Chapter 3 – THE ROSARY IN THE STUDY

I couldn’t breathe.

The air in the dining room vanished. I stared at the photograph in the gold locket. The boy was alive. He was a teenager. He was standing on a balcony overlooking the sea, wearing the bracelet I had woven from leather cord when I was pregnant.

“He’s alive,” I gasped.

Roman slammed his fist on the table. The china rattled.

“Where did you get that picture, Ma?” he roared, advancing toward Teresa.

For the first time, Roman’s uncles stood up, blocking his path. You do not touch the matriarch in a traditional Italian family.

“Your father gave it to me,” Teresa said, her voice shaking but her spine rigid. “He found out what you did, Roman. He went to Naples to bring my grandson home. That’s why you argued with him the night he died.”

Roman’s face twisted with a dark, terrible rage. “He was weak! He would have let the rival families use the boy against us. I kept him hidden to keep him safe!”

“You kept him hidden to control me!” I screamed, tears finally breaking free. “You told me my baby was dead! You let me weep over an empty urn for fourteen years!”

“You were too soft, Nora!” Roman yelled back. “You wanted a normal life. You would have taken him and left the family! I did what I had to do to ensure my heir survived.”

I looked at the man I had shared a bed with. He wasn’t a husband. He was a monster.

I turned and ran.

“Stop her!” Roman shouted.

I didn’t run for the front door; the guards would catch me. I ran down the long hallway toward Roman’s private study. I slammed the heavy oak door shut behind me and locked the deadbolt just as heavy footsteps pounded against the wood.

“Nora! Open this door!” Roman pounded his fist against the oak.

I backed away, scanning the dimly lit study.

I needed a way out, but more importantly, I needed to know exactly where in Naples my son was.

Roman kept his most secure files in the floor safe beneath his desk. But I didn’t have the combination.

“Nora, I will break this door down!”

I looked wildly around the room. My eyes landed on the small wooden shrine in the corner. Roman’s father’s antique rosary was draped over a carved wooden cross.

Teresa had told me once that her husband hid his most dangerous secrets in plain sight.

I grabbed the heavy silver rosary. I pulled the beads hard.

The silver cross snapped open.

Inside the hollowed-out cross was a tiny, folded piece of paper and a small brass key.

I unfolded the paper. It was a receipt for a private boarding school in Naples. St. Jude’s Academy.

And a student ID number.

CRACK.

The door hinges splintered. Roman was breaking through.

I shoved the receipt and the key into my bra.

I grabbed the heavy brass lamp from the desk.

The door burst open. Roman stood in the doorway, breathing hard, his eyes furious.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

But behind him, a shadow moved.

Elise had slipped away from the guards. Her red dress was torn, her makeup smeared, and she was holding Roman’s loaded pistol.

She aimed it directly at my husband’s back and pulled the trigger.

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