Chương 2 - THE DRAWING IN MATTEO’S COATBANG!
The third shot punched through the windshield of Luca Santoro’s sedan.
Glass exploded over the wet street.
“DOWN!”
Luca drove Elena and Matteo behind the stone base of an old fountain as another bullet struck the hood of the car.
Matteo screamed.
Elena pulled him against her chest, ignoring the fire ripping through her injured hip.
“Look at me, sweetheart. Don’t look over there. Look at me.”
The boy’s gray eyes found hers.
“Am I gonna die?”
“No.”
She said it without hesitation.
“No, you are not.”
Across the street, Luca’s men fired toward the rooftops.
One of them suddenly spun backward.
“Marco!”
Blood spread across the guard’s shoulder.
Luca fired twice toward a dark rooftop, then grabbed Marco by the collar and dragged him behind the fountain.
“Elena!”
She was already moving.
Nurse first.
Fear later.
Marco’s wound was high in the shoulder, bleeding hard but not pumping.
“Through-and-through,” she said. “He’s lucky.”
Marco gave a weak laugh.
“First time anyone called getting shot lucky.”
Luca crouched beside them.
“We have ninety seconds before whoever arranged this sends another team.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I would.”
The answer chilled her more than the rain.
Luca whistled sharply.
A second vehicle backed around the corner.
His men formed a moving wall.
Luca lifted Matteo.
The boy immediately reached for Elena.
“Elena too!”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“She’s coming.”
He looked at her.
“Whether she likes it or not.”
“I have a hospital.”
“You have a sniper.”
“I have patients.”
“And if you walk into that hospital, anyone standing beside you becomes a target.”
That stopped her.
Luca wasn’t threatening her.
He was warning her.
Ten minutes later, they were speeding through Palermo with Marco bleeding onto the floor and Matteo curled against Elena’s side.
Luca sat opposite them, pistol resting across his knee.
He watched every passing car.
Every motorcycle.
Every rooftop.
Elena had met frightened men before.
Men waiting outside surgery.
Men waiting for biopsy results.
Men hearing that their wives might not survive the night.
Luca Santoro wasn’t frightened for himself.
He was terrified for his son.
That frightened her more.
The car finally swept through iron gates surrounding an old sandstone villa above the city.
Armed guards appeared immediately.
“Lock everything,” Luca ordered. “No one leaves. No one enters.”
Inside, the villa was nothing like Elena expected.
No gold statues.
No absurd luxury.
It looked like a family home that had stopped being happy.
Dark wood.
Old photographs.
A child’s red rain boots beside the stairs.
A framed watercolor of the Palermo harbor.
And everywhere, silence.
Elena made Marco lie across the dining table.
“I need clean towels, alcohol, bandages, sterile gauze.”
A guard started to move.
“And don’t bring me whiskey like some gangster movie.”
For the first time that night, Luca almost smiled.
“Do what she says.”
Twenty minutes later, Marco’s bleeding was controlled.
Elena finally leaned against the table.
Pain tore through her hip.
Luca noticed.
“You were hit by the car.”
“Clipped.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I’ve had worse shifts.”
He stared at her.
“You always make jokes when you’re hurt?”
“Only around dangerous men.”
Marco snorted from the table.
Luca gave him one look.
Marco stopped.
Matteo had refused to leave Elena.
He sat in a chair wrapped in Luca’s charcoal overcoat, his wet hair sticking against his forehead.
Elena crouched carefully in front of him.
“Anywhere hurt?”
He shook his head.
“Head?”
“No.”
“Chest?”
“No.”
“Arms?”
“No.”
Then he whispered, “My stomach feels funny.”
“Scared funny?”
A tiny nod.
“That happens.”
He looked toward his father.
“Papa’s mad.”
Elena followed his gaze.
Luca stood by the fireplace examining the brass casing he had picked up in the street.
He wiped rainwater from it.
Then his expression changed.
Not anger.
Recognition.
Marco saw it too.
“Boss?”
Luca turned the casing between his fingers.
Stamped into the base were four tiny characters.
SM-9.
Marco went pale.
“What does that mean?” Elena asked.
Luca didn’t answer.
Marco did.
“That ammunition was made privately.”
“For whom?”
Nobody spoke.
Elena looked between them.
“For whom?”
Luca finally raised his eyes.
“For me.”
The room went still.
He placed the casing on the table.
“Two years ago, I had a private run produced for our security teams. Different powder. Different markings. Easy to identify if ammunition disappeared.”
“How many people have access?”
“Six.”
“Then start with six.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“It usually is when people say it isn’t.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You don’t understand my world.”
“No. But I understand bleeding.”
She pointed toward Marco.
“And whoever did this nearly put a bullet through a six-year-old.”
That landed.
Luca looked toward Matteo.
Something in his face softened.
Then Matteo slipped out of the chair.
His father’s coat dragged behind him.
“Elena?”
“Yes?”
“I made something.”
He pushed one small hand deep into the coat.
From the inner lining he pulled a folded piece of paper.
It had been folded so many times the edges had gone soft.
Elena opened it.
Crayon.
A red car.
A woman lying beside it.
A little boy under a yellow streetlight.
And a tall black figure.
On the figure’s wrist was a large square black watch.
Elena looked at Matteo.
“What is this?”
“The bad night.”
Luca crossed the room.
“What bad night?”
Matteo’s face closed immediately.
Elena saw it.
The same fear children showed when adults had taught them that telling the truth could make terrible things happen.
She lowered her voice.
“You’re safe.”
Matteo looked at her for several seconds.
Then he pointed to the woman beside the red car.
“That’s Mama.”
Luca froze.
Elena looked again.
Luca’s wife, Sofia, had died eighteen months earlier in what every newspaper in Sicily described as a late-night automobile accident outside Palermo.
Matteo tapped the black figure.
“He was there.”
Luca slowly crouched beside his son.
“Who was there, Matteo?”
The boy’s mouth trembled.
“Daddy…”
“Tell me.”
Matteo grabbed Elena’s sleeve.
She covered his hand with hers.
The boy stared at the drawing.
Then whispered four words that seemed to drain all the air from the room.
“That’s Uncle Vittorio.”
Luca stopped breathing.
Vittorio Mancuso.
His oldest friend.
His consigliere.
Matteo’s godfather.
And the only man in Sicily Luca Santoro trusted with his son.
Matteo pointed again to the square black watch.
“He told me Mama fell.”
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Then the six-year-old looked straight at his father.
“But Mama wasn’t dead yet.”
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