Chapter 2 - Elena's Son
For eleven years, Carmine had watched killers walk through Salvatore Moretti's gates.
He had seen men arrive bleeding from gunshot wounds, politicians arrive after midnight with their collars turned up, and rival bosses arrive surrounded by enough weapons to start a small war.
But he had never seen the guards afraid of an eight-year-old boy.
“Say it again,” Carmine whispered.
Rain slid from the child’s dark hair into his eyes.
He did not blink.
“My mother’s name was Elena.”
Dario’s face lost its color.
Carmine stared at the long driveway beyond the iron gate.
The golden windows of the Moretti mansion glowed through the storm.
For twelve years, one name had been forbidden inside that house.
Elena Vassari.
A waitress from Brooklyn.
A woman Salvatore Moretti had once loved more than his empire.
And the woman everyone believed had died after betraying him.
Carmine slowly removed his hand from his rifle.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Leo.”
“Leo what?”
The child hesitated.
“Just Leo.”
Carmine crouched.
Up close, the boy looked worse. His lips were blue. There was a healing bruise along his jaw. Another bruise disappeared beneath his collar.
Someone had hurt him.
Recently.
“Where is your mother?”
Leo looked past Carmine again.
“Dead.”
The word was empty.
Too empty.
Carmine felt something cold settle in his stomach.
“How?”
Leo reached beneath his soaked shirt.
Dario instantly raised his weapon.
“Hands!”
The boy froze.
Then very slowly, he pulled out a thin chain.
A silver medallion hung from it.
Carmine stopped breathing.
He knew that medallion.
Every man who had served Salvatore in the old days knew it.
A tiny Saint Christopher pendant with a crack running through the lower edge.
Salvatore had given it to Elena seventeen years ago.
Two weeks before she disappeared.
Carmine stood so quickly his knee cracked.
“Open the gate.”
Dario stared at him.
“What?”
“Open the damn gate.”
The enormous iron gates groaned apart.
Leo took one step forward.
Then collapsed.
Carmine caught him before his face struck the gravel.
The boy weighed almost nothing.
“Jesus.”
He lifted Leo into his arms and ran.
By the time they reached the mansion, half the security detail had gathered beneath the front portico.
Nobody asked questions.
They only stared at the unconscious boy in Carmine’s arms.
Inside, the marble foyer smelled of cedar smoke and expensive whiskey.
Carmine shouted for the house doctor.
Instead, a colder voice answered from the staircase.
“What happened?”
Every guard straightened.
Salvatore Moretti descended slowly.
At fifty-two, he was still the kind of man who changed the temperature of a room by entering it. Silver had appeared at his temples, but nothing else about him had softened. His black shirt was open at the throat. No tie. No jacket.
He had been asleep.
That alone told Carmine how serious the interruption was.
“A child came to the gate.”
Salvatore glanced at Leo.
His expression remained unreadable.
“Then take him to a hospital.”
“He asked for you.”
Salvatore stopped.
Carmine swallowed.
“He used your first name.”
Silence.
Then Carmine opened his fist.
The Saint Christopher pendant lay across his palm.
For the first time in eleven years, Carmine watched Salvatore Moretti lose control of his face.
Not much.
A tiny twitch near the jaw.
A sudden emptiness in the eyes.
But Carmine saw it.
So did everyone else.
“Where did he get that?”
Salvatore’s voice was barely audible.
“He says his mother gave it to him.”
Salvatore came down the final step.
“Who is his mother?”
Carmine knew the answer would detonate something that had been buried too long.
“Elena.”
The chandelier seemed to hum louder.
Nobody moved.
Salvatore stared at the boy.
His gaze traveled across Leo’s soaked face, his narrow shoulders, his torn shoes.
Then it stopped at the child’s eyes.
Leo opened them.
Dark gray.
The exact shade Elena’s had been.
Salvatore staggered half a step.
Only half.
But for a man like him, it was an earthquake.
Leo looked up at the stranger standing over him.
“You’re Salvatore?”
“Yes.”
“My mother told me not to trust you.”
That landed harder than any gunshot.
Several guards looked away.
Salvatore crouched.
“Then why did you come?”
Leo’s chin trembled for the first time.
“Because she also said you were the only man powerful enough to keep me alive.”
Salvatore’s eyes narrowed.
“Alive from whom?”
Leo tried to answer.
But his body suddenly began shaking violently.
Doctor Russo came rushing from the eastern hall.
“He’s hypothermic.”
They carried Leo into a guest room.
Warm blankets.
Dry clothes.
Heated fluids.
Salvatore stood near the door and watched every movement.
When Russo lifted Leo’s wet shirt, bruises covered the child’s ribs.
Salvatore’s hand curled into a fist.
“Who did that?”
Leo’s eyes remained closed.
Russo looked at him.
“He has older injuries too.”
“How old?”
“Months.”
Salvatore turned away.
“Find out who runs Miller Street Orphanage.”
Carmine nodded.
“Tonight.”
Another nod.
“And Carmine?”
“Yes, Boss?”
“If anyone there touched this child…”
Salvatore looked back at Leo.
“…don’t kill them until I’ve spoken to them.”
Carmine left immediately.
An hour passed.
Then two.
The storm continued pounding the windows.
Salvatore remained beside the bed.
At three seventeen in the morning, Leo woke.
He found the mafia boss sitting in a chair beside him.
“You stayed.”
Salvatore said nothing.
Leo studied him.
“My mother said you never stayed.”
Something moved behind Salvatore’s eyes.
“Your mother said many things about me?”
“Yes.”
“Were any good?”
Leo considered it seriously.
“One.”
Salvatore waited.
“She said you loved her once.”
The room became impossibly quiet.
Then Leo reached beneath the blanket.
“There’s something else.”
He pulled a folded piece of plastic from the waistband of the dry pants Russo had given him.
Inside the plastic was a photograph.
Elena.
Young.
Beautiful.
Smiling.
And beside her stood Salvatore Moretti, maybe thirty-five, his arm around her waist.
On the back, written in faded blue ink, were six words.
Salvatore read them twice.
Then a third time.
If I disappear, trust only him.
Underneath was a date.
Nine years ago.
Salvatore lifted his eyes.
“Elena wrote this after she supposedly died.”
Leo nodded.
“My mother wasn’t dead all those years.”
Salvatore’s entire body went still.
“Where was she?”
Leo swallowed.
“Hiding.”
“From me?”
The boy shook his head.
May you like
“From someone in your family.”
And far beneath the mansion, behind a locked steel door, a phone began ringing on a line that had not been used in twelve years.
