Chapter 2 – THE ASHES OF A QUIET LIFE

The tray slipped from my hands.

Glass shattered across the restaurant floor. Red wine spilled like blood over the white tiles.

“Leo,” I screamed.

I didn’t wait for Dante. I didn’t care about my job, the broken glass, or the old man in the corner booth.

I ran.

I pushed past Paul, ignoring his frantic shouting, and burst out the back doors into the freezing city night.

My apartment was six blocks away. I ran until my lungs burned and my cheap shoes tore blisters into my heels.

When I turned the final corner, the sky was glowing orange.

Thick, black smoke billowed into the night. Three fire trucks were already there, sirens wailing, hoses spraying water onto the collapsing roof of my brick building.

“LEO!” I sobbed, pushing through the crowd of bystanders on the sidewalk.

A police officer caught my waist, dragging me backward.

“Ma’am, you can’t go in there!”

“My nephew is inside!” I fought him like a wild animal. “He’s six! Let me go!”

“Nora!”

A familiar voice cut through the noise.

Mrs. Gable, my elderly neighbor from the first floor, was sitting on the back of an ambulance.

And huddled against her chest, wrapped in a foil emergency blanket, was a tiny boy with soot-stained pajamas.

“Auntie Nora!” Leo cried out.

I broke free from the officer and fell to my knees on the pavement, pulling the little boy into my arms.

I buried my face in his neck, sobbing uncontrollably. He smelled like smoke and cheap laundry detergent, but he was breathing. He was alive.

“I’ve got you, baby,” I rocked him back and forth. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”

“A man kicked our door in,” Leo whispered, his tiny hands gripping my coat. “He threw a bottle of fire, Auntie Nora. But Mrs. Gable grabbed me.”

My blood ran cold.

A bottle of fire. A Molotov cocktail.

This wasn’t faulty wiring. This was a hit.

Heavy footsteps approached from behind. The crowd parted instinctively.

Dante Gallo stopped beside us. His bodyguards formed a silent, immovable wall around me and my nephew, blocking the police from getting closer.

Dante looked at the burning building. Then he looked at Leo, shivering in my arms.

He wrapped it securely around Leo’s small shoulders.

“You’re safe now, little man,” Dante said softly.

Leo looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes.

Then, the six-year-old pointed a soot-stained finger directly at Dante’s face.

“Auntie Nora,” Leo whispered. “That’s the man from the photograph Grandpa hid under the floorboards.”

Dante froze.

I stared at the mafia boss, my heart stopping entirely.

“What photograph?” I demanded, pulling Leo closer.

Dante didn’t look at me. He looked at the burning building, the muscle in his jaw ticking wildly.

“The fire wasn’t meant for you, Nora,” Dante said, his voice completely hollow. “It was meant for my men. They were supposed to be guarding your building.”

“Guarding?” I gasped. “You’ve been watching us?”

Dante finally met my eyes. The guilt in them was suffocating.

“For six months,” Dante admitted. “Because your grandfather didn’t just run away from Prizzi. He took something that could destroy my family. And I’ve been waiting for you to find it.”

TITLE: The Secret Beneath The Floorboards

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