The Mafia Boss Told Me I Couldn't Go Home After I Cleaned Five Bloody Shirts

The explosion lifted the floor beneath my feet.

One second I was running up the concrete stairs.

The next I was on my hands and knees, ears ringing, dust swallowing the corridor.

Someone pulled me upright.

Gabriel.

"Hannah!"

I could barely hear him.

"I'm fine."

I wasn't.

My left palm was bleeding. My ribs hurt. Smoke poured from the stairwell below us.

Two of Gabriel's men carried Luca between them. Vittorio dragged Matteo by the collar despite the wound in Matteo's leg.

We reached the main floor just as a second blast shattered windows along the river side.

Cold rain hit my face.

Outside, everyone scattered toward the vehicles.

Then Luca collapsed.

Gabriel dropped beside him.

"Luca?"

His brother convulsed once, then went limp.

"Doctor!"

A physician from the security team ran over.

I watched him check Luca's pupils and pulse.

"He's breathing. We need to move now."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Could be withdrawal. Could be poisoning. I need tests."

Poisoning.

The word pulled me back to the photograph.

Luca's pale skin.

His heavy posture.

The faint green residue.

I looked at the envelope sample sealed in a plastic sleeve inside Gabriel's evidence bag.

"Wait."

No one listened.

"Wait!"

Gabriel turned.

"What?"

"The green compound. It may not just be a location marker."

The doctor looked at me.

"What compound?"

I explained quickly.

He frowned.

"Could be irrelevant."

"Could be. But Luca's shoes were wet in the photo. The room had residue. If he's been kept underground around old industrial chemicals for years, exposure matters."

The doctor nodded.

"Bring the sample."

Gabriel crouched beside Luca while the medics prepared a stretcher. For a moment, the chaos around us receded.

"I thought you were dead," Gabriel said.

Luca's eyelids fluttered. "I know."

"If I had known—"

"Don't."

"Luca—"

"Don't spend the first five minutes we have together apologizing for twelve years you didn't choose."

Gabriel's face tightened.

Luca managed the ghost of a smile. "You can apologize later. Preferably somewhere with better coffee."

Then his eyes rolled back and the doctor pushed Gabriel aside.

I watched Gabriel stand there in the rain, hands empty, expression stripped of every layer he used to intimidate people. Elena reached him first and gripped his arm. He covered her hand with his. No words.

It occurred to me that the Morettis were fluent in danger and almost illiterate in comfort.

I understood that better than I wanted to. After my mother died, friends had tried to help me with casseroles, sympathy cards, invitations I stopped answering. Eventually they quit asking. Grief had made me lonely, but pride had made the loneliness permanent.

Maybe that was why I stepped closer to Gabriel and said, "He's here now."

He looked at me.

"For whatever that's worth, he's here."

His throat moved. "It's worth something."

Before the medics loaded Luca into the ambulance, he caught my wrist with surprising strength.

"You're Hannah?" he asked.

I blinked. "How do you know my name?"

His cracked lips moved. "They talked about you downstairs. The cleaner who ruined the tracer. Alessio was furious."

Gabriel leaned closer. "Who was with him?"

Luca's eyes drifted toward Matteo, who was being secured in another vehicle under guard.

"Not him at first. Another man. Young. Computer guy. Kept saying the girl had taken a sample."

Evan Pike, though none of us knew it yet.

"Anything else?" Gabriel asked.

Luca struggled to focus. "Alessio kept asking about a church. Said your father hid the truth beneath saints."

Vittorio, standing ten feet away, went rigid.

I noticed. Gabriel did too.

But before either of us could question him, Luca's grip loosened and the medics moved him.

Gabriel watched the ambulance doors close. Then he looked at his uncle.

"What church?"

Vittorio's answer came too quickly. "I don't know."

It was the first lie I heard him tell.

We moved to a secure medical facility owned by the Morettis outside Lake Oswego.

For the next three hours, the world divided into rooms.

Luca in intensive care.

Matteo restrained under guard in another wing.

Sofia sitting outside Luca's room, crying without making a sound.

Gabriel pacing.

Me in a small laboratory with Dr. Shah and a technician, trying to identify the green residue.

It turned out not to be exotic.

That was the disturbing part.

The material contained a common fluorescent cleaning additive mixed with trace amounts of an industrial sedative contaminant used in veterinary compounds.

Not enough to knock someone unconscious immediately.

Enough, with repeated exposure, to keep someone weak, confused, and dependent.

Dr. Shah looked at the result.

"If this was in water or food over time, it could explain some of his symptoms."

"Can it be treated?"

"If we know the dose and duration."

"He's been gone twelve years."

She stared at me.

"Then we have a lot to learn."

I found Gabriel in the corridor.

He looked at my face and knew.

"Tell me."

I did.

His expression became murderous.

"They kept him drugged."

"Probably."

"For twelve years."

"Gabriel—"

He punched the wall.

The sound echoed through the corridor.

Sofia flinched from her chair.

Gabriel closed his eyes.

I looked at his bleeding knuckles.

"That was stupid."

He laughed bitterly.

"You're going to lecture me now?"

"Yes. Your brother just got back. Your mother is barely holding herself together. Your sister nearly watched you get shot. Try not to break the hand they may need you to sign hospital forms with."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he sat down.

I sat beside him.

For several minutes, neither of us spoke.

Finally, he said, "Matteo was with me when my father died."

"I know."

"He stood beside me at my wedding."

I turned toward him.

"You're married?"

He gave me a strange look.

"Widowed. Seven years."

"I'm sorry."

"Her name was Camille. Cancer. Nothing dramatic enough for my world. Just something I couldn't threaten or buy."

His voice was flat, but grief lived underneath it.

"After she died, Matteo was the one who got me out of the house. He kept the organization together. He knew every route, every safe house, every weakness."

"That's why Verciani needed him."

"Yes."

"Or why Matteo needed Verciani."

Gabriel looked at me.

"What do you mean?"

"You keep assuming Alessio is the architect. Maybe Matteo isn't just his employee."

Gabriel frowned.

"Matteo has no reason to want control."

"People don't betray families for no reason."

"Money."

"He already had money."

"Power."

"Maybe. But if he wanted you dead, he had fifteen years to arrange it. Why now?"

That stopped him.

I continued.

"And why use the shirts? Why the tracer? Why plant older blood on Dominic? Why create a puzzle complicated enough for someone to solve?"

Gabriel stared at me.

"Because they wanted me looking in the wrong direction."

"For a few hours, yes. But there may be more."

He stood.

"We ask Matteo."

Matteo Ricci was awake when we entered his room.

His leg was bandaged. One wrist was cuffed to the bed. Two armed guards stood outside.

He smiled when he saw me.

"The laundromat chemist."

"Former chemistry student."

"You should have finished school. You'd have been less troublesome."

Gabriel stepped closer.

"Why?"

Matteo looked at him.

"That is such a small question."

"Why betray me?"

"I didn't betray you."

Gabriel's eyes went cold.

Matteo laughed.

"There. That's the problem. You think loyalty means obedience. Your father thought the same thing."

"You tried to shoot me."

"Because you were about to release Luca."

"My brother."

"Your father's greatest mistake."

Sofia appeared in the doorway behind us.

Matteo saw her.

His expression changed.

"You never told him?"

Gabriel turned toward his mother.

"Told me what?"

Sofia went pale.

Matteo smiled slowly.

"Ask her why Luca was taken."

Gabriel's voice sharpened.

"Mama?"

She looked at the floor.

"Your father made a deal."

"What deal?"

"There was going to be a war. Moretti and Verciani. Hundreds could have died. Your father offered something to stop it."

Gabriel stared at her.

"He offered Luca?"

"No."

Her voice broke.

"He offered information. Names. Routes. Accounts. But Verciani wanted insurance. They took Luca without his permission."

Matteo interrupted.

"And your father let them keep him."

Gabriel stopped breathing.

Sofia shook her head violently.

"He searched—"

"For three months," Matteo said. "Then Verciani threatened Elena. Your father stopped."

Elena had entered behind her mother.

Her face crumpled.

"He chose me?"

Sofia began to cry.

"He chose the children he could still protect."

Gabriel looked sick.

Matteo leaned back against the pillow.

"That's the family you inherited. Not honor. Not loyalty. A system built on choosing which person gets sacrificed."

Gabriel's hands curled.

"So you decided to become worse?"

Matteo's smile vanished.

"I decided the system deserved to burn."

"By joining Verciani?"

"Alessio doesn't matter."

That was the first truly surprising thing he said.

Gabriel frowned.

"What?"

Matteo looked at me.

"Tell him, chemist. Blood tells stories, doesn't it?"

I thought of Dominic's shirt.

Older blood.

Different oxidation.

"Whose blood was on Dominic's shirt?"

Matteo's eyes gleamed.

"Not Dominic's."

"We know that."

"No. You know it wasn't fresh. You don't know whose it was."

Gabriel stepped forward.

"Whose?"

Matteo smiled.

"Your father's."

Silence.

Gabriel did not move, but Sofia did. She gripped the doorframe as if the floor had shifted beneath her.

"You had Vincent's blood?" she whispered.

Matteo looked at her. "Not me. Dominic found a sealed evidence box when he audited old medical storage. Vincent's shirt, blood samples, photographs from the night he died. He showed me because he thought someone had been hiding the circumstances from Gabriel."

Gabriel's eyes narrowed. "Dominic showed you and not me?"

"He was trying to verify it first. He still believed evidence mattered more than emotion. It got him killed."

I looked at Matteo. "You stained Dominic's shirt with preserved blood to make Gabriel investigate the past."

"Yes."

"And you put the tracer on Gabriel?"

"I arranged it."

"Why send the shirts to an ordinary laundromat?"

For the first time, Matteo's expression showed something almost like regret. "I wanted the tracker neutralized before Alessio could use it to find the next safe house. The laundromat was supposed to be disposable. The cleaner was supposed to be irrelevant."

My anger sharpened. "That's a charming way to describe me."

"I didn't know who would be working."

"That makes it better?"

"No."

He looked at me directly. "It makes it true."

Gabriel stepped between us. "Keep talking to her and I'll forget you're useful."

Matteo's mouth curved. "There. Exactly. You protect one person and call it morality while the machine around you crushes hundreds you never meet. I wanted you forced to see the machine."

Silence.

Gabriel's father had been dead thirteen years.

I stared at Matteo.

"That's impossible."

"Not if someone kept the shirt he died in."

Sofia made a horrified sound.

Matteo continued.

"Dominic found it three months ago in a sealed evidence vault. Along with records your father never meant you to see. I used his blood to make you look at the past."

Gabriel's voice was barely controlled.

"What records?"

"The real Hawthorne archive."

Gabriel looked confused.

Matteo smiled again.

"The archive Alessio stole tonight was a decoy."

Vittorio, standing in the doorway, whispered, "No."

Matteo turned toward him.

"You knew there was another one."

Vittorio's face told us the answer.

Gabriel looked at his uncle.

"Where is it?"