Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO KNEW HIS FATHERMatteo watched the security screen for nearly twenty seconds without moving.
Men like Matteo survived because they noticed what everyone else ignored—the sedan parked too long beneath a dead streetlight, the stranger who reached inside his coat when nervous, the silence that fell half a second before violence.
So when a woman stumbled into the road outside his estate at 2:13 in the morning, he was already reaching for the pistol beneath his jacket.
“Stop.”
The black Mercedes halted.
Rain hammered the windshield.
The woman took another step.
Then collapsed.
Matteo was outside before his security chief could stop him.
“Boss—”
“Cover the road.”
He crossed the wet pavement.
She looked young, maybe twenty-six. Long brown hair clung to her face. Her white dress was torn at one shoulder, and dark stains spread across the fabric.
Blood.
Too much of it.
Matteo crouched.
“Can you hear me?”
Her eyes opened.
Green.
Terrified.
But not confused.
She looked directly at him as though she had been searching for him.
“Matteo…”
His hand froze.
He had never seen her before.
“How do you know my name?”
She tried to answer but coughed instead.
“Call Dr. Romano,” Matteo ordered.
His security chief, Luca Ferraro, was already speaking into his phone.
The woman suddenly grabbed Matteo’s shirt.
“Wait.”
Her fingers were cold.
“Don’t… take me to a hospital.”
“You need one.”
“No police.”
Matteo studied her.
People feared hospitals when someone dangerous was watching them.
People feared police when the dangerous person owned them.
“Who did this?”
She shook her head.
Then reached beneath her dress.
Luca raised his weapon.
Matteo stopped him with one hand.
The woman pulled out a thin silver chain.
Something hung from it.
A pendant.
Matteo stared.
The world narrowed.
Rain vanished.
Traffic vanished.
Even the woman seemed to disappear.
The pendant was oval, no larger than a quarter, engraved with a lion standing beneath three stars.
Matteo had seen that symbol exactly once.
He had been eleven years old.
His father, Antonio DeLuca, had caught him inside a locked office at their old family home. Matteo had found a photograph hidden beneath the floorboards.
Two men stood beside a fishing boat.
Antonio was one.
The other man had been scratched from the photograph.
Around Antonio’s neck hung this pendant.
Matteo remembered his father snatching the photograph away.
“Some doors stay closed for a reason.”
Three weeks later, the photograph disappeared.
Six months after that, Antonio DeLuca was murdered.
Matteo had never seen the pendant again.
Until tonight.
“Where did you get this?”
The woman pressed it into his palm.
“My mother.”
“Who is she?”
Her breathing became shallow.
“Please…”
Matteo leaned closer.
“What happened?”
Her lips barely moved.
“Don’t let the man with the blue ring find me.”
Then she went limp.
Matteo caught her.
“Hey.”
No response.
“Luca!”
“She’s breathing.”
Matteo lifted her into his arms.
“Get the gates open.”
They carried her inside.
Dr. Romano arrived fourteen minutes later.
The physician worked in an upstairs guest room while Matteo stood outside holding the pendant.
He had spent twenty years becoming the kind of man people avoided crossing.
Restaurants went quiet when he entered.
Politicians returned his calls.
Men twice his size suddenly remembered appointments elsewhere when Matteo DeLuca looked unhappy.
Yet the tiny piece of silver in his hand scared him more than any loaded gun.
Luca approached.
“We checked the road.”
“And?”
“Blood near the old rail bridge. Tire marks. Looks like she ran through the woods.”
“Identification?”
“Nothing.”
“Phone?”
“Nothing.”
“Whoever chased her stripped her clean.”
Luca nodded.
Matteo looked toward the bedroom door.
“Except they missed the pendant.”
The doctor emerged.
“She’ll live.”
Matteo’s shoulders loosened slightly.
“She has a cut along her ribs and bruising. Lost blood, but the wound missed anything vital. She’s exhausted and badly dehydrated.”
“When will she wake?”
“Could be an hour. Could be morning.”
Matteo handed Luca the pendant.
“Photograph it. Search the crest privately.”
Luca hesitated.
“You recognize it.”
“My father owned one.”
Luca’s expression changed.
Before either man could speak again, the intercom buzzed.
Matteo looked at his watch.
2:41 a.m.
Nobody arrived at the DeLuca estate unannounced.
Nobody intelligent.
A guard’s voice came over the speaker.
“Mr. DeLuca?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a man at the front gate.”
“Send him away.”
“He says it concerns a woman.”
Matteo slowly looked toward the guest room.
“What woman?”
“He gave a name.”
The guard hesitated.
“Elena Marlowe.”
Matteo repeated it quietly.
“Elena.”
So now the stranger had a name.
“What does he want?”
“Says she was involved in an accident and he’s here to take her home.”
Matteo’s face hardened.
“Description.”
“Late fifties. Gray coat. Balding. Two men with him.”
Anything else?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
Matteo felt something cold move through his chest.
“He’s wearing a blue ring.”
Silence filled the hallway.
Luca reached for his pistol.
Matteo turned toward the security monitors.
On the screen stood a silver-haired man beneath a black umbrella.
He was smiling directly into the camera.
A large sapphire ring gleamed on his right hand.
Then the stranger raised his face.
“Tell Matteo DeLuca,” he said into the gate microphone, “that I know Elena is inside.”
Matteo stopped breathing.
May you like
The man smiled wider.
“And tell him his father should have buried the truth deeper.”
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