Chapter 7 - THE MOTHER’S CONFESSION
The boathouse grew so quiet I could hear the rain beginning to tap against the tin roof.
I stared at the small, pearl-handled pistol in my hand, the torn strip of my husband’s bloody uniform wrapped around it like a morbid ribbon.
“Tell me this is a lie,” I whispered, my voice trembling so hard it barely made a sound.
Eleanor Caruso didn’t look up. She kept her eyes fixed on the wet floorboards, her shoulders shaking violently against the ropes that bound her to the chair.
“Mom,” Luca said, his voice completely hollow. He stepped off Silas’s neck, letting the hitman gasp for air. “Mom, what is this?”
Eleanor finally lifted her head.
Her face was utterly broken, stripped of all the regal dignity she had carried for the six years I had known her.
“Antonio was going to kill him,” Eleanor cried, her voice cracking in agony. She looked directly at Luca. “He was going to kill you, Luca.”
Luca flinched as if he had been struck. “What are you talking about? Dad loved me.”
“Your father loved the empire!” Eleanor screamed, a sudden, fierce energy taking over her fragile frame. “When you told him you wanted to legitimize the family, when you said you wanted to pull the Carusos out of the drug trade… he told the capos you were weak. He was planning a hit on his own son to keep control of the streets!”
Luca staggered backward, his gun dropping to his side.
Vanessa laughed maliciously from the corner. “A real family drama. It almost brings a tear to my eye.”
“Shut up!” Luca roared, aiming his gun at Vanessa without looking at her. He turned back to his mother. “You shot him? In the alley behind the restaurant?”
Eleanor nodded, tears pouring down her cheeks.
“I asked him to take a walk with me out the back door. I begged him to let you step away from the life. He laughed at me. He said you were a liability that needed to be pruned. So… I pulled that pistol from my purse.”
She looked at me, her eyes filled with an unbearable sorrow.
“I shot him in the chest. I didn’t know the ambulance was already on the street for a different call. Your husband, David… he ran into the alley right after the gunshot. He saw me standing there with the gun.”
I felt the air rush out of my lungs.
David hadn’t just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had been a direct witness to a mafia matriarch murdering her husband.
“David took the gun from me,” Eleanor wept. “He wrapped his uniform cloth around it so I wouldn’t get blood on my hands. He loaded Antonio into the back of the ambulance and told me to run. He promised he wouldn’t tell the police I did it. He promised to say it was a drive-by shooting.”
“But Vanessa’s men intercepted the ambulance,” I finished, piecing the nightmare together, the puzzle finally locking into place.
“Yes,” Eleanor sobbed. “Silas and his men crashed the ambulance to finish Antonio off, thinking they were doing a hit for the Romano family. David barely escaped with the evidence. He hid the gun and the rosary, and he came to me three days later.”
I stared at her, horrified. “He came to you? Before he was killed?”
Eleanor nodded. “He came to the mansion. He told me Vanessa’s men were hunting him. He asked me for money to get you and Molly out of the city. I went to the safe to get the cash… but I was too late.”
Silas chuckled from the floor, coughing up blood. “Yeah. We caught the ambulance driver leaving the estate. Beat him to death in the alley three blocks away. Made it look like a mugging. Covered up our loose ends.”
I felt bile rise in my throat.
Eleanor looked at me, pleading.
“Rachel, I didn’t order David’s death. I swear to you. I tried to save him. When I found out the Romanos killed him, I was devastated. But I couldn’t go to the police. If I told them the Romanos killed David because of the ambulance, the investigation would have led straight back to me shooting Antonio in the alley. Luca would have been destroyed.”
“So you hired me,” I whispered, stepping backward, putting distance between me and the woman I had thought of as a grandmother to my child.
“I hired you to protect you!” Eleanor begged. “I gave you a home, I gave Molly a safe place to grow up. I made sure Silas could never touch you inside our walls. I lived with the guilt every single day, Rachel. Every time you served me tea, every time Molly smiled at me… it broke my heart.”
“You used us,” I said, my voice turning to ice. “You kept us as pets to soothe your own guilty conscience.”
I reached down and pulled a small knife from Luca’s belt.
Vanessa’s eyes widened, thinking I was coming for her.
But I walked over to Eleanor and sliced the zip-ties binding her hands and feet.
Then I sliced the ties holding Molly.
Molly instantly threw her arms around my legs, sobbing uncontrollably.
I picked my daughter up, burying her face in my neck so she wouldn’t have to look at the blood or the guns.
“Rachel,” Luca said softly, reaching a hand out toward me. He looked completely shattered, a king whose entire foundation had just crumbled to dust. “Please.”
“Don’t,” I warned him, stepping back.
I dropped the pearl-handled pistol onto the floorboards. I dropped the heavy silver rosary next to it.
“I don’t want your money. I don’t want your protection. I am taking my daughter, and we are walking out of this boathouse. If you or anyone in your family ever comes near us again, I will go to the police, and I will burn this entire empire to the ground.”
I turned my back on the mafia boss, the murderous fiancée, and the weeping matriarch.
I walked out the door of the boathouse, into the pouring rain, holding the only thing in the world that mattered to me.
We had made it halfway down the wooden dock when I heard the heavy footsteps behind me.
I spun around, my hand reaching for the silver gun still tucked into my waistband.
But it was Luca.
He had walked out into the rain, leaving his mother and his enemies behind.
May you like
In his outstretched hand, he was holding the worn, yellow piece of paper. The note David had written.
“You missed the back, Rachel,” Luca said, his voice breaking. “In the pawn shop, when Vanessa called, you dropped it. You never read the last line.”
