THE SECRET IN THE MUSIC BOX AND THE MOBSTER’S REVENGE

The rain was coming down in sheets, matting Luca’s dark hair to his forehead and soaking right through his expensive suit.

He stood at the edge of the wooden dock, the churning river roaring beneath us, holding out the fragile yellow paper like a peace offering.

I clutched Molly tighter against my chest. She had stopped crying and was now watching Luca with wide, exhausted eyes.

“I don’t want to read it,” I yelled over the storm, stepping backward toward the muddy trail. “I’m done, Luca! I’m done with the secrets, I’m done with the violence. I just want to take my little girl and go!”

“Rachel, please,” Luca begged. It was the first time I had ever heard the powerful, untouchable Caruso boss beg for anything. “This isn’t from me. It’s from David. You owe it to him to read the last thing he ever wrote to you.”

My throat tightened painfully.

I slowly walked back toward him.

I kept my body angled, shielding Molly, as I reached out with a trembling hand and took the damp yellow paper.

I flipped it over.

The ink was slightly smudged from where it had dropped on the glass counter of the pawn shop, but the rushed, frantic handwriting of my late husband was still perfectly legible.

“Rachel, if you are reading this, it means the truth finally caught up to the Caruso family. I never meant to bring this danger to your door.

But you need to know something. Eleanor Caruso didn’t shoot her husband in cold blood. She was defending herself. I saw Antonio pull his gun on her first in that alley. She fired to save her own life, and to save her son’s.

If I don’t make it out of this, go to Eleanor. I asked her to take care of you and Molly. She is a good woman trapped in a terrible world. Trust her, Rachel. Let her protect our little girl. And tell Molly that her daddy loves her more than the stars in the sky.”

The paper slipped from my fingers, fluttering down to stick against the wet wooden planks of the dock.

A ragged sob tore out of my chest, so deep and painful it brought me to my knees in the mud.

David knew.

He knew Eleanor was acting in self-defense. He knew she was a victim of her husband’s cruelty, just like everyone else.

He hadn’t been murdered trying to extort the Carusos. He had been murdered because he was a genuinely good man who tried to help a terrified woman, and the Romanos had punished him for it.

Eleanor hadn’t hired me out of a twisted sense of guilt to keep me quiet.

She had hired me because my husband had used his dying breath to ask her to keep us safe. She had honored his final wish the only way she knew how.

Suddenly, the boathouse doors burst open.

Eleanor stumbled out into the rain, supported by two of Luca’s men who had just arrived in a second wave of black SUVs.

Behind them, I could see Silas and Vanessa being dragged out in zip-ties, their faces bruised and defeated.

Eleanor looked at me kneeling in the mud, clutching my daughter.

She tried to walk toward me, but she was too weak. She collapsed against the wooden railing, weeping openly.

“I’m sorry, Rachel,” she cried into the storm. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save him.”

I slowly stood up.

My legs felt like lead, but my heart, which had been frozen in anger and grief for six long years, finally felt like it was thawing.

I walked over to the frail elderly woman.

I didn’t say anything. I just wrapped my free arm around her shaking shoulders and pulled her into a tight embrace.

Eleanor gasped, burying her face in my wet shoulder, holding onto me like a lifeline.

Luca stood a few feet away, watching us, the hard, ruthless edges of his face completely softened by the rain and the overwhelming relief.

“Marco and his men are detained,” Luca said quietly, stepping closer. “Vanessa and Silas are going to be handed over to the federal authorities with a bow on top. The Romano family is finished tonight.”

He looked down at Molly, who was shivering in the cold.

Luca took off his heavy, dry suit jacket and draped it gently over my daughter’s shoulders.

“Let’s go home,” Luca said softly.

I looked at him.

For six years, the Caruso mansion had just been my workplace. It had been the place I scrubbed the floors, polished the silver, and kept my head down.

But looking at the yellow paper dissolving in the rain, I realized David hadn’t just left me clues to solve a murder.