Chapter 1 - The Shifted Hawk|
Dante Moretti stood in the dim light of his study, staring down at the shallow velvet-lined drawer. The heavy silence of the eighteen-room stone mansion pressed against his ears like deep water.
The yellow bronze seal rested inside its familiar rectangular indent. To anyone else, it looked untouched—a four-ounce block of historic metal carved with a hawk clutching grapes. But Dante’s eyes had spent four decades measuring millimeters.
The hawk’s beak was turned three millimeters to the left. The fine layer of anti-tarnish powder on the green felt was lightly disturbed, brushed away by hasty, unpracticed fingers.
“Ten minutes,” Dante whispered to the dark room.
Ten minutes was all Isabella had needed while pretending to retouch her lipstick in the powder room down the hall. Ten minutes while the rain tapped against the high glass windows and the fire crackled innocently in the hearth.
His hands did not shake. He closed the hidden drawer with a soft, mechanical click that vanished into the floorboards.
He walked to the window and looked out across the lawn. Through the gray curtain of rain, four security guards walked their quiet rotations. The stone walls kept the outside world away, but they had proven useless against the poison brought inside through the front door.
A three-year-old child had seen what four rotation guards and twenty security cameras had missed.
Dante pulled a silver cigarette case from his coat pocket, snapped it open, and lit a single clove cigarette. As the sweet, sharp smoke filled his lungs, his mind moved backward seven years—to the rainy Tuesday he buried his brother Marco, shot twice outside a restaurant in Little Italy.
He had signed a ceasefire with Don Carmine Russo the very next morning because he lacked proof.
May you like
“You wanted proof, Marco?” Dante murmured, watching the smoke curl toward the high timber ceiling. “A toddler just handed it to me.”
He snapped the case shut, turned on his heel, and slipped out into the darkened corridor.
