Chapter 5 – The Father’s Coat

I stared at the screen, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

The tall man standing over Anthony wore a heavy, dark wool coat with a distinctive velvet collar. Even through the grainy black-and-white monitor, the coat looked archaic, out of place among the modern tactical gear of the Rossi men.

“Are you sure, Mrs. Marino?” I whispered.

“I sewed that velvet collar myself,” Rosa said, her voice shaking with a grief that had suddenly been resurrected. “My husband, Carlo, was wearing it the night his car was forced off the bridge. The police said the coat was lost in the river. How does this man have it?”

On the screen, the man leaned down and spoke to Anthony.

Anthony’s reaction was immediate. He didn’t look defeated anymore. He looked entirely consumed by rage. He lunged forward, but three Rossi men slammed him back into the snow, pressing the barrels of their rifles against his head.

The man in the coat laughed.

He pulled something from the pocket of the coat and held it up to Anthony’s face.

It was a small, glittering object.

“What is he holding?” Lily asked, squinting at the monitor.

I leaned closer to the glass. It looked like a piece of jewelry.

Rosa let out a sharp cry. “The bracelet.”

I turned to her. “What bracelet?”

“When Carlo died,” Rosa explained, tears spilling down her wrinkled cheeks, “he was carrying a silver bracelet. It was a gift for Elena, for her tenth birthday. He never made it home to give it to her.”

The puzzle pieces were crashing together in my mind.

Victoria poisoning Elena. My mother hiding the diary. The stolen watch. And now, the coat and the bracelet.

“Who is that man?” I asked.

“That’s Dominic Rossi,” Rosa said bitterly. “The current head of the Rossi family. But twenty years ago, he was just a foot soldier. If he has Carlo’s coat and bracelet…”

“He was the one who murdered your husband,” I finished, feeling sick to my stomach.

On the monitor, Dominic Rossi placed the silver bracelet inside his pocket. He gestured to his men. Two of them hauled Anthony to his feet and began dragging him toward the lead SUV.

They were taking him.

“They’re going to kill my Daddy!” Lily screamed, pulling at the locked steel door. “Let him go! Let him go!”

I grabbed Lily and pulled her into a tight hug, pressing her face against my shoulder so she couldn’t watch the screen.

“We have to do something,” I said to Rosa, panic making my voice shrill. “If they take him, he’s dead.”

Rosa Marino closed her eyes.

She took a long, deep breath.

When she opened her eyes, the frail, weeping old woman was gone. Sitting in the wheelchair was the widow of a Mafia boss.

“Claire,” Rosa said, her voice hard as iron. “Under the keyboard on the desk. There is a red button.”

I looked at the steel desk. I reached under the keyboard and felt a small, plastic switch.

“What does it do?” I asked.

“It opens the emergency armory,” Rosa said. “Anthony isn’t the only one who knows how to protect this family.”

I pressed the button.

With a loud hiss, a section of the concrete wall slid open, revealing a hidden weapons cache. Rifles, handguns, and tactical vests lined the wall.

But Rosa didn’t look at the guns.

She pointed to a small, heavy metal lockbox sitting on the bottom shelf.

“Bring me that box, Claire.”

I ran over, grabbed the heavy box, and placed it on her lap.

Rosa dialed a three-digit combination. The box clicked open.

Inside wasn’t a weapon. It was a stack of yellowed, fragile documents tied with a leather string.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The real diary,” Rosa said flatly.

I stared at her in shock. “But Tommy… the floorboards in the cottage…”

“Tommy stole a decoy,” Rosa said, a grim smile touching her lips. “Did you really think I would leave the most dangerous piece of evidence in this city buried under a wooden floorboard? Elena gave the diary to your mother, and your mother gave it to me. I’ve kept it locked in this bunker for three years.”

Hope flared in my chest. “So the Rossis don’t have the leverage. We do.”

“Exactly,” Rosa said. She picked up the radio microphone from the desk and changed the frequency dial.

She pressed the transmit button.

“Dominic Rossi,” Rosa’s voice echoed through the external loudspeakers of the mansion, booming across the snowy lawn.

On the monitors, Dominic froze. He looked up at the house.

“This is Rosa Marino,” she declared, her voice steady and echoing with power. “Let my son go. Right now.”

Dominic laughed, holding up a small black notebook. He pressed a button on his own radio.

“Or what, Rosa?” Dominic’s voice crackled back through our bunker speaker. “You’ll shoot me? I have the diary. You’re finished.”

“You have a grocery ledger from 2018,” Rosa replied coldly. “I have Elena’s diary. And I just initiated a dead-man’s switch. If you don’t release Anthony in sixty seconds, the real diary will be automatically emailed to the FBI, the DA, and every rival family in the Five Boroughs.”

Dominic’s smug smile vanished.

He opened the black notebook in his hand. He flipped through the pages.

Even on the grainy monitor, I could see his face twist in fury as he realized the pages were blank.

“Fifty seconds, Dominic,” Rosa said.

Dominic glared at the house. He looked at Anthony, who was suddenly smiling a bloody, vicious smile.

“Let him go,” Dominic barked at his men.

The guards shoved Anthony forward.

Anthony didn’t run. He walked slowly, deliberately, stopping right in front of Dominic Rossi.

Anthony reached out and grabbed the lapel of the heavy winter coat.

“This is my father’s,” Anthony said loudly enough for the microphones to catch it.

He ripped the coat off Dominic’s shoulders.

Dominic didn’t stop him. He knew he had lost the upper hand.

“Get in the cars,” Dominic ordered his men.

As the Rossis climbed into their SUVs and sped down the driveway, leaving the ruined gates behind, Anthony put his father’s heavy coat over his own shoulders.

He looked directly at the security camera and nodded.

“Open the door, Claire,” Rosa said, tears of relief finally falling.

I punched the code. The steel door hissed open.

We ran up the stairs, Lily sprinting ahead of us.

When we reached the ruined grand foyer, Anthony was kneeling on the floor, holding Lily so tightly she was lifted off the ground.

I pushed Rosa’s wheelchair forward.

Anthony looked up at us. He stood and walked over to his mother, wrapping his arms around her.

“You saved my life, Mom,” he whispered into her hair.

“You would have done the same for me,” she smiled.

Anthony turned to me.

His eyes were incredibly soft.

“You didn’t run, Claire,” he said. “You stayed and protected my family.”

“I’m sorry about Tommy,” I said, looking down at my hands. “I’m so sorry.”

Anthony reached into the pocket of his father’s coat.

He pulled out the silver bracelet Dominic had been holding.

But as he held it up in the light of the chandeliers, something was wrong.

It wasn’t a little girl’s birthday bracelet.

It was a medical bracelet.

And the name engraved on the metal wasn’t Elena Marino.

It was Mary Bennett.

My mother.

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