Chapter 4 - THE MAN AT HER TABLESerafina read the name three times.
Salvatore Greco.
She wanted it to become someone else.
It didn’t.
Victor moved closer.
“What is it?”
She showed him the screen.
His expression collapsed.
“No.”
Carlo saw the name.
For several seconds, the seventy-one-year-old capo looked genuinely old.
“Salvatore?”
Elena gave a quiet laugh.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Serafina looked at her.
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“You said one of my capos.”
“I never said I knew which one.”
Serafina studied her.
“Why tell me anything?”
Elena lowered her weapon.
“Because whoever is doing this wants me dead too.”
Gunfire rattled above them.
Carlo looked toward the tunnel entrance.
“We can debate motives later.”
Serafina’s mind was moving quickly.
Salvatore had been with her family for eighteen years.
He had carried Matteo’s coffin.
He had stood beside Serafina in the hospital when Leo was born.
He gave Mia a gold bracelet every birthday.
He knew the estate.
He knew the safe room.
He knew exactly how Domenico would react during an attack.
Which meant the children had not been randomly taken.
The entire assault had been engineered to separate them from her.
“Where would Salvatore take them?” Victor asked.
Serafina closed her eyes.
She reconstructed twenty years of conversations.
Warehouses.
Homes.
Properties.
Meeting places.
Then she remembered.
Matteo once told her Salvatore had purchased an abandoned horse farm near Beacon under a shell company.
He had said it was for retirement.
“North.”
“How far?”
“Forty minutes.”
Elena shook her head.
“If he took them fifteen minutes ago, he has a head start.”
“Then give me a car.”
“You’re not going alone.”
“The message says—”
“The message is designed to make you stupid.”
Serafina looked at her.
Elena stepped closer.
“I hated your husband.”
Serafina’s jaw tightened.
“But I didn’t hate your children. And I certainly don’t intend to die tonight because Salvatore Greco wants a throne.”
Victor asked, “Why would he kill Matteo?”
Elena’s expression darkened.
“Because Matteo discovered something.”
“What?”
“My father and Salvatore were partners.”
Silence.
Serafina had known Giuseppe Drago only as an enemy of the Moretti alliance.
Elena continued.
“They created a narcotics pipeline through the ports without Commission approval. Matteo found out.”
Carlo cursed.
“Matteo opposed drugs.”
“Exactly.”
Serafina remembered the arguments.
Matteo had become increasingly distracted during his final months.
He had told her he was investigating a problem but refused to involve her until he had proof.
Then his car exploded.
Serafina looked at Elena.
“Your father ordered it.”
“My father suggested it.”
“And Salvatore?”
“Arranged everything.”
The truth hit differently than Serafina expected.
Not with rage.
With grief.
Quiet and cold.
Seven years of birthdays.
Christmas dinners.
Family gatherings.
Salvatore smiling beside her children.
All while carrying the knowledge of what he had done.
Nolan interrupted.
“You’re lying.”
Everyone looked at him.
“Elena told me Matteo was weak.”
Elena rolled her eyes.
“I told you many things.”
“You said Serafina killed your family.”
“My father destroyed my family.”
Nolan stared at her.
“You promised me control of Brooklyn.”
“Did you really think twelve capos would suddenly follow Victor Vescari’s spoiled son?”
Nolan looked wounded.
Victor almost laughed.
“You idiot.”
Nolan turned on him.
“You never gave me anything!”
“I gave you everything.”
“You made me sit behind men who should have answered to me.”
“Because you weren’t ready.”
“I was thirty-two!”
“And you still weren’t ready.”
Nolan shoved his father.
Victor stumbled.
Carlo immediately stepped between them.
“Enough.”
Serafina barely noticed.
Her children were somewhere with Salvatore.
Nothing else mattered.
She looked at Elena.
“You have vehicles?”
“Yes.”
“Men?”
“Twelve outside. Assuming they survived whoever just attacked.”
“Who are the new shooters?”
“I don’t know.”
Victor said, “Could be Salvatore cleaning up loose ends.”
Serafina nodded.
Likely.
A radio crackled.
Elena’s lieutenant spoke.
“Perimeter’s clear. Attackers withdrew.”
That confirmed it.
“They weren’t here to kill us,” Serafina said.
Elena understood.
“Distraction.”
“They needed time to move Mia and Leo.”
Carlo checked his pistol.
“Then we move.”
They emerged near the carriage house.
Bodies lay beside the garden wall.
Serafina recognized two estate guards.
She refused to look too long.
There would be time for mourning later.
Domenico appeared from behind a vehicle, blood running from his forehead.
Serafina ran toward him.
“Where are they?”
His expression broke.
“I’m sorry.”
“Where?”
“Salvatore came to the safe room. He had the override.”
“You gave them to him?”
“He told me you had ordered evacuation through the west exit.”
Serafina stared at him.
Domenico looked sick.
“He had your authorization code.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Serafina did.
Salvatore had been part of the system when those codes were established.
They had trusted him.
Domenico swallowed.
“I realized something was wrong when I heard the second explosion. I went after them. They shot the tires.”
He pointed toward an SUV sitting crooked near the gates.
“Boss, I failed you.”
Serafina grabbed his face between her hands.
“No.”
His eyes widened.
“He fooled both of us. You’re alive. That means you can help me bring them home.”
Domenico nodded.
“Anything.”
“Get vehicles.”
Within four minutes, three black SUVs were ready.
Serafina climbed into the first.
Victor opened the passenger door.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“You’re staying.”
“My son caused this.”
“Exactly.”
Victor’s face tightened.
“That’s why I’m coming.”
Nolan stood twenty feet away under guard.
Serafina looked at him.
“If he moves, break both legs.”
Nolan’s expression darkened.
Victor climbed into the vehicle.
Carlo and Domenico joined the second SUV.
Elena entered the first beside Serafina.
It was a partnership neither woman would have imagined an hour earlier.
The convoy sped through the estate gates.
Mia’s photograph remained open on Serafina’s phone.
Her daughter looked terrified but alert.
Leo’s head rested against her shoulder.
“Smart girl,” Serafina whispered.
Elena glanced at her.
“What?”
“She’s keeping Leo calm.”
“How old?”
“Eight.”
Elena stared at the photograph.
“My sister was eight when she died.”
Serafina looked at her.
Elena faced the window.
For the first time, Serafina saw something beyond the enemy.
A daughter.
A sister.
Someone shaped by the same world they had both spent their lives navigating.
“Salvatore killed her too?” Serafina asked.
Elena nodded.
“My father started a war. Salvatore gave him the weapons and information to continue it. Then when everything collapsed, he disappeared back into your organization.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Elena laughed bitterly.
“You killed my father.”
“Your father tried to kill me.”
“I know that now.”
The car fell silent.
Victor stared forward.
Then Serafina’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
“Mom?”
Mia.
Serafina’s entire body tightened.
“Mia.”
“I’m okay.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you see anything?”
“A barn.”
Serafina and Victor exchanged looks.
The horse farm.
“Where’s Leo?”
“Here.”
A muffled sob sounded.
Serafina closed her eyes.
“Put me on speaker.”
A click.
“Leo?”
“Mommy?”
“I’m coming.”
“He said you won’t.”
“Who?”
Mia whispered.
“Uncle Sal.”
Serafina’s face went ice-cold.
“Listen to me. You both stay together. Do exactly what Mia says.”
“Okay.”
Mia breathed into the phone.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I stole his phone.”
Despite everything, Serafina almost smiled.
“That’s my girl.”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Can you hide it?”
“Yes.”
“Do that now.”
“But—”
A noise sounded in the background.
Footsteps.
Mia whispered, “He’s coming.”
The line disconnected.
Serafina immediately opened the location data.
The phone signal appeared.
Beacon.
Exactly where she expected.
Then the signal vanished.
Victor looked at her.
“Did you get it?”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
“Twenty-three minutes.”
The driver pushed harder.
Trees blurred beside the road.
Elena loaded a fresh magazine.
Domenico’s SUV followed.
Serafina stared at the darkness ahead.
Twenty-three minutes felt like twenty-three years.
Then another message arrived.
Not from Mia.
From Salvatore.
You always were clever, Serafina.
A second message followed.
Come through the front gate. No weapons.
And a third.
A photograph.
Mia and Leo were sitting on the floor inside a barn.
Salvatore stood behind them.
He held a gun.
But the gun wasn’t aimed at the children.
It was aimed at someone kneeling beside them.
A man.
Bloodied.
Barely conscious.
Serafina zoomed in.
Victor gasped.
“That’s impossible.”
Serafina stared at the face.
Seven years earlier, she had buried a closed coffin because the explosion had supposedly left nothing identifiable.
Yet the man kneeling inside Salvatore’s barn had the same scar above his left eyebrow.
The same shoulders.
The same eyes.
Serafina stopped breathing.
Elena whispered, “Who is that?”
Serafina couldn’t answer.
Because the dead man in the photograph was her husband.
May you like
Matteo Moretti.
Alive.
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