Chapter 3 – The Bloodstained Watch

The alleyway spun around me. The rain felt like ice against my skin.

I stared at the faded, bloodstained contract in my trembling hands.

Authorization of Termination.

And there, at the bottom, scrawled in unmistakable blue ink, was the signature: Frank Moretti.

“No,” I whispered, looking from the paper to the unconscious old man slouched against the brick wall. “No, this doesn’t make sense.”

Frank had raised Dominic. He had worked two jobs to buy him clothes. He had sewn the crooked black tie Dominic was wearing right now. Why would he sign a contract ordering the death of his own son?

Before my mind could process the horrifying contradiction, the sound of heavy boots echoed at the end of the alley.

The hitmen were coming back.

I shoved the silver watch and the contract deep into my apron pocket. I grabbed Frank under the arms, ignoring the burning ache in my muscles, and dragged his unconscious body toward a rusted fire escape ladder.

“Come on, Frank, wake up!” I hissed, slapping his cold cheek.

He groaned weakly, his eyelids fluttering. “Dominic…”

“Dominic is fighting for us inside,” I whispered fiercely. “You have to stand up. We have to hide.”

I hauled him into a narrow recess behind a brick pillar just as the flashlights swept the alley again.

“They’re gone,” one of the hitmen growled. “Call Victoria. Tell her the old man slipped away.”

“What about Dominic?”

“The boss said to leave Dominic alive. The wedding still happens tomorrow, or the Commission kills us all. Just find the old man and the photograph.”

The hitmen climbed into a black sedan and sped away.

I slumped against the wet bricks, gasping for air. Victoria wasn’t just trying to kill Frank. She was trying to force Dominic into a marriage while holding him hostage to the Commission’s rules.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. The screen was cracked, but it still worked. I dialed the only person I knew who wasn’t in the mob.

“Mom?” I cried when she answered.

“Rachel? Honey, what’s wrong? It’s midnight.”

“Mom, listen to me very carefully. Lock the doors. Do not answer the phone for anyone. I’m sending a cab to pick you up. Go to Aunt Sarah’s in Queens and stay there until I call.”

“Rachel, you’re scaring me—”

“Just do it!” I hung up, terrified that Victoria’s reach extended to my own family.

I turned back to Frank. He was awake now, clutching his chest, his breathing labored.

“Rachel,” he rasped, reaching for his empty pocket. “The watch… where is the watch?”

I knelt in front of him, pulling the heavy silver timepiece from my apron. I held it out, my hand shaking, but I didn’t give it back to him.

“I opened it, Frank,” I said, my voice thick with betrayal and fear. “I saw the contract.”

Frank’s face completely crumbled. The gentle, sweet grandfather vanished, replaced by a man carrying a soul-crushing burden of guilt.

“You ordered the hit,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. “You killed Dominic’s parents. And you’ve been playing the loving grandfather for twenty years.”

“No!” Frank sobbed, grabbing my wrists with a sudden, desperate strength. “You don’t understand! I didn’t sign it for the Bellinis!”

“Your name is on it!”

“Because they had my wife!” Frank cried, the agony in his voice breaking my heart despite my anger. “Twenty years ago, Victoria’s father kidnapped Dominic’s grandmother. He told me if I didn’t authorize the hit on my own son, he would torture her to death.”

I froze, the rain soaking through my hair.

“I refused,” Frank wept, burying his face in his hands. “I told them to kill me instead. But they mailed me her finger, Rachel. With her wedding ring still on it.”

My stomach violently turned.

“I signed the paper to save her,” Frank gasped, his chest heaving. “And they killed my son anyway. Then they killed my wife. I lost everyone in one night. Everyone except Dominic.”

I stared at the broken old man in the mud. He wasn’t a traitor. He was a victim of the most horrific choice a human being could face.

“Why didn’t you tell Dominic?” I asked softly.

“Because if Dominic knew I signed the paper that killed his father, he would never forgive me,” Frank sobbed. “He is the only thing I have left in this world. I couldn’t bear to lose his love.”

Suddenly, the rusted metal door of the bus terminal burst open.

I jumped, grabbing a loose brick from the alley floor, ready to fight.

But it wasn’t a hitman.

It was Dominic.

His expensive shirt was torn, and blood was dripping from a deep cut above his eyebrow. He held his handgun loosely by his side, breathing heavily.

He saw us and let out a ragged breath of relief, running over and dropping to his knees in the mud beside Frank.

“You’re alive,” Dominic whispered, pulling his grandfather into a tight embrace. “Thank God.”

Frank hugged him back, weeping silently over Dominic’s shoulder.

Dominic looked up at me. “We have to move. The police are coming, and the Bellinis own half the precinct. Where is the SUV?”

“I didn’t take it,” I said. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

Dominic stared at me, something profound shifting in his dark eyes. I was just a housekeeper. I was supposed to run. But I had stayed in the crossfire.

“Then we steal a car,” Dominic said, standing up.

He moved toward the street, but I grabbed his arm.

“Dominic, wait,” I said, my voice shaking.

He stopped. “What is it, Rachel?”

I looked at Frank. The old man was staring at me, sheer terror in his eyes. He was silently begging me not to show Dominic the watch. Not to expose his darkest secret.

“Answer One, Open Two,” my mother used to say. Every time a secret is revealed, two more take its place.

I looked at Dominic’s bleeding face. I looked at the crooked black tie he was still wearing.

I reached into my pocket, my fingers brushing against the cold silver watch.

But before I could pull it out, Dominic’s cell phone rang.

He checked the caller ID. His face went dead pale.

He answered it, putting it on speaker.

“Hello, Dominic,” Victoria’s silky, arrogant voice echoed in the dark alley.

“Victoria,” Dominic growled. “You’re a dead woman.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, darling,” she laughed. “Because right now, I’m sitting in a very lovely hospital room at St. Jude’s.”

My blood ran cold. My mother’s hospital.

“And I’m looking at a very nice lady who says she’s Rachel’s mother,” Victoria purred. “So, here is the deal. You bring me the old man and the photograph. Or Rachel’s mother gets a lethal dose of morphine in about five minutes.”

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