Chapter 5 - The SafeAnna stared at the iron safe on the floor, her mind spinning so fast the room seemed to tilt on its axis.
Mira?
The word echoed in her head like a gunshot. Her best friend. The girl who ran the South Philly hair salon, who screamed down the phone about pepper spray and news stations, who had stayed on the line with her the night before her wedding to make sure she was still breathing.
"You're lying," Anna whispered, backing away from the desk until her spine hit the cold, wood-paneled wall. "Mira doesn't even know what a syndicate is. She thinks the mafia is just an old box set of The Godfather!"
"People wear masks, Anna," Cedric said, his voice hard as he gripped the wheels of his chair, rolling closer despite the strain visible in every line of his body. "Your father wasn't an architect embezzling money; he was an accountant who laundered the Spedaro family’s core assets before the federal indictments hit in 2024. When he tried to flip to the FBI to protect you, someone inside my family sold him out. And the person who handed the ledger copies to the hit squad wasn't one of my capos."
He kicked the heavy brass key across the floorboards. It stopped right at the toe of her boot.
"Open it," Cedric commanded. "Before they blow the doors off this house."
Outside, the distinct, rhythmic rumble of heavy diesel engines echoed up the winding private driveway. Headlights swept across the tall library windows, casting blinding bars of white light through the smoke-filled room.
Thomas Reilly slammed the heavy wooden shutters shut and locked them with a steel bar. "Boss, they're at the front steps. C-charge on the mahogany doors. We have maybe sixty seconds before they breach."
Cedric ignored him. His dark eyes remained fixed on Anna.
"Choose, Anna Lisa," he said softly. "Keep living in the fairy tale where your father was a victim and your friends are innocent, or open the box and find out why you were sold to a crippled monster in a wheelchair."
Anna looked down at the key.
Her hands were still shaking from the gunfight, the smell of gunpowder stinging her nostrils, her ears ringing from the blasts. But the fog of confusion that had clouded her entire life—the sudden death of her father, the crushing debt, the terrifying marriage—suddenly parted like storm clouds before a hurricane.
She dropped to her knees.
She picked up the brass key, slid it into the heavy rotary lock of the safe, and turned it left, right, left, until the internal tumblers clicked with a heavy, satisfying thud.
The iron door swung open.
Inside, there was no money. No gold. No weapons.
Just a single manila folder labeled with a single word in her father's actual, unmistakable handwriting: MIRA.
Anna reached inside with trembling fingers, pulled the folder out, and flipped open the cover.
The first paper inside wasn't a bank statement. It was a high-resolution color photograph taken three days before her wedding—a photo of Mira Collins sitting across a corner table at an upscale downtown bistro, laughing and clinking champagne glasses with Victor Vance, the head of the rival Philadelphia Irish Syndicate and Cedric’s deadliest enemy.
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And beneath the photograph was a signed wire transfer receipt for five hundred thousand dollars, wired directly from a Cayman account registered to Collins Enterprises, bearing Mira's signature.
Anna stopped breathing.
