THE MAFIA BOSS’S WIFE TRIED TO POISON HIS 80-YEAR-OLD MOTHER—BUT THE HOUSEMAID’S DISCOVERY BROUGHT THE WHOLE EMPIRE DOWN

“Sabrina?” Vincent lowered his revolver, his voice laced with absolute disbelief.

She stepped into the damp tunnel, shutting the heavy metal door behind her. She was breathing hard, clutching her left arm. Her designer dress was torn, and blood soaked through the sleeve, but she was very much alive.

“Marcus is a terrible shot,” Sabrina hissed, wincing as she leaned against the brick wall. “He grazed my shoulder when I confronted him. I played dead on the bedroom floor until he left to hunt you down.”

Eleanor shrank back against the wine racks. “You... you’re alive.”

“No thanks to your naive trust in the staff, Eleanor,” Sabrina snapped, glaring at me. Then she turned her sharp eyes back to her husband. “We don't have time for this. Marcus has locked the estate gates. He’s calling in the Rossi family hitmen to clean house. We have less than ten minutes before this tunnel is swarming with men.”

Vincent didn't move. He stared at the woman he had been married to for twenty-seven years. The woman who had drugged his mother just hours ago.

“Why should I trust you?” Vincent asked coldly, raising his gun again and aiming it squarely at Sabrina’s chest. “You poisoned my mother tonight. You threatened Harold with my father’s watch. You were going to blackmail me to the feds!”

Sabrina didn't flinch at the gun. She looked at Vincent with a strange mix of anger and desperate sorrow.

“I drugged Eleanor because I was trying to save her life!” Sabrina cried out, her voice echoing off the damp bricks.

“By putting her in a hospital?” Vincent growled.

“By getting her out of this house!” Sabrina shouted back. “I found out yesterday that Marcus sold us out to the Rossis. I knew they were planning a hit on this estate tonight during the engagement party. I couldn't warn you, Vincent—Marcus had my phones tapped and his men watching my every move. If I told you, he would have killed us all before the guests even arrived!”

My mind raced, trying to piece together the chaos. “So you poisoned the tea so the paramedics would come?” I asked.

Sabrina looked at me, a bitter smile crossing her pale lips. “Yes, you stupid girl. If Eleanor had a medical emergency, the ambulance would have taken her to the hospital. Harold would have gone with her. They would have been safe behind police lines when the Rossi hitmen breached the gates.”

Eleanor stared at her daughter-in-law, the betrayal and confusion warring in her eyes. “But you threatened Harold last week. You offered him two million dollars to leave me.”

“Because I knew the Rossis were coming for our whole family!” Sabrina said, tears finally breaking through her tough exterior. “I wanted him to take the money and run so he wouldn't be caught in the crossfire! I played the greedy, jealous wife so nobody would suspect I knew about the hit!”

Vincent slowly lowered the gun, the realization crashing over him. “You made yourself the villain... to get my mother and Harold out of the blast radius.”

“I’ve been the villain of this family for twenty-seven years, Vincent,” Sabrina whispered, sliding down the brick wall to sit on the damp floor, clutching her bleeding shoulder. “What’s one more night?”

She reached into her good pocket with her trembling hand and pulled out two crisp pieces of paper. She held them out to Eleanor.

“Here,” Sabrina said weakly.

I stepped forward and took the papers from her hand.

They were two first-class plane tickets. One-way to Florence, Italy. The departure time was 11:00 PM tonight.

The names on the tickets were Eleanor Carbone and Harold Whitmore.

“I bought them last week,” Sabrina said, looking up at Eleanor with exhausted, bloodshot eyes. “I wanted Harold to take you away. Far away from this life. From the violence. You deserve a few happy years, Eleanor. You always did.”

Eleanor covered her mouth, a sob tearing through her chest. She knelt down on the dirty tunnel floor in her elegant gown and wrapped her arms around the woman who had tormented her all evening.

“Oh, Sabrina,” Eleanor wept, burying her face in Sabrina’s hair. “You foolish, brave girl.”

Vincent stared at his wife, guilt washing over his face. He crouched down beside them. “I’m sorry, Brina. I should have known.”

“Save your apologies,” Sabrina coughed, waving him off. “Harold is in police custody. He’s safe from Marcus and the Rossis. But we aren't. Marcus is going to search the boathouse next.”

“Then we fight,” Vincent said, his eyes hardening as he checked the cylinder of his silver revolver. “I’m not dying in a basement.”

“You only have six bullets, Mr. Carbone,” I pointed out, my voice shaking. “And Marcus has an army coming.”

Sabrina looked at me, her eyes locking onto my apron pocket. “Emma. Did you pick up my silk coat in the foyer?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The dry-cleaning receipt in the pocket,” Sabrina said urgently. “Marcus planted that receipt to frame me for Dr. Thorne’s murder, but he made a fatal mistake. He didn't check the back of it.”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out the receipt, and flipped it over in the dim lighter fluid glow.

Written in hastily scrawled pen on the back of the receipt was a locker number and a combination code.

“Dr. Thorne knew Marcus was going to kill him,” Sabrina explained, breathing heavily. “Thorne hid Marcus’s financial records—the proof of his treason with the Rossi family—in a locker at the train station. If we get those records to the Mafia Commission, Marcus is a dead man.”

Suddenly, the heavy metal door leading to the boathouse rattled again.

But this time, it wasn't Sabrina.

A deafening blast from a shotgun blew the hinges off the metal door. The heavy steel crashed to the tunnel floor, kicking up a massive cloud of dust.