Chapter 4 - THE BROKEN CRIB
The glass in the tall arched windows rattled against the frames.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
High-velocity rounds punched through the heavy curtains.
Sophie screamed, pulling the wool blanket over her head.
Bruno sprang to his feet on the mattress, a deafening roar tearing from his throat.
"Down!" Dante roared.
He lunged across the floor, catching me by the waist.
He tackled me onto the rug behind the heavy mahogany desk.
Shards of ornamental glass showered over our backs.
The smell of cordite and wet plaster billowed through the dark room.
Dante didn't flinch.
He reached up, grabbed the heavy iron drawer handle of the desk, and yanked it out.
He pulled a tactical submachine gun from a hidden false bottom.
He racked the slide with one brutal, practiced motion.
CLACK.
"Bruno! Guard!" Dante yelled.
The Cane Corso didn't leave the bed.
He planted his front paws on the edge of the mattress, his hackles raised like wire brushes, blocking Sophie with his massive chest.
The bedroom door burst open.
A man tumbled inside, sliding across the polished floorboards.
It was Marco, Dante’s second-in-command.
His black suit was torn across the ribs.
Blood was pumping between his fingers where he clutched his side.
"Boss," Marco gasped, coughing red onto the rug.
"The gatehouse is overrun."
"They came from the drainage culverts under the lawn."
"They have night vision."
Dante rose to a crouch, his gun leveled at the dark doorway.
"How many?"
"Ten. Maybe twelve."
Marco grimaced, pressing his back against the base of the bookshelf.
"They aren't looking for the safe, Dante."
"They're headed for the servants' cottage."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a sledgehammer.
"The cottage?" I whispered.
"There's nothing in that cottage but secondhand furniture!"
Marco looked at me through the dim firelight.
His eyes were filled with grim pity.
"They're looking for the girl's birth certificate, Elena."
"And the baptismal medal your mother-in-law gave you."
My hand flew to my throat.
Under my soaked sweater, hanging from a thin gold chain, was a heavy silver medallion.
St. Jude.
The patron saint of lost causes.
Miguel had given it to me the night Sophie was born.
He had told me it was his grandfather’s medal from Sicily.
He had told me never to take it off.
Dante turned his head sharply toward me.
His eyes caught the glint of silver through the frayed collar of my sweater.
"You're wearing the medallion?" he breathed.
"Miguel gave it to me!"
"Show me," Dante commanded, his voice shaking with sudden intensity.
I reached beneath my collar and pulled the silver pendant into the firelight.
On the front was the carved relief of St. Jude.
On the back, worn smooth by three years against my skin, was a sequence of tiny engraved numbers:
04-19-89-V.
Dante stared at the numbers.
His face drained of whatever color remained.
"The vault code," Dante whispered.
"The private reserve in Red Hook."
"Dante, what is happening?!" I pleaded, tears finally spilling down my cheeks.
"Who was my husband?!"
"Miguel was my cousin, Elena," Dante said, his voice dropping into a register so dark it chilled the room.
"My uncle Carlo’s eldest son."
"The rightful heir to the Red Hook terminals before Carlo was executed by the Commission."
The world seemed to spin on its axis.
My husband.
The quiet, gentle man who baked bread at four in the morning.
The man who sang Spanish lullabies to our daughter while rocking her to sleep.
He was mafia royalty.
"Miguel walked away from the family when you were pregnant," Dante said, not breaking eye contact.
"He traded his birthright for a small apartment in Brooklyn and an honest life."
"He gave my brother Lucian the vault codes to buy his freedom."
"And someone killed him for it."
A boot kicked the doorframe of the gallery outside.
Heavy footsteps crunched on broken glass in the hall.
A voice called out from the darkness—raspy, scarred, and mocking:
"Dante!"
The voice was warped, as if the vocal cords had been melted and stitched back together.
"You're sleeping in my room, brother."
"And you're protecting my collateral."
Bruno let out a blood-curdling howl from the bed.
Sophie began to sob under the covers.
Dante slowly rose to his full height behind the desk.
His eyes were cold as slate.
May you like
"Lucian," Dante said into the dark.
"You should have stayed in the grave."
