Chapter 7 – The Black Rosary’s Confession

The grand foyer was eerily silent, save for the sound of Lily’s soft hiccups against Matthew’s shoulder.

I stood up slowly, my black uniform wrinkled and damp from the rain and the marble floor.

Vanessa’s final, venomous words echoed in my mind.Ask her whose rosary they found in his pocket. You think he was just a gardener?

My husband, David, had been the head groundskeeper for the Moretti estate. He died fourteen years ago. A sudden, massive heart attack in the greenhouse. That was the truth I had lived with. It was the tragedy that had broken Matthew’s heart and started his downward spiral.

I turned to Teresa.

“Mrs. Moretti,” I said, my voice trembling. “What did she mean? What rosary?”

Teresa looked at Luca, a silent conversation passing between mother and son. Luca’s brow furrowed. He hadn’t been the head of the family fourteen years ago; his father had.

“Mom?” Luca asked gently. “What is she talking about?”

Teresa closed her eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath.

“Vanessa has spent years going through your father’s private files to find leverage against this family,” Teresa said quietly. “I didn’t know she had found that one.”

“Found what?” I demanded, stepping closer. I wasn’t an employee right now. I was a widow demanding the truth. “Teresa, please. Tell me.”

Teresa gestured toward the library upstairs. “Come with me, Ellen. Matthew, bring the child.”

We left the whispering guests in the lounge and walked up the grand staircase. We entered the heavy, oak-paneled library. Teresa walked behind her late husband’s massive mahogany desk. She opened a small, locked drawer using a key she wore on a chain around her neck.

She pulled out a small, velvet pouch and placed it on the desk.

“Fourteen years ago, when we found David in the greenhouse, the coroner ruled it a heart attack,” Teresa began, her voice heavy with the weight of a decade-old secret. “But before the paramedics arrived, my husband went through David’s pockets. He found this.”

Teresa opened the pouch.

She poured a black, wooden rosary onto the desk.

It wasn’t a standard Catholic rosary. The crucifix was made of dark iron, and the beads were carved with small, intricate crests.

I recognized the crest immediately, having worked in a mafia household for twelve years.

It was the crest of the Rossi family. The Morettis’ greatest rivals.

“The Rossi family uses these to mark a hit,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a stunned whisper. He picked up the rosary, staring at it. “They leave it on the bodies of the people they execute.”

The room spun.

“Execute?” I choked out. “David wasn’t executed. He had a heart attack.”

“He was poisoned, Ellen,” Teresa said softly, tears filling her eyes. “A chemical that mimics a massive cardiac arrest. Undetectable unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. My husband knew. When he found the rosary, he realized the Rossi family had assassinated his best groundskeeper.”

Matthew stood frozen, clutching Lily. “But why? My dad was just a gardener. He planted roses. He didn’t have anything to do with the mob.”

“That’s what my husband thought, too,” Teresa said. “Until he found the ledger hidden beneath the floorboards in the greenhouse.”

Teresa reached back into the drawer and pulled out a small, weathered leather notebook. She handed it to me.

My hands shook as I opened it.

It was filled with David’s precise, neat handwriting.

“David wasn’t just planting roses,” Teresa said, her voice filled with deep reverence. “He was listening. People ignore the gardener. The Rossi family had planted a mole inside our estate, someone feeding them our shipping routes and security codes. David figured it out. He spent six months tracking the mole, writing down every illicit meeting, every stolen code in that ledger.”

I stared at the pages. Dates, times, license plate numbers. My gentle, quiet husband had been conducting a one-man espionage mission to protect the family that employed him.

“He was going to give the ledger to my husband the morning he died,” Teresa whispered. “But the mole found out. They poisoned David to keep him quiet. But David managed to hide the ledger under the floorboards before the poison took his life. My husband found it a week later.”

“Who was the mole?” Luca demanded, his fists clenched.

Teresa looked directly at me.

“It was Vanessa’s father,” she said.