Chapter 5 – THE FLASH DRIVE AND THE COAT

“I don’t know who she gave it to,” Vincent said, his voice dangerously calm as he stared down the barrel of Rosalind’s gun. “The letter doesn’t say.”

Rosalind’s cruel smile vanished. Her eyes darted to the wooden music box still resting in Clara’s hands, then back to Vincent. She cocked the hammer of her pistol.

“You’re lying,” Rosalind hissed, her polished facade finally cracking into desperate rage. “Don Carmine will peel my skin off if I come back empty-handed. Give me a name, Vincent!”

“Shoot me, then,” Vincent offered, stepping closer to her, deliberately drawing her focus entirely onto himself. “If you kill me, you’ll never find it. You lose your leverage.”

Rosalind’s hands shook. She knew he was right. If the flash drive contained the offshore accounts that could destroy the Moretti empire, it was the most valuable object in the city.

“Grab them,” Rosalind barked to the two massive gunmen flanking her. “We’ll take them to the warehouse. He’ll talk when I start peeling the maid’s fingernails off.”

The two men stepped forward, raising their automatic weapons.

Clara’s heart hammered in her throat. She gripped the music box tightly. Behind Vincent’s broad shoulders, her eyes frantically scanned the narrow, tiled hallway of the locker room. There was no exit. No windows. Just a solid wall of metal lockers.

But as Clara looked at the lockers, a desperate, wild idea sparked in her mind.

“Mr. Hale!” Clara screamed suddenly, dropping to her knees.

As she dropped, she hurled the heavy wooden music box with all her strength directly at the overhead fluorescent light fixture above Rosalind’s head.

The heavy mahogany box smashed into the glass tubing. The bulb exploded in a shower of sparks and broken glass, plunging that section of the hallway into absolute, terrifying darkness.

“Fire!” Rosalind shrieked as the sparks rained down on her trench coat.

In the sudden chaos, Vincent didn’t hesitate. He drew his own handgun and fired blindly into the dark toward the gunmen, grabbing Clara by the collar of her jacket and violently yanking her into the narrow gap between two rows of freestanding lockers.

Automatic gunfire erupted, deafening in the enclosed space, chewing through the metal locker doors where Vincent and Clara had stood a second before.

“Keep moving!” Vincent grunted, pushing Clara down the dark, narrow aisle.

They sprinted blindly through the labyrinth of storage lockers, the sound of Rosalind screaming orders echoing behind them. They burst out a side maintenance door, taking the metal stairs two at a time, until they burst out into the freezing, rainy alleyway where the armored SUV was parked.

Clara scrambled to the vehicle, her hands shaking so badly she could barely punch in the door code.

The heavy locks clicked. Clara threw the door open and collapsed into the passenger seat. Vincent jumped into the driver’s side, throwing the car into gear, and slammed on the gas.

The SUV roared out of the alleyway just as Rosalind’s men burst through the station doors, firing uselessly at the bulletproof rear window.

They were safe. For now.

Clara leaned over the center console, checking the backseat. Sophie was miraculously still asleep, curled into a tight ball under her warm winter coat, completely oblivious to the gunfire.

Vincent drove frantically, weaving through the deserted early morning streets, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The adrenaline was wearing off, and the blood loss from his head wound was taking a severe toll.

“Mr. Hale, you’re going to pass out,” Clara panicked, seeing his grip slipping on the steering wheel. “Pull over. Let me drive.”

Vincent shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t. If they catch us… I have to protect you both.”

“You can’t protect us if you crash this car into a wall!” Clara yelled, reaching over and grabbing the steering wheel. “Pull over. Now.”

The sheer authority in the twenty-four-year-old housemaid’s voice shocked the mafia boss. Vincent blinked, his heavy eyelids fluttering, and slowly guided the massive vehicle into an empty parking lot beneath a highway overpass.

He put the car in park and slumped back against the leather seat, completely exhausted.

Clara quickly climbed over the center console into the driver’s seat, pushing Vincent gently into the passenger side. She checked his bandage; it was soaked, but the bleeding had slowed.

“Where to?” Clara asked, gripping the steering wheel.

Vincent closed his eyes. “The safe house. 42nd and Elm. It’s off the books. Marcus doesn’t know about it.”

Clara put the car in drive and pulled back out onto the street.

The silence inside the car was suffocating. The revelation from the letter weighed heavily on both of them. Elena was a Moretti. The enemy’s daughter. And she had sacrificed her life to protect her husband and child.

“Clara,” Vincent whispered weakly, his eyes still closed. “Who did she give it to? She said she gave the flash drive to someone my enemies would never search. Someone she trusted implicitly.”

Clara drove carefully, her mind racing. “She didn’t have any close friends, did she? You told me once she kept to herself. She didn’t trust anyone in the syndicate.”

“No one,” Vincent agreed. “Just me. And the nanny.”

Clara frowned. “The nanny? I thought you said you fired the nanny a month before Elena died.”

“I did,” Vincent said, opening his eyes slightly. “She was stealing silver from the dining room. I caught her and threw her out.”

“So Elena wouldn’t have given it to her,” Clara reasoned.

She glanced in the rearview mirror at Sophie, who was shifting in her sleep. The little girl clutched her stuffed rabbit, pulling her heavy winter coat tighter around her small shoulders.

Clara’s eyes locked onto the coat.

It was a beautiful, custom-made blue wool coat. Elena had bought it for Sophie for her fourth birthday, just a week before Elena died.

I gave it to the only person I knew I could trust. The only person my father’s men would never think to search.

Clara slammed on the brakes so hard the heavy SUV skidded on the wet pavement, screeching to a halt in the middle of the empty road.

Vincent jolted forward against the seatbelt. “Clara! What are you doing?”

Clara didn’t answer. She threw the car into park and scrambled over the console into the backseat.

“Sophie, sweetie, wake up,” Clara said urgently, gently shaking the child.

Sophie blinked, her brown eyes wide and confused. “Clara? Are we there?”

“Not yet, baby,” Clara said, carefully pulling the blue wool coat off Sophie’s shoulders. “I just need to check something on your coat.”

Vincent turned around in his seat, wincing in pain. “Clara, what are you looking for?”

“She gave it to the only person she trusted, Mr. Hale,” Clara whispered, her fingers frantically tracing the thick, quilted lining of the child’s winter coat. “A person no mafia hitman would ever pat down or search. A four-year-old child.”

Clara felt the seams near the heavy left pocket. The stitching was slightly irregular. Thicker than the rest of the coat.

She pulled a small pocket knife from the emergency kit in the seatback and carefully sliced the thread.

The blue wool parted.

Tucked deep inside the lining, wrapped in a small piece of velvet, was a tiny, black USB flash drive.

Clara pulled it out, her hands trembling violently.

She looked up at Vincent, holding the key that could destroy the most powerful mafia family in the country.

“She gave it to Sophie,” Clara breathed.

Before Vincent could speak, his cell phone, resting in the cup holder, suddenly lit up.

It was ringing.

The caller ID didn’t show a name. It showed a single, terrifying word:

MORETTI.