Chapter 4 - THE BURNING ROSES
The silence that followed Leo’s words was heavy enough to crush bone.
Bianca staggered backward, hitting the edge of the dining table. Her perfect, manicured hands gripped the mahogany wood as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff.
“The man with the scar on his face,” Lorenzo repeated. The words tasted like poison in his mouth.
Everyone in the room knew who Leo was describing. Dante Marino, the head of the rival family, bore a massive, jagged scar across his left cheek—a permanent reminder of the gardening shears Lorenzo’s mother had struck him with twenty years ago.
“Lorenzo, the boy is lying!” Bianca shrieked, her voice echoing hysterically. “He hates me! He’s always hated me! He’s making up stories to stop the wedding!”
“My son doesn’t lie,” Lorenzo roared, his legendary temper finally snapping. He grabbed the diamond bracelet from the table and hurled it at the wall. The priceless heirloom shattered against the plaster, diamonds scattering across the marble floor. “You’ve been sleeping with the man who murdered my mother! You’ve been selling him my family’s secrets!”
Answer One. Bianca wasn’t just a greedy socialite. She was a mole, deeply embedded in the Bellini family by Dante Marino himself, using a fake identity to bypass Lorenzo’s background checks.
“I swear to God, Lorenzo, I don’t know him!” Bianca wept, dropping to her knees.
Open Two. If Bianca was working for Dante Marino, why was she giving him Sofia’s diamond bracelet in a brown envelope? Was it payment? Or was it proof of something much darker regarding the car accident that killed Lorenzo’s first wife?
Lorenzo drew his weapon. The heavy, black steel pistol slid from his shoulder holster with a terrifying, metallic click.
Aunt Eleanor screamed. I instinctively pulled Leo behind my maid’s apron, shielding his eyes.
“Mr. Bellini, no!” Martha cried out from her chair, her frail voice cracking. “Not in front of the boy!”
Lorenzo froze. His finger hovered over the trigger. He looked at Bianca, trembling and weeping on the floor, and then he looked at his seven-year-old son, hiding behind my skirt.
The mafia boss closed his eyes, his chest heaving as he fought a violent internal war. Slowly, he lowered the gun.
“Claire,” Lorenzo said, his voice dangerously calm.
“Yes, sir?” I answered, my heart hammering in my throat.
“Take Leo and Eleanor upstairs. Lock them in the master suite. Martha, you go with them.”
“What are you going to do to her?” Aunt Eleanor asked, her hands shaking.
“I’m going to find out exactly how much of my life is a lie,” Lorenzo replied, his dark eyes fixed on Bianca. “And then I am going to deal with Dante Marino.”
I didn’t wait. I grabbed Leo’s hand and helped Martha up from her chair. We hurried out of the dining room, Aunt Eleanor closely behind us. As the heavy doors swung shut, the last thing I saw was Lorenzo standing over his sobbing fiancée.
We rushed up the grand staircase. The massive Bellini estate felt different now—no longer a sanctuary, but a cage.
I ushered them into the master suite, locking the heavy deadbolt behind us. Aunt Eleanor immediately went to the window, pulling the heavy velvet curtains back to look out over the grounds.
“It’s too quiet out there,” Eleanor whispered. “Lorenzo’s security detail should be swarming the perimeter.”
I sat on the edge of the massive king-sized bed, pulling Leo onto my lap. He was remarkably brave, but I could feel his small body trembling.
“You did the right thing, Leo,” I whispered, stroking his dark hair. “You told the truth.”
Leo looked up at me, his brown eyes wide. “Claire? Why did Bianca want to tear down Martha’s house?”
“To find something your grandma hid a long time ago, sweetie,” I said softly.
Reversal.
“But Grandma didn’t hide the papers under Martha’s house,” Leo said matter-of-factly.
I stopped breathing. Martha, who was resting in an armchair across the room, suddenly sat up straight.
“What did you say, child?” Martha asked, her voice shaking.
“Grandma didn’t hide them under your house,” Leo repeated. He reached into the pocket of his pajama pants again. This time, he didn’t pull out an object. He pulled out a small, folded piece of thick, yellowed parchment.
“I found this inside the rusted lockbox before I brought it downstairs,” Leo explained, unfolding the paper. “It’s a map Grandma drew.”
I gently took the parchment from his hands.
It was a hand-drawn map of the estate from twenty years ago. But the giant red ‘X’ wasn’t over the retirees’ cottages.
It was drawn over the old stone greenhouse at the far edge of the property.
“The greenhouse?” Aunt Eleanor gasped, rushing over to look at the map. “But the greenhouse has been abandoned for a decade. Why would Bianca want to bulldoze the cottages if the deeds are in the greenhouse?”
Answer One. Bianca had the wrong location. She was destroying the cottages for nothing.
“Because she only heard part of the story,” Martha realized, her eyes widening in horror. “Dante Marino knew your mother hid the lockbox near the cottages to throw him off the scent! He sent Bianca here to finish the job, but he gave her the wrong information!”
Open Two. If the deeds to the Bellini empire are in the greenhouse, we needed to get them before Bianca realized her mistake. But how?
Suddenly, the fire alarm in the master suite began blaring, a piercing, deafening screech that made Leo cover his ears.
Aunt Eleanor ran back to the window and screamed.
“Claire! Look!”
I rushed to the glass.
Down in the gardens, illuminating the dark night sky, massive flames were roaring into the air.
But it wasn’t the main house that was burning.
It was Martha’s cottage.
And standing on the lawn, holding a silver gasoline canister, was Bianca.
She looked up at our window, the firelight dancing across her ruined red dress. She raised a cell phone to her ear.
Then, my phone buzzed in my apron pocket.
I pulled it out with shaking hands. The caller ID was unknown. I answered it.
“Hello?” I breathed.
“Listen to me very carefully, you little maid,” Bianca’s voice hissed through the speaker, devoid of all her previous tears and panic. She sounded cold, lethal, and entirely in control.
“Where is Lorenzo?” I demanded.
“Lorenzo is taking a very deep sleep on the dining room floor,” Bianca laughed cruelly. “Did you really think a mafia boss could vet me? Dante’s people scrubbed my identity five years ago. I slipped a sedative into his champagne while he was yelling at me.”
My blood ran completely cold.
“I know the boy has the map, Claire,” Bianca said. “I saw him slip the parchment out of the lockbox. Bring the map down to the garden right now. If you don’t, I burn the rest of the cottages with the retirees trapped inside.”
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She paused, the crackle of the flames echoing through the phone.
“You have five minutes. Or the old people burn.”
