Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW
The first gunshot came from upstairs.
Nico moved before anybody else.
Rafael turned toward the sound.
That was his mistake.
Serafina hit his gun arm.
The shot went into the chandelier.
Glass exploded.
People screamed.
Nico drove Rafael into the wall.
The pistol skidded beneath the table.
I ran for the doors.
Locked.
One of the Bellandi men smashed a chair against the handle.
Again.
Again.
The wood split.
Nico and Rafael crashed across the floor.
Rafael was stronger than he looked.
Nico was angrier.
Serafina grabbed the fallen pistol.
Everyone froze.
She aimed it.
At Nico.
He stared at her.
For three years, she had shared his bed.
For three years, she had memorized his routines.
For three years, she had been waiting to kill him.
Her finger tightened.
Then she moved the gun six inches.
And fired.
Rafael screamed.
The bullet tore through his shoulder.
Nico ripped the weapon from his hand and drove him face-first into the floor.
Serafina stood shaking.
“I told you,” she whispered. “The boy was not part of this.”
Nobody thanked her.
She did not deserve thanks.
But Tomas was alive.
The guards upstairs were not Rinaldi men after all.
One had fired into the ceiling after discovering another intruder climbing through the service stairs.
Tomas had hidden beneath his bed.
He was terrified.
But safe.
Rafael was tied to a dining chair.
Blood soaked his shoulder.
Nico sent loyal men to retrieve my mother.
I wanted to protest.
Then I remembered the rosary.
The lies.
My father.
Forty minutes later, Helen Ellison entered the Bellandi mansion wearing an old gray coat.
Her eyes found me first.
Then the rosary.
She stopped.
“Oh, God.”
That was enough.
“Dad is alive?”
She closed her eyes.
“Mom.”
She began crying.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
The exhausted cry of a woman who had held the same secret too long.
“Yes.”
My knees weakened.
I sat.
“Where?”
“Canada.”
“For nine years?”
“No.”
She looked at Rafael.
“For three.”
I stared at her.
She explained.
My father had left us nine years earlier because he had begun doing private transport jobs for criminal families.
He was ashamed.
He thought he could make money quickly and stop.
Instead, he became useful.
Six years later, he was hired as an emergency driver for Lucia Bellandi.
He did not know she was being hunted.
He was following several minutes behind her when Rafael forced her car from the road.
My father saw everything.
He stopped.
He reached Lucia before the flames spread.
She could not get out.
Tomas was trapped in the back.
My father smashed the rear window and pulled the boy free.
That was why Tomas survived.
Nico stared at me.
I had spent the entire night trying to save myself from being framed.
And my father had once saved Nico’s nephew from a burning car.
“What did Lucia give him?”
Nico asked.
My mother opened her coat.
Around her neck was a thin chain.
A tiny silver saint’s medal hung from it.
She removed it.
“She gave Daniel this.”
Nico took it.
The back contained six engraved numbers.
Teresa whispered,
“The first half of the vault location.”
Nico looked toward the necklace.
“And the second half?”
My mother looked at Serafina.
“Under the emerald.”
Serafina’s face changed.
My mother continued.
“The necklace was never just a key. The Bellandi jeweler engraved a second coordinate beneath the center stone.”
Nico stared at the fake necklace.
Then at Rafael.
“You knew.”
Rafael laughed through the pain.
“We knew enough.”
My mother shook her head.
“No. You knew the old story.”
Rafael’s smile disappeared.
“The watch doesn’t contain the second half.”
Teresa looked at her.
“What?”
“Daniel learned the truth from Lucia before she died. The watch is a decoy.”
My mother looked directly at Nico.
“The necklace is the real key.”
Silence.
May you like
The Bellandi heirloom Nico had placed around Serafina Rinaldi’s throat.
The thing she had been sent into his life to steal.
