her father. My late husband. He gave it to her before he died.”
“What was your husband’s name?”
“David. David Bennett.”
I stared at the pendant. David Bennett. A ghost. A nobody. Yet he possessed a token that meant he was either intimately connected to my empire, or he had killed one of my men to get it. Or, a third, far more terrifying option began to form in the dark recesses of my mind.
“Take her to your quarters,” I told Maya, forcing my gaze up to her terrified brown eyes. “Stay there. Do not leave the estate. Do not make any phone calls. Dante!”
Dante stepped forward, his face an emotionless mask. “Yes, boss.”
“Escort them. Keep a man outside their door. No one goes in or out without my explicit permission.”
Maya looked as though she was going to cry, but she nodded tightly, hurrying out of the room with Sophie pressed against her shoulder. As she left, Sophie peered over her mother’s shoulder, waving her small hand at me.
“Bye, Mister,” she whispered.
May you like
I didn't answer. I looked down at the empty chair where my daughter used to sit, the air suddenly thick with a conspiracy that had remained buried for twenty-four months.
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