Chapter 2 - The Shot Through the Window
For half a second, nobody moved.
Vincent Caruso lay beneath Bruno’s paws, his eyes open, blood spreading across his shirt. Shattered glass glittered over the white roses surrounding Elena’s coffin. Somewhere behind me, Sofia Vasquez screamed her daughter’s name while Mateo shouted for someone to help.
Then training took over.
“Down!” I roared.
My men pulled mourners behind pillars and overturned chairs. Bruno remained over Vincent until I grabbed his harness and dragged him toward the coffin.
Another bullet struck the wall where my head had been.
The shooter was still outside.
“East building,” Marco Santini shouted from the window. “Fourth or fifth floor.”
“Do not return fire,” I ordered. “There are civilians everywhere.”
That command surprised some of my men. Years earlier, I might have answered an attack with enough gunfire to shake the neighborhood. But a child was breathing inside a coffin ten feet away. Whatever rules had governed my life before that moment no longer mattered.
Two paramedics rushed through the main doors with police behind them.
Mateo stepped between them and Elena.
“She’s alive,” he said. “You save her before you ask anything.”
The lead paramedic leaned over the coffin and placed two fingers against Elena’s neck.
“I have a pulse.”
Sofia collapsed against her husband.
The medical device hidden beneath Elena’s dress emitted a steady green blink. The paramedic examined the tube running beneath her collar.
“This looks like a portable infusion pump,” she said. “Someone has been giving her a controlled sedative.”
“Can you wake her?”
“Not safely here.”
They lifted Elena onto a stretcher. Bruno tried to follow, whining and pressing against my leg.
I looked at the police officer approaching me. Detective Laura Hayes had investigated three murders connected to my organization over the past decade. She had never managed to charge me, and I had never given her enough reason to stop trying.
Now her gaze moved from Vincent’s body to Elena’s open coffin.
“What happened?”
“Someone tried to bury a living child.”
“And someone shot the man who knew why.”
“You heard him?”
“Half the room heard him.”
She turned toward Vincent. “Was he your underboss?”
“He was.”
“Was?”
“He stopped being anything the moment he helped put Elena in that coffin.”
Hayes studied me. She expected anger. She expected threats. What she saw instead seemed to make her uneasy.
“Your people need to remain here for questioning.”
“My people will cooperate.”
Marco stepped closer. “Boss—”
I silenced him with a look.
The paramedics rolled Elena toward the door. Bruno strained against his leash.
“Let him come,” Sofia said.
The paramedic hesitated. “Animals aren’t allowed in the ambulance.”
“He found her,” Sofia replied. “He stays with her.”
In the end, Bruno rode in the front with one of Mateo’s cousins while Elena’s parents sat beside her. I remained behind because the shooter had not targeted the child.
He had targeted the truth.
Hayes walked me toward a side room.
“Vincent’s last words were that the traitor was in your family,” she said. “Who did he mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“That may be the first honest answer you’ve ever given me.”
I ignored the insult.
“Find the shooter.”
“I intend to.”
“You will need access to the building across the street before whoever was there removes the evidence.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that official advice?”
“It is a warning from someone who understands how quickly professionals disappear.”
Hayes spoke into her radio.
While she coordinated the search, I returned to Vincent’s body. His jacket had been removed by paramedics. One sleeve lay twisted beneath him.
Something dark protruded from his cuff.
I crouched.
A tiny memory card was taped inside the fabric.
Vincent had hidden it where no one would search during a funeral.
I removed it before Hayes turned back.
That made me guilty of tampering with evidence. It also might have been the only reason the evidence survived.
Marco noticed.
“What is it?”
“Not here.”
We left the funeral home after the police completed their initial questioning. Two vehicles carried us to an apartment above a closed Italian bakery in Astoria. It was one of the few safe locations Vincent had never known about.
Inside, Marco locked every door.
My cousin, Anthony Moretti, was waiting.
Anthony was my aunt’s son and the closest thing I had to a brother since Carlo died. He managed our legitimate construction businesses and stayed away from violence whenever possible.
He looked pale.
“I heard about Elena.”
“She is alive.”
“Thank God.”
I watched him carefully.
Vincent’s final words echoed in my mind.
The traitor is in your family.
Anthony noticed my stare. “What?”
“Where were you an hour ago?”
His expression hardened. “At St. Joseph’s Hospital with Aunt Rosa. She had another treatment.”
“Who can confirm that?”
“The nurses. Her doctor. Twenty people.”
Marco placed a laptop on the table.
I inserted the memory card.
A single encrypted folder appeared.
The password field gave us three attempts before automatic deletion.
“Vincent loved dates,” Marco said. “Birthdays, anniversaries.”
I tried the date my father founded our organization.
Wrong.
I tried the date Vincent joined us.
Wrong.
One attempt remained.
Anthony leaned toward the screen.
“Elena’s birthday.”
I looked at him.
“How would you know that?”
“She came to the Christmas party last year. Mateo told me she was turning seven in March.”
It was a reasonable answer.
I entered the date.
The folder opened.
Inside were photographs of handwritten ledgers, copies of bank transfers, police reports that had never been released, and surveillance images of members of my organization meeting federal agents.
At the center of it all was a list titled PROJECT LANTERN.
Marco read the names aloud.
“Luis Ferraro. Patrick Doyle. Carlo Moretti.”
My chest tightened.
Carlo had died five years earlier after an ambush outside a warehouse. We had blamed a rival family.
According to the file, someone inside our own circle had given the attackers his route.
Anthony stepped back.
“No.”
I opened the next document.
It contained payments from shell companies to a private clinic called Harbor Light Pediatric Research.
Elena’s name appeared on one medical form.
Beside it were the words:
SUBJECT E-17. WITNESS EXPOSURE. TEMPORARY SUSPENSION AUTHORIZED.
“She wasn’t just silenced,” Marco said. “They used her.”
Anthony pointed toward another folder. “Open that.”
A video appeared.
The footage showed the hallway outside Mateo’s office. The date was three days before Elena collapsed at school.
Elena entered the frame carrying a pink backpack. She stopped near an open door.
A man’s voice came from inside.
“You keep selling Moretti’s people, and eventually he’ll realize the information comes from his own house.”
Another voice answered.
Calm.
Familiar.
“The old man never suspected me. Dominic won’t either.”
Elena leaned closer.
A shadow moved behind her.
She turned.
The video ended.
Marco stared at the black screen.
“Play it again.”
I did.
The second voice was distorted, but I recognized the rhythm. I had heard it across dinner tables, in business meetings, and beside graves.
Anthony whispered, “That sounds like Uncle Salvatore.”
My father’s older brother.
The man who had taught me to fire a gun.
The man who had placed a hand on my shoulder at Carlo’s funeral and promised to find his killers.
The man who had called me that morning to say he was too sick to attend Elena’s service.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered without speaking.
A machine-altered voice said, “The girl should have stayed buried.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Who is this?”
“You have something that belongs to us.”
“The ledger?”
“The card.”
Anthony’s eyes shifted toward the window.
The voice continued.
“Bring it to Warehouse Twelve before midnight. Come alone, or the next coffin will belong to someone in your family.”
The call ended.
A red light began blinking beneath the laptop.
Marco bent down.
“What is that?”
The battery compartment clicked.
I smelled burning plastic.
“Move!”
We threw ourselves behind the kitchen wall as the laptop exploded.
The blast shattered the windows and filled the apartment with smoke.
When I opened my eyes, Anthony was on the floor.
A piece of glass had cut his forehead, but he was alive.
Marco staggered upright.
“The card?”
I opened my fist.
Still there.
Then we heard sirens.
Not approaching from a distance.
Already outside.
Anthony looked through the broken window.
“Police.”
“They got here too fast,” Marco said.
I understood immediately.
The explosion had not been designed to kill us.
It had been designed to expose the safe apartment and make the police find us with stolen evidence from a murder scene.
A voice boomed from the street.
“Dominic Moretti, come out with your hands visible.”
Detective Hayes.
Marco reached for his gun.
I caught his wrist.
“No.”
“They will take the card.”
“Then we make sure they take the right one.”
I pulled the memory card from the laptop reader and slipped it beneath the metal plate of my watch.
Then I picked up a blank replacement from Marco’s equipment case.
We walked downstairs with our hands raised.
Hayes stood behind a patrol car.
Her officers surrounded us.
“On your knees,” she ordered.
I obeyed.
As she handcuffed me, she searched my pockets and found the blank card.
“What is this?”
“The reason someone just tried to kill us.”
She placed it into an evidence bag.
Across the street, behind the crowd of neighbors, a black sedan waited at the corner.
The rear window lowered slightly.
I saw my uncle Salvatore sitting inside.
May you like
He looked directly at me.
Then he smiled.
