Chapter 6 - The House of Secrets
Back at the Vitale estate, miles away from the bloody concrete of the docks, the grand mansion was shrouded in an eerie, watchful silence.
Clara Bennett sat on the edge of the oversized velvet bed in the fourth-floor guest suite, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap. Her heart raced with a mixture of terror and desperate hope.
For fourteen years, she had carried the burden of her father’s disappearance. She had grown up in hiding, fed on scraps of truth and terrifying warnings from old loyalists who told her that Renato Salvi—the man who ruled the Vitale household—was the monster who had murdered Leo Moretti and framed him for treason.
When Renato had forced her to infiltrate the estate last week under threat of harming little Lily, Clara had believed she was walking into a slaughterhouse.
Instead, her daughter had wandered into the orchard, climbed onto the chest of the most feared man in New York, and fallen asleep above his heart.
“Mama?”
Clara looked down. Lily was sitting cross-legged on the rug, busy wrapping a piece of string around the missing ear of Mr. Buttons the rabbit.
“Yes, sweetheart?” Clara asked, her voice trembling slightly.
“Is the sleeping man coming back?” Lily asked innocently, looking up with her big brown eyes.
Clara swallowed hard, smoothing her daughter’s dark curls. “I don't know, baby. I honestly don't know.”
A soft, three-tone chime echoed from the smart-panel near the heavy oak door.
Clara froze. She stood up slowly, stepping in front of Lily to shield her. The security code chimed again—not an alarm, but the authorized entry tone of the master wing.
The heavy door swung open.
Damiano Vitale stood in the doorway.
His dark wool coat was drenched with rain, his white shirt collar stained with dark smudges of gunpowder and dirt. His face was pale, his gray eyes burning with an intense, exhausted fire. He looked every bit the warlord who had just returned from executing justice in the dark.
Clara held her breath, expecting the cold wrath of a man who had discovered he was being played.
Instead, Damiano looked past her toward the little girl sitting on the rug. Lily looked up, blinked twice, and gave him a bright, gap-toothed smile.
“Hi, sleeping man,” Lily said cheerfully.
A heavy, visible shudder ran through Damiano’s massive frame. The cold, impenetrable armor he had worn for twenty years seemed to crack right down the middle. He walked slowly into the room, ignoring the mud on his boots, and stopped a few feet away from Clara.
“Your father was Leo Moretti,” Damiano said, his voice thick with emotion he was struggling to control.
Clara lowered her head, tears spilling over her eyelashes. “He didn't betray your father, Mr. Vitale. Renato murdered him the same night he murdered yours. He made me and my mother live in shadows for fourteen years, threatening to kill us if I ever spoke the truth.”
Damiano took another step forward. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, blood-stained silver pocket watch—the very watch his father had dropped the night he died. He held it out on his open palm toward Clara.
“Renato confessed on the docks tonight,” Damiano said quietly. “He confessed to everything. The poison. The forged ledgers. Your father’s murder. The debt is paid, Clara.”
Clara looked up, her dark eyes locking onto his. There was no anger left in his face—only a profound, aching sorrow, and something else, something tender and terrifyingly fragile.
“You don't have to hide anymore,” Damiano vowed, his voice ringing with absolute authority. “Neither of you.”
Lily scrambled across the carpet, stood up on her tiptoes, and tugged gently on the hem of Damiano’s wet wool coat.
“Can I have a hug now, sleeping man?” she asked.
Damiano dropped to one knee on the hardwood floor, right there in the middle of the guest suite, ignoring the dirt and the rain and the twenty years of ghosts that had haunted his house. He opened his arms and pulled the little girl against his chest, burying his face in her dark curls.
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As Lily wrapped her small arms around his neck, pressing her stuffed rabbit against his shoulder, a single tear slipped from Damiano’s eye, cutting a clean path through the dirt on his cheek.
It was the first tear he had shed since the morning he found his father dead in the study.
