Chapter 4 - THE SILVER LOCKET AND THE CELLAR IN QUEENS
"Enzo, bring the Maybach to the fifty-sixth street side entrance right now," Dominic commanded into his cuff microphone, his dark eyes never leaving the brass V-14 tag in his palm. "And call thirty men from the Brooklyn crew to meet us on Steinway Street in Astoria. Quietly. No sirens, no flashy cars."
My heart leaped into my throat. "Mr. Moretti—what did you just mean when you said my husband didn't die in that fire four years ago?"
Dominic looked past me through the glass wall of the VIP lounge. Inside, six-year-old Rosie was sitting on the velvet bench wearing the shiny red patent-leather Christmas shoes, her little feet swinging happily as she took a sip of hot chocolate with a whipped-cream mustache on her upper lip.
For the first time in her life, she looked warm, safe, and completely carefree.
Dominic turned back to me, lowering his voice so not a sound would reach her.
"Four years ago, when that wooden workshop on Red Hook Pier burned down," Dominic said grimly, "the fire marshal pulled a charred body out of the office ruins wearing Michael’s stainless-steel Seiko watch. Two days later, my mother received a velvet jeweler’s box in the mail containing a severed ring finger wearing Michael’s gold St. Anthony band, along with a ransom note demanding five million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds from the rival Calabrese syndicate."
My stomach lurched. I braced my hand against the marble pillar to stay upright. "You told me Leo wore a gold St. Anthony ring? Leo never wore a ring on his left hand when he was working with table saws—he wore his wedding band on a silver chain around his neck!"
Dominic stopped cold. "He didn't have a St. Anthony ring?"
"No!" I fumbled beneath the collar of my wool coat and pulled out a thin silver curb chain hanging around my own neck. Dangling from it was a simple, scratched ten-karat gold wedding band engraved on the inside: C & L — Forever. "Look! He left his wedding band on our nightstand the morning of December nineteenth so the sawdust wouldn't scratch it! And he had a childhood scar across the knuckle of his left ring finger from when he fell off a bicycle at eight years old!"
Dominic stared at the simple gold band on my chain.
"The finger they sent my mother didn't have a bicycle scar," Dominic whispered, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. "My father was having heart surgery that week, so my Uncle Vittorio—my father’s younger brother—identified the body at the morgue and handled the five-million-dollar bearer bond drop himself. Vittorio told me the Calabrese family murdered Michael before the drop was completed."
"He lied to you," I breathed, the horrifying truth coming together. "Uncle Vittorio stole the five million dollars from your father’s safe using a staged kidnapping—and he used Anton Novak to scare me into silence so I’d never file a missing person report for Leo Miller in Queens!"
Before Dominic could reply, the private elevator at the end of the Bergman’s VIP corridor chimed open.
Out stepped a tall, silver-haired man in his sixties wearing a double-breasted camel overcoat and carrying a walking stick with a silver hound's-head handle, flanked by three burly men in gray wool coats.
Wait.
I recognized those gray wool coats instantly.
Those were the exact men who had walked into the back office of Novak’s Bakery yesterday afternoon to threaten Anton Novak about the cellar beneath the brick ovens!
"Dominic!" the older man called out smoothly, spreading his arms with a warm, patriarchal smile—until he stopped ten feet away and saw me standing beside his nephew.
"Uncle Vittorio," Dominic said, stepping half a pace to his left so his broad frame completely shielded me and blocked Vittorio’s view of Rosie inside the glass lounge. "My secretary told me you were in Atlantic City until Friday."
"Your mother called me at noon, nephew," Vittorio Moretti said, his sharp, hooded eyes flicking suspiciously toward my patched coat and worn vinyl purse. "She said you were coming to Bergman’s to pick up her diamond brooch for her birthday dinner tonight, and then your driver radioed the office that you canceled your three o'clock port commission meeting. Who is this?"
I kept my head down, pulling my wool scarf higher around my chin so Vittorio’s men wouldn't recognize me as the morning bread girl who had been scrubbing flour bins in the corner of Novak’s Bakery yesterday when they walked past.
"A witness from the Queens zoning board," Dominic lied without missing a beat, his voice icy calm. "We’re discussing the steam pipe easements on Steinway Street."
At the mention of Steinway Street—the exact block where Novak’s Bakery sat—I saw the muscle in Uncle Vittorio’s cheek twitch.
Inside the glass VIP lounge behind us, six-year-old Rosie hopped off the velvet bench in her new red Christmas shoes and skipped toward the glass door, holding out a white Bergman’s shoebox and a second drawing she had just made on a store napkin.
"Mommy! Look!" Rosie’s clear, bright six-year-old voice rang out as she pushed the glass door open a crack. "Mr. Luca said I can wear the red ones right now and put my old snow boots in the shiny box! And I drew a picture of Daddy’s blue house by the water for Mr. Dominic!"
Every drop of blood froze in my veins.
Uncle Vittorio’s head snapped toward the glass door.
He looked down at six-year-old Rosie—at her curly brown hair, her bright blue eyes, and that unmistakable Moretti dimple in her left cheek—and then his gaze dropped to the green carpenter’s pencil in her hand and the drawing on the napkin.
Rosie hadn't drawn our basement apartment in Queens.
She had drawn the little wooden paint-splattered shed with the peaked blue roof on Red Hook Pier that Leo had taken her to in his stroller when she was two years old—with the numbers 14-B written on the door.
Uncle Vittorio’s warm smile vanished, replaced by a look of pure, cold calculation.
"Well, well," Vittorio said softly, his gloved hand tightening around the silver hound’s head of his walking stick while his three men in gray overcoats shifted their stances in the narrow corridor, blocking the elevator exit. "So Anton Novak didn't send the carpenter’s widow to Chicago after all."
Dominic didn't draw a weapon in front of Rosie. Instead, he stepped calmly between the glass door and his uncle, while Luca inside the lounge quietly picked Rosie up and stepped behind the reinforced brick pillar of the stockroom.
"Take a good look at my niece, Vittorio," Dominic said, his voice a quiet promise of death. "Now tell me why your men were at Novak’s Bakery yesterday ordering Anton to clear out the cellar beneath the ovens before the city steam inspectors arrive tomorrow."
Uncle Vittorio smiled thinly, knowing there were fifty holiday shoppers just beyond the curtain of the main shoe salon—meaning neither side could open fire without bringing half the NYPD down on Fifth Avenue in ninety seconds.
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"You always had your father’s blind spot for sentiment, Dominic," Vittorio murmured, backing two steps toward the open freight stairwell with his three armed men covering him. "If you think Anton Novak was hiding dead bodies under those bakery ovens for the last four years, you’re stupider than Michael was. By the time your car fights through Midtown holiday traffic to Queens, that cellar will be empty—and you’ll never know why your brother walked into that vault on his own two feet!"
Vittorio yanked the heavy steel fire door of the freight stairwell open and vanished inside with his men, pulling the emergency fire alarm handle on the wall as he went!
