Chapter 5 - THE MAN IN BLACK GLOVES
Nobody moved.
Rafael reached into his jacket and pulled out a pistol.
Serafina stood.
Not frightened.
Relieved.
That told us everything.
Nico stared at her.
“You knew.”
She did not answer.
Rafael removed his right glove.
Burned skin covered his hand.
Thick scars ran from his knuckles beneath his shirt cuff.
Exactly like Tomas’s drawing.
Nico looked at the man who had guarded his home for seven years.
“You killed Lucia.”
Rafael tilted his head.
“I drove the second car.”
Nico’s face emptied.
“You stood beside me at her funeral.”
“Yes.”
“You carried her coffin.”
“Yes.”
Rafael said it without shame.
Nico’s voice was barely audible.
“Why?”
Rafael looked toward Serafina.
Then back.
“Because Vittorio Rinaldi told me to.”
There it was.
Not extortion.
Not blackmail.
Not debt.
A war.
One that had been happening inside Nico’s own house while he thought it had ended.
Serafina stepped away from the table.
“You killed my brothers,” she said.
Nico looked at her.
“I was nineteen when the first one died. Twenty-one when the second one disappeared.”
“My father gave those orders.”
“And you inherited his name.”
“You murdered my sister for something my father did?”
“No.”
Her expression hardened.
“We murdered your sister because she discovered who I was.”
That changed everything.
Nico stared at her.
Serafina continued.
“Lucia never trusted me. She checked my school records. She found a photograph from the Rinaldi funeral. She was driving to meet someone when Rafael intercepted her.”
Nico looked at Rafael.
“She knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you killed her.”
Rafael shrugged.
“She would have exposed everything.”
A sound came from the hallway.
A small scrape.
Tomas.
Nico’s face changed.
He looked toward the ceiling.
Rafael smiled.
“Your guards upstairs answer to me.”
Nico moved.
Rafael raised the gun.
“Don’t.”
Serafina suddenly said,
“Leave Tomas out of this.”
Rafael looked at her.
“We tried that three years ago.”
“I said leave him.”
For the first time, the two Rinaldi agents looked like they were not following the same script.
Nico noticed.
“So that line in the message.”
He looked at Serafina.
“Boy unresolved.”
Serafina said nothing.
“You stopped them.”
Rafael laughed.
“She delayed it.”
Serafina snapped,
“He was three.”
“He’s a Bellandi.”
“He was three!”
The room shook with the force of her voice.
Then silence returned.
Nico looked at the woman who had come into his life to destroy him.
For the first time, he saw something human inside the deception.
It did not forgive anything.
But it complicated it.
Rafael did not care.
He looked at Nico.
“The watch.”
Nico glanced toward the table.
“You already had it.”
“Not long enough.”
Rafael’s expression hardened.
“The necklace and the watch were designed as a pair.”
Nico frowned.
Teresa whispered,
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
The old woman stared at the two heirlooms.
“The vault.”
Nico turned.
“What vault?”
Teresa closed her eyes.
“Your grandfather never trusted banks.”
Rafael smiled.
“Finally.”
Teresa looked at Nico.
“The necklace contains half a cipher. The watch contains the other half.”
Nico stared at her.
“A cipher to what?”
“To everything your grandfather kept off the books.”
Accounts.
Properties.
Names.
Safe houses.
Judges.
Police.
Politicians.
Men who owed favors.
Men who had committed murders.
Enough information to destroy the Bellandi family without firing another bullet.
Serafina had not infiltrated the family only to kill them.
May you like
She had come to inherit their secrets first.
Then leave nothing standing.
