Chapter 6 – THE GOLD POCKET WATCH

“Step away from her, Sarah,” Carmine ordered, cocking the hammer. The metallic click echoed loudly in the cavernous room.

I didn’t move. I tightened my arms around Nonna Vittoria. The eighty-three-year-old matriarch was trembling, but her chin remained high.

“You shoot me, Carmine,” Nonna said, her voice steady, “and there isn’t a made man in Chicago who won’t hunt you down.”

“They’ll think Vincent did it,” Carmine smiled. “The unstable boss, pushed to the edge by his crumbling marriage.”

Vincent stood ten feet away, his hands raised. He had placed himself between the terrace doors and the table.

“Take the estate, Carmine,” Vincent said, his voice surprisingly calm. “Take the territory. Just put the gun down.”

“Oh, I’ll take it all,” Carmine chuckled. He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a heavy gold pocket watch.

Vincent’s pocket watch. The one his grandfather had given him.

“I lifted this off you in the hallway,” Carmine sneered. “I’m going to leave it right next to Vittoria’s body. A perfect frame job.”

My eyes darted around the room. Madeline was gone. She had fled with the others. We were completely trapped.

“You think my wife will corroborate your story?” Vincent asked.

“Your wife,” Carmine said, looking at me with dead eyes, “won’t be around to tell any stories.”

He shifted the gun toward me.

In that split second, I didn’t think about the mistress. I didn’t think about the psychiatric hold or the lies. I thought about the six-year-old boy who had drawn a picture of a father he barely got to see.

My hand brushed against the heavy silver centerpiece on the table above me.

“Vincent!” I screamed.

I shoved the heavy silver bowl as hard as I could. It slid off the edge of the mahogany table and crashed directly onto Carmine’s wrist.

The gun went off.

Share