Chapter 1 - THE TEN MEN AT MY FATHER’S GRAVE
Thirteen years after FBI forensic accountant David Ward died in what authorities called a rain-slicked highway accident, his daughter Elena finally opened the box of case notes she had avoided since his funeral.
The pages told a different story.
Offshore accounts. Human trafficking. Political connections. Names circled in red. And one warning repeated again and again:
They’re watching.
Then Elena received an anonymous text.
Your father didn’t die in an accident. The truth is buried where he is. Go tonight.
Against every instinct telling her to stay home, Elena drove through the storm to Ashwood Cemetery.
There she found ten men in black suits standing silently around David Ward’s grave.
Black SUVs waited nearby.
One man knelt before the headstone, placed a white rose against the stone, and spoke quietly in Italian. Then all ten men bowed their heads.
Minutes later, they disappeared.
Elena approached the grave and discovered an envelope containing thousands of dollars and a card bearing only five words:
Debt paid. Forgive me. — D.R.
She was still holding it when a voice came from behind her.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Elena turned.
A tall man stood ten feet away beneath the rain, dressed in a black overcoat over an expensive suit. His hair was dark at the temples, his expression controlled, and a thin scar crossed one side of his jaw.
She had never met him.
But she recognized his face.
Dominic Rinaldi.
May you like
The man federal newspapers had spent twenty years calling one of the most powerful Mafia bosses on the East Coast.
And he was staring at Elena Ward as though he had been waiting thirteen years for this exact moment.
