SIX MAFIA MEN FROZE WHEN THE WAITRESS SPOKE ITALIAN

I do not remember deciding to run.

One second Marco was saying someone had broken into my apartment.

The next, I was in the hallway with my coat half-buttoned and my bag slipping off my shoulder.

Luca caught up with me near the kitchen.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

"No."

I spun around. "You don't get to tell me where I can go."

His expression hardened, but his voice stayed level.

"Someone entered your apartment less than fifteen minutes after your grandmother died. That is not random."

"How do you even know someone broke in?"

Marco answered from behind him.

"Because Mr. Rossi asked me to have one of our drivers make sure you got home safely. The driver saw your front door open and a man leaving through the alley."

I stared at Luca.

"You had someone follow me?"

"I had someone make sure you reached your building alive after I realized who your grandmother was."

"That is following me."

"Call it whatever you want tomorrow. Tonight, it may have saved your life."

I hated that he had a point.

I hated even more that my mind was already on the message.

The blue suitcase.

I had exactly one blue suitcase.

It was old, scuffed, and shoved beneath my bed.

I had carried it from Boston six months earlier.

My grandmother had given it to me when I was seventeen.

"I need something from the apartment," I said.

Luca looked at Marco.

Marco nodded once.

"Then we all go."

"No."

Luca's eyebrows lifted.

"It is my apartment."

"And someone just broke into it."

"Which means they could be gone."

"Or waiting."

I folded my arms even though my hands were shaking. "I survived Boston without you."

Something in his face sharpened.

"What happened in Boston?"

I instantly regretted the sentence.

"Nothing."

"That did not sound like nothing."

"It is none of your business."

He studied me for two seconds.

Then, unexpectedly, he nodded.

"Fine."

That one word unsettled me more than an argument would have.

Twenty minutes later, I sat in the back seat of a black SUV with Luca beside me and Marco in front.

New York streamed past the windows in wet streaks of neon and January rain.

No one spoke until we crossed into Queens.

Then Luca asked, "Did Elena ever mention my mother?"

"No."

"Did she keep photographs?"

"A few. Mostly of Italy before I was born."

"Any of Manhattan?"

I thought about the metal box.

"Maybe."

He turned toward me.

"Dylan."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Use that voice like I'm one of your employees."

A corner of Marco's mouth moved in the front seat.

Luca noticed.

"Something amusing?"

"Not remotely," Marco said.

I looked out the window to hide a ridiculous impulse to smile.

It vanished when we reached my block.

Two men in dark coats stood outside my building.

The front door had splintered near the lock.

My stomach dropped.

"Stay here," Luca said.

I opened the door.

"I heard you."

"That was not agreement."

"Correct."

I stepped onto the sidewalk.

He muttered something in Italian that my grandmother definitely would not have approved of.

I understood that too.

The apartment was worse than I expected.

Drawers ripped out.

Couch cushions slashed.

Kitchen cabinets emptied.

My mattress dragged halfway off the frame.

Nothing expensive was missing because I owned nothing expensive.

My laptop sat untouched on the table.

The television was still mounted to the wall.

This was not burglary.

Someone had been searching.

"Blue suitcase," I whispered.

I dropped to my knees beside the bed.

It was gone.

I felt the room tilt.

"No. No, no, no."

Luca crouched beside me.

"What was in it?"

"I don't know."

"You came here for something you do not know?"

"The lawyer said my grandmother left an envelope in it."

"When?"

"I don't know. I haven't used the suitcase since Boston."

Marco moved toward the window.

"The intruder knew exactly what he wanted."

I closed my eyes.

Boston.

The word kept coming back.

I saw Grant Holloway leaning in my kitchen doorway six months earlier, asking why I kept an old suitcase when he had offered to buy me new luggage.

I saw him going through my desk while claiming he was looking for stamps.

I heard his voice the night I finally left.

You think you can disappear from me?

My skin went cold.

"Dylan?" Luca said.

I stood too quickly.

"I need to make a call."

"To whom?"

"My ex-boyfriend."

The room went silent.

Luca's face became unreadable.

"The Boston story."

"His name is Grant. Grant Holloway. We dated for almost two years. He was charming at first. Then he started checking my phone, deciding who I could see, showing up outside my office, asking questions about my grandmother."

Marco turned from the window.

"What kind of questions?"

I forced myself to remember.

"Her maiden name. Where in Italy she lived. Whether she had friends in New York. Whether she ever worked for wealthy families here."

Marco and Luca exchanged a look.

My heart started pounding.

"You think Grant knew who she was."

Luca did not answer immediately.

That was answer enough.

I pulled out my phone.

"I'm calling him."

Luca took the phone from my hand.

Not violently.

Not even quickly.

He simply removed it before I could press the number.

Every nerve in my body ignited.

"Give me my phone."

He did.

Immediately.

That surprised both of us.

"I will not take choices away from you," he said. "But think before you make that call. If he was using you to find Elena, hearing your voice tells him you are alive, frightened, and looking for answers."

I stared at the phone.

My anger cooled into something more useful.

He was right again.

I hated the pattern.

Marco's phone buzzed.

He checked it.

"They found the suitcase."

I turned.

"Where?"

"Alley behind the building."

We hurried downstairs.

The suitcase lay open beside a dumpster, clothes scattered in dirty snow.

I dropped beside it.

My sweater.

Old jeans.

A pair of shoes.

Then my hand touched cardboard beneath the torn fabric lining.

I froze.

"What is it?" Luca asked.

The bottom panel looked slightly raised.

I hooked my fingers under the seam.

The lining peeled back.

There was an envelope taped flat beneath it.

The intruder had missed it.

My name was written on the front in my grandmother's handwriting.

DYLAN - ONLY AFTER I AM GONE.

Below that, smaller:

IF YOU ARE WITH LUCA ROSSI, LET HIM SEE EVERYTHING.

Luca read over my shoulder.

Neither of us spoke.

Inside the envelope were four things.

A brass key.

A photograph.

A folded letter.

And a tiny black flash drive.

I picked up the photograph first.

It was old, at least twenty years.

My grandmother stood on the steps of a large stone house beside a beautiful dark-haired woman.

The woman held the hand of a teenage boy.

The boy had Luca's eyes.

I looked at him.

His entire face changed.

"My mother," he whispered.

Sofia.

In the photograph, Sofia Rossi was smiling at my grandmother like a sister.

On the back, Elena had written one sentence in Italian.

I translated it aloud.

"The last day before everything burned."

Luca looked away.

I opened the letter.

My grandmother's handwriting wavered across the page.

My dearest Dylan,

If you are reading this, I am gone, and I am sorry that death has forced you into a truth I spent most of your life trying to keep away from you.

First: Luca Rossi is not your enemy.

Second: his father was not mine.

Third: the person who destroyed both our families is still close enough to touch him.

Luca stepped nearer.

I kept reading.

Twenty-two years ago, Sofia Rossi discovered that someone inside her husband's circle was moving money, names, and private schedules to men who wanted control of the Rossi businesses. She came to me because I handled translations and foreign accounts. We found proof.

Before we could bring it to Salvatore Rossi, someone learned what we knew.

The attack that killed Sofia was meant to kill Luca too.

I saved the boy. I could not save his mother.

Afterward, the evidence was altered to make it appear that I had sold the route. Salvatore believed the lie. I ran because I had your mother to protect and because the real traitor had already killed once.

My vision blurred.

I wiped my eyes and continued.

Dylan, I have carried the original records all these years. They are in a safe deposit box in Manhattan. The key is enclosed. The flash drive contains a copy, but do not open it on any ordinary computer.

There is one more truth you must know.

The traitor's son inherited his father's place.

And if Luca still keeps the same six men at his private table, one of those men knows exactly who you are.

I stopped breathing.

Behind us, Marco swore softly.

Luca's gaze lifted toward the street.

Six men.

He had been one.

Five others had sat with him.

One of them had known my grandmother.

One of them may have sent someone into my apartment.

I turned the letter over.