Chapter 2 – THE SECRET HIDDEN IN HIS WOOL COAT

The silence in the dining room felt heavier than lead.

Twenty-three relatives stopped breathing.

I looked at Luca. The powerful mafia boss, a man who commanded the city with a single glance, looked completely terrified.

“Vivian, shut your mouth,” Luca snarled, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.

Vivian smiled, adjusting her designer purse on her shoulder. “Why, Luca? Are we keeping secrets from the woman who paid for your little… project?”

“Get out!” Luca roared, a sound that finally made Vivian flinch. She turned on her heel and walked out the heavy oak front doors, the click of her heels echoing like gunshots.

I stood perfectly still.

My mother’s flower shop. The shop I had grown up in. The shop I sold for pennies on the dollar because Luca told me the feds had frozen his accounts and the family needed liquid cash to survive the week.

“Rose,” Luca said, stepping toward me. His hands were raised, palms out, like he was approaching a wild animal. “Don’t listen to her. She’s just angry.”

“What did you buy, Luca?” I asked. My voice was eerily calm.

“Nothing. It was business.”

Nonna Adelaide struck the floor with her cane. “Do not lie in this house, Luca. Not today. Tell your wife.”

“It’s family business, Grandmother,” he snapped, his control slipping. “Not for Sunday dinner.”

“I am your family,” I said. “And it was my money.”

I didn’t wait for his permission. I walked past him, ignoring his outstretched hand, and marched into the grand foyer. His heavy black wool overcoat hung on the brass rack.

“Rose, what are you doing?” Luca followed me, panic seeping into his tone.

“You never check your coat pockets when you come home,” I said, my hands sliding into the deep, silk-lined pockets. “You rely on the staff to empty them.”

My fingers brushed against something hard and metallic.

I pulled it out.

It wasn’t a bank statement or a deed to a property.

It was a small, tarnished silver locket.

“Give me that,” Luca said, lunging forward.

I stepped back, my thumb finding the clasp. I popped it open.

Inside the locket wasn’t a picture of Vivian. It wasn’t a picture of me.

It was a photograph of a little boy.

He looked about five years old. He had dark, messy hair and familiar, soulful brown eyes. Eyes that mirrored the ones staring back at me in the mirror every morning.

“Who is this child?” I whispered.

Luca closed his eyes, a look of profound defeat washing over him. “Rose, please. Not here.”

Nonna Adelaide had followed us into the foyer. She looked at the locket in my hand, her aged eyes widening in shock. “Luca… is that…?”

“Yes,” Luca said quietly.

I looked from my husband to his grandmother. They shared a look of understanding that excluded me entirely.

“Is this your son?” I asked, my voice cracking. Six years of trying. Six years of negative tests and silent tears in empty bedrooms.

“He’s not Vivian’s,” Luca said quickly. “I swear to you, Rose. He’s not hers.”

“Then whose is he?” I demanded, the locket burning my palm. “And what does my mother’s flower shop have to do with him?”

Luca took a deep breath.

“I used the money from the flower shop to buy him safely out of Chicago,” Luca confessed, his voice breaking. “I had to pay off a debt to keep him hidden.”

A reversal slammed into my chest. He hadn’t bought a luxury car or a penthouse for his mistress. He had bought a child’s life.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I cried.

“Because,” a new voice echoed from the doorway.

We all turned. A man in a tailored suit stood there—Dominic, Luca’s ruthless underboss.

Dominic looked at me with cold pity.

“Because, Rose,” Dominic said smoothly, “that boy’s mother is the woman who was supposed to marry Luca. Your older sister.”

My lungs forgot how to work.

My sister, Clara, died in a car crash seven years ago.

Or so I had been told.

Before I could speak, Dominic pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and tossed it onto the entryway table.

“Vivian didn’t just leave,” Dominic said. “She took this from the east wing before she walked out.”

I unfolded the paper. It was a child’s crude crayon drawing.

A drawing of a woman with bright red hair standing next to a little boy.

Written in clumsy, childish letters at the bottom were the words: To Auntie Rose.

Share