Chapter 2 - THE SILVER CHARM’S BLOODLINE
The heavy mahogany doors of my study groaned as I slammed them shut. The sound echoed through the high ceilings of the Rossi manor, sharp as a gunshot.
Outside, the icy February wind whipped against the glass, but inside, the room had turned suffocatingly hot. My lungs burned. My heart pounded against my ribs like an iron hammer against an anvil.
I stood at the top of the grand marble staircase, watching Sophia Rossi—the quiet, timid maid who had worked in my kitchen for less than six months—hurry across the courtyard. She was carrying little Emma in her arms, wrapping a faded plaid shawl tightly around the toddler’s shoulders.
"Sophia!" My voice boomed through the quiet mansion, cutting through the silence like a blade.
Sophia froze on the bottom step. Her shoulders instantly rounded, her eyes widening in sheer terror. In our world, when Don Matteo Rossi calls your name in that tone, it usually means your life is measured in seconds.
"Upstairs. Now," I commanded, my hand resting heavily on the polished wooden banister.
Two armed guards—Marco and Paul, dressed in dark suits with concealed suppressed pistols—instantly moved from their posts near the main archway, quietly blocking the exit doors behind her.
Sophia swallowed hard, clutching little Emma closer to her chest. The three-year-old girl didn't look scared at all. Her bright golden curls bounced as she looked up at me, her big blue eyes full of an uncanny, ancient calm.
When Sophia entered my study, her knees were visibly shaking. She didn't dare take a seat, even when I gestured toward the leather armchairs near the fireplace.
"Don Matteo... please," Sophia whispered, her voice cracking with pure panic. "Emma is just a child! She didn't mean any disrespect! I will pack our things and leave immediately—"
"Quiet," I said softly, stepping closer. The terror in her eyes was real, but I didn't care about her fear right now. I cared about the object resting inside my palm.
I opened my hand. The silver charm glinted under the warm yellow light of the chandelier. It was a antique medallion shaped like a cracked pomegranate, wrapped in tiny silver vine leaves.
"Where did your daughter get this, Sophia?" I asked, my voice dropping into an icy whisper that carried more threat than a raised shout. "Answer me truthfully, or your brother in Brooklyn will be answering questions from my capos by nightfall."
Sophia gasped, her face draining of all color. "My mother gave it to Emma before she died three months ago!"
"Your mother?" I stepped right into her personal space, looming over her like a shadow. "My wife, Elena, wore this charm around her neck every day of her life. The night she was ambushed in Queens... the night her car was rammed under that elevated train line... this charm was cut from her throat. The police said it was lost in the wreckage. So tell me how a maid's mother ended up with my murdered wife’s medallion!"
Sophia fell to her knees right on the Persian rug, holding Emma tight against her shoulder. Tears spilled over her eyelashes, dripping onto the polished wood floor.
"My mother was Nonna Rosa," Sophia sobbed, looking up into my eyes with desperate honesty. "Before she moved to New York, she was the head midwife and herbalist for your wife's family in Palermo! When Elena was brought to the hospital after the ambush... before the paramedics pronounced her dead... my mother was working the night shift as a sanitation worker in the trauma ward!"
My chest seized. "Elena was still breathing when your mother found her?"
"Yes!" Sophia wept. "My mother knelt beside Elena’s gurney before the detectives arrived. Elena was dying, Don Matteo. Her lungs were failing. But she forced open her hand, pressed this silver charm into my mother's palm, and whispered: 'Give this to Matteo when the child’s legs fall asleep. Tell him the poison didn't come from the Morettis. It came from inside the house.'"
The air rushed out of my lungs. The study seemed to tilt on its axis.
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"Poison?" I whispered, my brain struggling to process the word. "Elena died of blunt force trauma from the crash..."
"No," Sophia said, her voice dropping into a dark, solemn tone. "My mother examined Elena’s eyes and throat before the medical examiner took her body. Elena wasn't dying from the crash wounds, Don Matteo. She was paralyzed before the car ever hit the steel pillar. Someone had been slipping slow-acting neurotoxins into her food for months... the same neurotoxin that was placed in little Isabella’s tea two years ago."
