Chapter 2 - The Cipher of the Dead
The grip I had on Elena’s wrist was enough to shatter bone. For a fraction of a second, the heavy air in Matteo’s bedroom felt like it stopped moving entirely. Outside, the rain lashed against the reinforced windows of the Moretti estate, but inside, the only sound was the rhythmic, agonizing beep of the heart monitor beside my son’s bed.
Elena didn't pull away. She didn't flinch. Her dark eyes remained locked onto mine, steady and unyielding, carrying a weight of sorrow that matched my own.
“Let her go, Luca.”
Her voice wasn't a plea. It was a command. And terrifyingly, my hand loosened.
I stepped back, my chest rising and falling as the words echoed in my mind. Sofia knew who was going to kill her.
“Explain,” I demanded, my voice dropping into that dark, lethal register that usually made grown men drop to their knees. “That recipe was locked in a vault only I had the combination to. The envelope is in my wife’s handwriting—handwriting she used only when we were alone, a cipher we created together so no one could forge her notes. How do you have this? Who are you?”
Elena turned away from me, her attention returning to Matteo. My son was chewing slowly on another bite of the red velvet cake, a faint, ghost-like flush returning to his pale cheeks. He looked up at Elena with wide, trusting eyes—eyes that held the exact same shade of amber as Sofia’s.
“My name is Elena Rossi,” she said softly, smoothing down the front of her black dress. “And Sofia wasn't just the woman you married, Luca. She was my older sister. The sister you never knew she had, because when she chose to step into your world of blood and shadows, our family cut her off to protect her. But she never cut me off. In secret, we kept talking. And in the final months of her life, she grew terrified.”
The room seemed to tilt on its axis. Sofia had a sister? A sister she never mentioned during our four years of marriage?
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?” I hissed, stepping closer. “If someone was threatening her—if she was in danger—she had me! I am Luca Moretti. No one touches my family and lives to draw breath.”
“That,” Elena said bitterly, turning to face me with a flash of fire in her eyes, “is precisely why she couldn't tell you. You lived in a war zone, Luca. Your enemies were everywhere, but so were your so-called friends. If Sofia had told you she suspected someone in your inner circle, you would have gone on a rampage. You would have burned Chicago to the ground. And in the chaos, the real killer would have slipped away.”
She reached down and gently wiped a crumb from the corner of Matteo’s mouth. The boy leaned into her touch, sighing softly.
“Instead,” Elena continued, “she prepared. She knew her time was running out. She baked this cake with me over video call three weeks before she died, memorizing every measurement, hiding the recipe where she knew only someone she trusted completely could find it if the worst happened. And she wrote that letter.”
I stared at the sealed envelope resting beside Matteo’s plate. The bold, elegant cursive of my dead wife’s hand seemed to mock me from the wood of the nightstand.
“Open it,” Elena whispered.
My fingers felt like lead as I reached out. I picked up the envelope, broke the heavy wax seal bearing the Moretti crest—a crest Sofia had redesigned herself—and pulled out a single sheet of heavy parchment.
My dearest Luca,
If you are reading this, it means our son is in danger, and I am already gone. The poison that took my life wasn't an accident, and it wasn't a stray bullet from a rival syndicate. It came from inside the house. Trust no one, my love—not your capos, not your accountants, not the men who stand at your door. Look for the man who wears the silver ring with the cracked emerald.
Save our boy.
— Sofia
The paper slipped from my numb fingers, fluttering down onto the rug.
A silver ring with a cracked emerald.
May you like
I knew that ring. I had stared at it across my mahogany desk every single day for the past six years.
It belonged to Marcus Vance—my most trusted consigliere, my brother-in-arms, the man who had stood beside me at my wedding, and the man currently managing every single operation of the Moretti empire.
