Chapter 9 - THE LETTER FROM SICILY
Z
Seven months after Patrick Callahan was arrested, Claire received a letter from a dead woman.
It arrived on a Tuesday morning inside a cream envelope with no return address.
Claire was at her desk in Caruso Maritime when Teresa called.
“There is something here for you.”
Claire smiled at the stack of contracts covering her desk.
“If it’s another wedding invitation, tell them Vincent refuses to dance.”
“I heard that,” Vincent called from the doorway.
Claire looked up.
He leaned against the frame of her office with a coffee in one hand.
Seven months of marriage had changed certain things.
Vincent still carried danger around him as naturally as another man carried a wallet.
But Claire no longer mistook silence for anger.
She no longer assumed every closed door concealed punishment.
She no longer apologized every time she disagreed with him.
Usually.
Teresa’s voice came through the speaker.
“It is not an invitation.”
Something in her tone made Claire sit straighter.
“What is it?”
“A letter.”
“From who?”
Teresa hesitated.
“Your mother.”
Claire stopped breathing.
Vincent put down his coffee.
Claire’s mother, Margaret Callahan, had died when Claire was eleven.
Officially, it had been pneumonia following complications from an autoimmune condition.
Patrick had handled everything.
The hospital.
The funeral.
The estate.
The stories afterward.
Claire had spent fourteen years believing there was nothing left to question.
“Teresa,” she whispered. “My mother is dead.”
“I know.”
Vincent was already reaching for his jacket.
“We’re going home.”
Claire barely remembered the drive.
The envelope waited on the library table.
Her name was written across the front.
Not Claire Caruso.
Claire Margaret Callahan.
Her middle name.
Her mother’s name.
Claire touched the handwriting.
Her fingers began to shake.
“I don’t remember her writing.”
Vincent stood beside her.
“You don’t have to open it.”
“Yes, I do.”
The envelope contained four pages.
The first sentence broke her.
My darling Claire,
If you are reading this, then either I survived long enough to tell you everything myself, or I failed.
Claire stopped.
Vincent reached for her hand.
She let him take it.
She continued.
Margaret wrote that Patrick had changed during the final years of their marriage.
Not in the ways Claire remembered.
Not shouting.
Not insults.
Something quieter.
Money disappeared from accounts.
People visited the house late at night.
Patrick became paranoid about shipping records.
Then Margaret discovered he had been laundering money through businesses connected to organized crime.
But the name in the letter was not Caruso.
Marino.
Claire looked up.
Vincent’s face hardened.
She kept reading.
Margaret had attempted to leave.
Patrick found out.
Two weeks later, she became sick.
Not violently.
Gradually.
Fatigue.
Nausea.
Weakness.
Symptoms the family doctor blamed on her existing condition.
Margaret had not believed him.
So she sent blood samples to another physician.
The results never reached her.
The letter had been written from a private clinic in Boston.
Three days before Margaret died.
Claire’s vision blurred.
“No.”
Vincent took the pages from her before they slipped from her hands.
“Claire.”
“No.”
She stood so quickly the chair fell backward.
“My mother thought he was poisoning her.”
Vincent said nothing.
“She thought Patrick was killing her.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
Daniel entered the library.
One look at Claire’s face stopped him.
“What happened?”
Vincent handed him the letter.
Daniel read silently.
When he finished, his expression became grim.
“Where did this come from?”
The envelope also contained a smaller note written in modern handwriting.
Mrs. Caruso,
Your mother entrusted these pages to my father in Palermo in 2001. He died last month. His instructions were that they be delivered if Patrick Callahan ever lost the ability to intercept them.
There was a name beneath it.
Dr. Matteo Bellandi.
Daniel looked at Vincent.
“Bellandi.”
Vincent knew it.
“Palermo.”
Claire stared between them.
“Who is he?”
Vincent hesitated.
“A family.”
“What kind of family?”
“The kind people still lower their voices around in Sicily.”
Claire almost laughed.
“Of course.”
Vincent continued.
“The Bellandis operated legitimate medical clinics for decades. Their older generation also treated men who didn’t use ordinary hospitals.”
“Crime families.”
“Yes.”
“My mother sent this to a mafia doctor?”
“Possibly.”
Daniel returned to the note.
“There’s an address.”
Claire reached for the page.
At the bottom, beneath Dr. Bellandi’s signature, was one final sentence.
Your mother left something else.
Claire’s heart thudded.
Vincent read it.
“What?”
“There are records.”
Daniel looked up.
“Medical?”
“Maybe more.”
Claire stared at the letter.
Her mother had died when she was eleven.
Claire remembered fever.
Curtains closed against sunlight.
Patrick telling the girls not to disturb her.
A hospital room Claire had barely been allowed to enter.
And one night her mother gripping Claire’s hand with surprising strength.
Don’t let anyone tell you who you are.
Claire had thought it was a dying mother comforting her youngest daughter.
Now she wondered whether Margaret had been warning her.
Vincent sat across from Claire.
“We can send someone.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“I’m going.”
“This involves Sicily.”
“I know.”
“And the Bellandis.”
“I know.”
“And possibly a murder committed fourteen years ago.”
Claire looked at him.
“My mother’s murder.”
Vincent did not correct her.
“Possibly.”
Claire’s voice dropped.
“If Patrick did this, I need to know.”
Vincent leaned forward.
“And if someone is trying to lure us overseas?”
“Then we find out.”
“That answer sounds suspiciously like something I would say.”
“You’re a terrible influence.”
Despite himself, he smiled.
Daniel interrupted.
“There’s another problem.”
He turned the envelope over.
A faint embossed mark appeared near the seal.
A black serpent wrapped around a crown.
Vincent’s smile vanished.
Claire noticed.
“What?”
He did not answer immediately.
“Vincent.”
“That symbol belonged to a Sicilian group my grandfather fought thirty years ago.”
“Marino?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Vincent looked toward the window.
“The Vescari family.”
Daniel added quietly, “They were supposed to be gone.”
Claire looked at the serpent again.
“What happened to them?”
Vincent’s expression became distant.
“My grandfather helped remove them from Palermo after they tried to take control of port routes.”
“Remove?”
“Most died. Some disappeared.”
Claire’s stomach tightened.
“And now someone carrying their symbol has a letter from my mother.”
“Yes.”
The library fell silent.
Claire looked down at Margaret’s words.
Her mother had hidden evidence.
Patrick had lied.
The Marino organization had been tied to Callahan money decades earlier than anyone knew.
And somewhere in Palermo, a doctor was waiting with whatever Margaret had left behind.
Claire folded the letter carefully.
“When do we leave?”
Vincent studied her.
Then nodded.
“Tomorrow night.”
Across the Atlantic, in a villa outside Palermo, an elderly man closed a leather folder and looked toward the sea.
A younger man stood beside him.
“She received the letter?”
“Yes.”
“And Caruso?”
“He will come.”
The old man smiled.
“Good.”
He touched the black serpent ring on his finger.
“Vincent Caruso believes the war his grandfather started ended thirty years ago.”
May you like
He looked toward a photograph of Margaret Callahan taken in 2001.
“He is about to learn it never ended.”
