Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO RAISED A FALCONE
Elena thought she had misheard him.
“Your mother?”
Adrian placed the strip of paper on the desk.
The handwriting was faded but clear.
BEATRICE.
Beatrice Falcone had died six years earlier.
Unlike Carlo, there had been no mysterious disappearance, no closed casket, no whispered rumor.
Adrian had sat beside her hospital bed during her final week.
He had held her hand when she died.
“You’re sure that’s what your father meant?” Elena asked.
“No.”
Adrian’s answer came quickly.
It surprised her.
He picked up the paper.
“This is a name. It isn’t proof.”
Victor looked almost relieved.
“Good.”
Adrian turned.
“Why?”
Victor hesitated.
Then Elena understood.
“You knew her.”
Victor’s face tightened.
“My aunt Teresa did.”
Luna Blue’s owner.
Victor pulled out a chair.
“Beatrice Falcone helped Teresa buy the restaurant.”
“When?”
“Twenty-seven years ago.”
Adrian stared at him.
Victor continued.
“My aunt was a waitress. No bank was giving her enough money for a waterfront property. Beatrice loaned her the rest privately.”
“Why?”
“She never said.”
Adrian looked at Rocco.
“Find Teresa.”
Victor shook his head.
“She’s in Providence visiting her daughter.”
“Then call her.”
Rocco stepped aside.
Elena stared at the old photograph still frozen on the laptop.
Anthony.
Gabriel.
Rosa.
The fourth person had been cut mostly from view.
Only a woman’s hand remained visible.
On her wrist was a bracelet.
Three blue stones shaped like crescents.
Elena’s stomach tightened.
“I’ve seen that.”
Adrian came closer.
“Where?”
“My mother’s jewelry box.”
Victor looked up.
“No.”
Elena turned.
“What?”
“Rosa hated that bracelet.”
“You know about it?”
“She wore it once. Years ago. Teresa saw it and nearly dropped a tray.”
Elena’s pulse quickened.
Adrian was already moving.
“We’re going to your mother’s apartment.”
“You said she was taken.”
“I know.”
“So why—”
“Because whoever took her may be looking for the same thing.”
Twenty minutes later, two cars stopped outside Elena’s modest building in East Boston.
Her apartment door was locked.
Nothing looked disturbed.
Inside, the familiar smell of lavender detergent made Elena’s chest hurt.
Her mother’s blanket remained folded over the couch.
Prescription bottles stood beside a glass of water.
The surgery had been real.
So had the recovery.
But Rosa had somehow left the apartment, traveled across Boston, walked through a tunnel, and entered Warehouse Four without telling her daughter.
Elena entered the bedroom.
The jewelry box was gone.
“Someone took it.”
Adrian examined the dresser.
“No forced entry.”
“My mother keeps a spare key.”
“Where?”
Elena pointed beneath a ceramic planter.
The key was still there.
Rocco opened the closet.
“Boss.”
A suitcase sat behind Rosa’s winter coats.
Packed.
Elena stared at it.
Her mother had been planning to leave.
Inside were clothes, cash, medication, and two train tickets to Montreal.
Both dated for tomorrow.
One bore Rosa Marino’s name.
The other—
Elena Marino.
“She was taking me with her.”
Adrian picked up an envelope beneath the tickets.
ELENA was written across it.
Inside was no confession.
Only a child’s drawing.
Elena recognized it immediately.
She had drawn it when she was six.
Three stick figures held hands beneath a crooked yellow sun.
MOM.
DAD.
ME.
But someone had later added a fourth figure in blue ink.
A tall man standing at a distance.
Above him were two words.
UNCLE TONY.
Adrian stared.
“My father.”
Elena looked at him.
“I never knew your father.”
“Apparently you did.”
On the back was a date.
Elena had been one.
Beneath it, Rosa had written:
ANTHONY KEPT HIS PROMISE.
“What promise?” Elena whispered.
Adrian didn’t answer.
Rocco’s phone buzzed.
He had reached Teresa.
He put her on speaker.
The older woman’s voice trembled when Adrian mentioned Beatrice.
“Don’t say that name in my restaurant.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother nearly destroyed my family.”
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“Explain.”
Teresa exhaled.
“Beatrice used Luna Blue to move messages. She told me they were for Anthony. I believed her. Then Gabriel Bellandi came to me one night covered in blood.”
Elena gripped the dresser.
“My father?”
“He said Anthony had discovered Beatrice was working with Carlo.”
Adrian closed his eyes briefly.
“So the note was right.”
“No.”
Teresa’s answer came sharply.
“Listen to me. Beatrice wasn’t controlling Blue Crescent.”
Everyone became still.
“She was infiltrating it.”
Adrian looked at the paper again.
Teresa continued.
“Anthony didn’t write her name because she was the enemy. He wrote it because she knew the enemy.”
Reversal.
The woman Adrian had just suspected had apparently been trying to expose the same network.
“Then why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because after Anthony died, she stopped trusting anyone with the Falcone name.”
Including her own son.
Adrian absorbed that in silence.
Teresa began crying.
“I should have told you years ago.”
“What happened to Gabriel?”
Elena asked it.
The line became quiet.
Teresa knew.
Elena could hear it.
“Please.”
Teresa finally whispered, “Your father died because he went back for Rosa.”
Elena closed her eyes.
She had always been told Daniel Marino died in a highway accident.
“He was supposed to disappear permanently that night. New identity. New country. But Rosa had been caught photographing a ledger.”
“What ledger?”
“The Crescent Ledger.”
Adrian looked at Rocco.
Teresa continued.
“It contained every politician, dockworker, customs officer, businessman, and police contact Blue Crescent had purchased.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena looked toward the missing jewelry box.
The bracelet.
Three blue crescents.
Anthony had hidden a name in a watch.
Gabriel had hidden evidence behind a wall.
Rosa had kept a bracelet for twenty-five years.
Objects.
Pieces.
A puzzle designed to survive the people carrying it.
Rocco suddenly called from the living room.
They hurried out.
He stood beside Rosa’s old sewing cabinet.
One drawer had been pulled open.
Inside were dozens of spools of thread.
And a photograph.
Rocco handed it to Adrian.
It showed Beatrice Falcone standing beside Rosa outside Luna Blue.
Both women were much younger.
Between them stood a little boy.
Adrian.
On the photograph, Beatrice had written:
IF ANTHONY AND I FAIL, ROSA KNOWS WHERE TO TAKE ADRIAN.
Adrian read it twice.
Elena looked at him.
“My mother was supposed to protect you?”
Before he could answer, Victor appeared at the bedroom doorway.
He had gone pale.
“What?” Adrian asked.
Victor pointed toward the photograph.
“That wasn’t in the drawer when I was here yesterday.”
Elena turned.
“You were here?”
“Your mother called me.”
“Why?”
Victor swallowed.
“She gave me something.”
Adrian stepped toward him.
“What?”
Victor reached beneath his shirt.
A chain hung around his neck.
On it was a small brass key.
Elena recognized the shape.
May you like
It matched the lock on her father’s old music box.
Victor said, “Rosa told me if anything happened to her, I was supposed to give this to Elena.”
