Chapter 3 - THE BURNED POCKET WATCH
The heavy brass handles of the ballroom doors didn't budge. Marco’s remaining loyal men rushed the exits, throwing their weight against the wood. Nothing. Leo had locked seventy of Chicago’s most powerful people inside their own fortress.
“He has the security system,” Dominic said, his voice tight. “The entire house is on lockdown. We’re sitting ducks.”
Marco didn’t panic. He reached into his pocket and slid his dark glasses back over his eyes, shielding them from the chandeliers. He walked toward Vivian, who was still kneeling on the marble floor. He knelt in front of her.
“How long, Vivian?” Marco asked. His voice wasn’t angry. It was exhausted. “How long has Leo been running my house behind my back?”
Vivian looked down at the child’s drawing in my hands. “Since the ambush. Leo came to me the morning you woke up in the hospital. He said the rival families didn’t hit your convoy. He did.”
I gasped. Leo had been Marco’s shadow for ten years. “Why?” Marco asked.
“Because of what was in the lead car,” Vivian whispered. “Leo thought you were moving the cash from the offshore accounts. He hit the convoy to steal it. But he didn’t find cash, did he, Marco?”
Marco went perfectly still. He reached inside his suit jacket. He pulled out an object wrapped in a scorched linen handkerchief. He unwrapped it carefully.
It was a gold pocket watch. Half of it was melted. The glass face was shattered. “No,” Marco said quietly. “He didn’t find cash.”
Dominic stared at the watch. “Is that... Uncle Carmine’s watch? From the old country? Marco, why would Leo slaughter four of our men for an antique watch?”
“Because it’s not just a watch,” Marco said. He pressed a hidden latch on the side of the melted gold casing. The back popped open. Inside wasn't a clock mechanism. It was a tiny, intricately engraved micro-SD card.
“The offshore accounts aren’t just money,” Marco explained. “It’s the blackmail files. Decades of politicians, judges, and police commissioners. Whoever holds this card controls the city.”
Suddenly, the speakers in the ballroom crackled to life. Leo’s voice echoed from the ceiling. “You always were too smart for your own good, Boss.”
Marco looked up toward the security camera in the corner. “Where is the boy, Leo?”
“Safe. For now,” Leo’s voice sneered. “You have ten minutes to slide that watch under the ballroom doors. If you don't, I drop a match on the East Wing. The boy is tied to a chair in the library.”
Vivian screamed. The East Wing. The library was on the third floor.
Marco stood up slowly. He didn't look like a half-blind man recovering from surgery. He looked like the boss of the Bellini family. “You won’t burn the house down, Leo. You’re too greedy.”
“Try me,” Leo laughed.
I looked at the burned pocket watch in Marco’s hand. Then I looked closer. There was an engraving on the inside of the lid. To A. Rossi. For loyalty.
My breath caught in my throat. A. Rossi. Antonio Rossi. My father.
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My father was Marco’s driver. He died in the ambush a month ago. I looked at Marco. “Why does my father’s name on that watch?”
Marco turned toward me, his jaw clenching. “Because your father didn’t die in the ambush, Sofia. He’s the one who gave me this watch before he vanished.”
