Chapter 3 - Seven Shirts and One Dead Woman's Secret
Rocco didn't point the gun at me.
That was the only reason I didn't scream.
He pointed it at the window behind Salvatore DeLuca.
“DOWN!”
The glass exploded.
Victor lunged across the table, grabbed my shoulders, and pulled me to the floor.
A bullet struck the chandelier.
Crystal shattered over the dining room.
Someone shouted.
Another gunshot cracked through the room.
I curled beneath Victor's body, his weight shielding me as armed guards rushed through the doors.
“Stay down,” he ordered.
I had no intention of doing anything else.
A second later, he was gone.
I heard footsteps.
Furniture scraping.
A man screaming.
Then silence.
The kind of silence that makes you wonder whether everyone else has died.
Victor returned with blood on his cuff.
Not his blood.
I knew that immediately.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
His hands moved over my arms, checking for injuries.
“Look at me, Tessa.”
I did.
For one strange moment, the entire room disappeared.
He looked frightened.
Not angry.
Not furious.
Frightened.
For me.
Then Rocco appeared.
“Shooter escaped through the east grounds.”
Victor stood.
“Lock down the estate.”
Salvatore DeLuca was still sitting at the table.
His wineglass hadn't moved.
He looked almost disappointed.
“Terrible security, Victor.”
Victor turned toward him.
“Get out.”
Salvatore smiled.
“Careful, son.”
“I'm not your son.”
“No,” the older man said.
His eyes shifted toward me.
“Apparently, you're not the only one with family problems.”
I didn't sleep that night.
Victor assigned two guards outside my bedroom.
He also gave me my phone back after having Rocco examine it.
The mysterious message had come from a disposable number.
Untraceable, according to Rocco.
Which was convenient.
Especially because I was beginning to suspect he knew exactly who had sent it.
At two in the morning, I walked into the tailoring studio.
I needed something familiar.
Something that made sense.
Needles.
Thread.
Fabric.
Things that behaved according to rules.
If you pulled a seam too tightly, it puckered.
If you cut against the grain, it twisted.
If you made a mistake, you could usually fix it.
People weren't like that.
People lied.
People disappeared.
People murdered mothers and then sat down to dinner.
I turned on the sewing machine.
Victor had left the gray cashmere shirt on the mannequin.
His mother's pale-blue silk showed along the inner shoulder.
I examined my stitching.
Then I noticed something strange.
A small section of the original fabric had a different texture.
Not thicker.
Not rougher.
Just slightly stiffer.
I held it beneath the lamp.
There was a second seam.
Older than mine.
Almost invisible.
My pulse quickened.
I reached for a seam ripper.
Carefully, I opened the stitches.
Something slipped out.
A narrow strip of paper.
Yellowed.
Folded four times.
I unfolded it.
There were numbers.
Three names.
And a sentence written in faded blue ink.
If Victor survives, tell him the Falcon never betrayed us.
I stopped breathing.
The Falcon.
My pendant.
My father's family.
I turned the paper over.
On the back was a date.
October 17, 2006.
Twenty years earlier.
The night of the fire.
“What are you doing?”
Victor's voice came from the doorway.
I spun around.
He stood barefoot, wearing black sweatpants and a loose cotton shirt that hung awkwardly from his uninjured shoulder.
His hair was damp.
He looked exhausted.
And dangerous.
“Couldn't sleep,” I said.
His gaze dropped to the paper in my hand.
“What is that?”
I hesitated.
Then held it out.
“Something your mother hid.”
He crossed the room.
Took the paper.
Read it.
His face changed.
The transformation was slow.
First confusion.
Then disbelief.
Then something terrible.
“Where did you find this?”
“In the silk.”
He read the message again.
“The Falcon.”
I swallowed.
“Do you know what it means?”
Victor didn't answer.
Instead, he sat.
Not gracefully.
He lowered himself into the nearest chair as though his legs had stopped supporting him.
“My mother wrote this.”
“You recognize her handwriting?”
He nodded.
His fingers tightened around the paper.
“I watched her die.”
I said nothing.
He stared at the wall.
“I was sixteen. There was a party at the estate. My father had invited half the city.”
His voice grew distant.
“Something went wrong. Men came through the kitchen. Someone started shooting.”
I sat opposite him.
“The fire?”
“It began in the west wing.”
He swallowed.
“My mother pushed me into a storage room. Told me to stay there.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
His laugh was bitter.
“I was sixteen. I thought I could save her.”
He touched his shoulder.
“The ceiling collapsed. I remember heat. Smoke. Her screaming my name.”
His eyes closed.
“When I woke up, three days had passed.”
“Your mother?”
“Dead.”
“Your father?”
“Alive.”
He looked at the paper.
“And he told me the Falcon family ordered the attack.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
“The Falcon family?”
Victor nodded.
“The Falcones. A powerful family from South Philadelphia. My father spent the next twenty years destroying everything connected to them.”
I couldn't move.
Falcone.
M. D. F.
My pendant.
My mother's name.
I remembered a foster worker once telling me my original surname had been difficult to pronounce.
Something Italian.
Something beginning with F.
Victor continued.
“The Falcones were accused of betraying an agreement with my father. My mother supposedly discovered the betrayal.”
“But this note says—”
“I know what it says.”
He stood abruptly.
His chair scraped backward.
“If my mother wrote this, then my father lied.”
“Why would he?”
Victor looked toward the door.
“That's what I'm going to find out.”
He started walking.
“Victor.”
He stopped.
I hesitated.
There was a truth sitting beneath my blouse.
A silver truth.
One I was suddenly terrified to show him.
“What happens if a Falcone is still alive?”
He slowly turned.
“Why?”
“Just asking.”
His expression hardened.
“My father hunted them for twenty years.”
“And you?”
Silence.
Then he said something that made my stomach drop.
“I finished what he started.”
The next morning, Victor summoned Rocco.
I watched from the upper landing as the two men entered the library.
Their voices carried through the partially open door.
“Where did you find her?” Victor demanded.
“Lombardi's.”
“Why that shop?”
“Best tailor in South Philadelphia.”
“Don't insult me.”
Silence.
Then Rocco spoke.
“I was given her name.”
“By whom?”
Another pause.
“Your father.”
My blood turned cold.
Victor's father.
The man who had ordered the destruction of the Falcones.
The man who had supposedly died six years earlier.
Victor's voice dropped.
“My father is dead.”
Rocco said nothing.
“Rocco.”
Still nothing.
Then a third voice spoke.
A woman's voice.
Old.
Weak.
But unmistakably alive.
“Your father isn't dead, Victor.”
I pressed myself against the wall.
Inside the library, Victor whispered, “Teresa?”
The housekeeper answered.
“He's been waiting for that girl to come home.”
I ran.
Not because I had a plan.
Because suddenly the mansion felt like a trap built specifically for me.
I rushed back to the studio.
Grabbed my bag.
My phone.
My pendant.
Then I heard a metallic click behind me.
Rocco stood in the doorway.
His pistol hung at his side.
“Don't make this difficult, Tessa.”
I backed away.
“You knew.”
His expression was unreadable.
“Knew what?”
“Who I am.”
He looked at the pendant in my hand.
For the first time, the enormous man seemed genuinely shaken.
“Put that away.”
“Why?”
“Because if Victor sees it before I can explain—”
The door opened behind him.
Victor stepped inside.
His eyes moved from Rocco's gun to my face.
Then to the silver falcon.
He stopped.
Everything stopped.
Slowly, Victor approached.
“Where did you get that?”
I couldn't speak.
He reached toward the pendant.
I stepped back.
“Don't.”
He froze.
For a long moment, he stared at the tiny silver wings.
Then he whispered a name.
“Marcella.”
My mother's name.
The name nobody had ever told me.
I looked at him.
“How do you know that name?”
Victor's face drained of color.
“Because Marcella Falcone was the woman my father accused of murdering my mother.”
He looked at Rocco.
Then back at me.
“And she had a daughter.”
I swallowed.
Victor's voice broke.
“A little girl who supposedly died in the fire.”
He stepped closer.
“Tessa.”
His eyes searched mine.
“Who are you?”
Before I could answer, Rocco's phone rang.
He checked the screen.
And went pale.
A single photograph had arrived.
It showed a hospital room.
An elderly man sitting upright in bed.
Beside him was today's newspaper.
May you like
The caption read:
Tell Victor his father wants to meet his granddaughter.
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