THE BROKEN CROWN: A MAFIA BOSS, A BREAD CRUMB, AND THE GHOSTS OF ASH RIDGE

The silence inside the bakery was suffocating. Outside, the rain had turned into thick, heavy flakes of Appalachian snow, sticking to the shattered glass of the front window.

Clara hadn't moved. Her eyes were fixed on the gun in Enzo’s hand, then on the two bodies groaning on her floor, and finally on his eyes.

"You're not Michael," she whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of terror and fury. "You’re not a cripple. You're the devil they were talking about."

Enzo lowered the weapon, flicked the safety on with his thumb, and set it on the counter. He walked over to the first guard, dragged him by the collar into the back storage room, and did the same with the other two, locking the heavy industrial freezer door behind them.

Then he walked back to Clara. He took a clean linen towel from the shelf, soaked it in cold water from the sink, and held it out to her.

She didn't take it. She slapped his hand away.

"Don't touch me!" she hissed. "You brought this into our shop! You brought your war here!"

"It was already here, Clara," Enzo said, his voice stripped of all pretense. "It's been here for thirty years. My uncle was killing your father inch by inch before you were even born."

Joseph Rossi struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on the wooden counter. His eyes were wide with a terrible, dawn-breaking comprehension. "The Falcone family. The boy from Boston... you’re Marco’s nephew."

"I was," Enzo said. "Now I'm the man who is going to end him."

Enzo reached into his pocket and pulled out the thick roll of hundred-dollar bills he had kept hidden in the lining of his boot—ten thousand dollars in crisp, uncirculated currency. He placed it on the counter next to the flour bin.

"Take your daughter. Take your truck. Drive north toward Pennsylvania. Don't stop until you cross the state line."

"No," Clara said, stepping between Enzo and her father. "We’re not running. This shop is all we have. My mother died in the bed upstairs three years ago. We don't have anywhere to go, and I'm not letting you turn my home into a slaughterhouse and then tell me to run like a dog!"

Enzo looked at her. Her face was smudged with flour, her cheek was swelling red from Bianchi’s strike, but her eyes held a fierce, unyielding fire that he had never seen in any boardroom, penthouse, or harbor docks in Boston. Everyone in his life had either feared him or tried to buy him.

She was looking at him with pure, righteous anger.

"If you stay here, more will come," Enzo said quietly. "My uncle has twenty men at the hunting lodge. When Bianchi doesn't check in, they will come with rifles and gasoline."

"Then we call the state police," Joseph wheezed.

"The state police take forty-five minutes to reach this ridge in the snow," Enzo replied coldly. "Marco’s men will be here in twenty. And the local sheriff is already in his pocket."

Clara looked at the broken window, then at the blood on the floorboards, and then at her father’s trembling hands. The anger in her face began to calcify into a grim, desperate resolve.

"My uncle has an old hunting cabin," Clara said suddenly, looking at her father. "Up past the old coal tipple. It’s off the map. No roads leading to it, just an overgrown logging trail. If we take the old four-wheeler, we can hide Pop there."

"Good," Enzo said. "Get him there now."

"And what are you going to do?" Clara asked, her eyes narrowing. "Walk up that mountain by yourself?"

"I don't intend to walk," Enzo said. He walked over to the front window, looked out at the idling black truck that Bianchi had arrived in, and picked up the keys from the counter. "I’m going to return my uncle’s car."

He turned to leave, but Clara caught his sleeve. Her fingers were tight against the canvas of his coat.

"Why?" she demanded, searching his face. "If you’re the boss of all these monsters, why were you sitting in the cold with four quarters in a tin cup?"

Enzo paused at the doorway. The snow swirled around his boots.