CHAPTER 2 — The Grave That Had No Name
I didn't sleep.
How could I?
The most dangerous man in Chicago had looked at me as if I carried the ghost of someone he had buried years ago.
The next morning I almost didn't return.
Mateo stopped me at the apartment door.
"You'll lose the job."
"I might lose more than that."
He smiled through another coughing fit.
"We've survived worse."
Had we?
By nine o'clock I was back inside the Russo Tower.
This time the guards searched my bag.
Twice.
No one explained why.
When I entered the penthouse, Vincenzo was waiting.
Coffee untouched.
Eyes red.
As if he hadn't slept either.
"I need to ask you questions."
"What if I don't know the answers?"
"You will."
He slid an old music box across the table.
Its wood was cracked.
The ballerina inside no longer danced.
"Open it."
I twisted the tiny key.
A melody floated into the room.
The same lullaby.
Halfway through...
The music changed.
A second verse.
One I had never heard before.
Without thinking...
I finished singing the missing lyrics.
The room exploded into silence.
Vincenzo stood so quickly his chair crashed backward.
"Who taught you that part?"
I frowned.
"My grandmother."
"Impossible."
"Why?"
"Because only my family knew those words."
Before I could answer, every phone in the room vibrated.
One guard rushed inside.
"Boss..."
His face had turned white.
"The Council knows."
"The Council knows what?"
"Someone sang the Belladonna Lullaby."
The temperature in the room seemed to fall ten degrees.
Vincenzo dismissed every guard.
Locked the office door.
Then finally spoke the truth.
"The lullaby wasn't written for children."
"It was a code."
"A code?"
"My grandfather created it during the Sicilian Mafia wars."
"Every verse hid names."
"Every note marked safe houses."
"The final verse..."
He swallowed hard.
"...revealed where the Russo fortune was hidden."
I laughed nervously.
"That's impossible."
"So is you knowing lyrics no outsider has heard in fifty years."
He opened a hidden drawer beneath the desk.
Inside rested dozens of old newspaper clippings.
Missing women.
Burned churches.
Disappeared judges.
Entire families erased.
Every article had one thing in common.
Someone had been searching for the missing verse.
"You aren't here by accident, Lucia."
"What are you saying?"
"I think..."
He stared directly into my eyes.
"...someone raised you to finish a war that never truly ended."
Before I could respond...
A sniper's bullet shattered the office window.
Glass exploded across the room.
Vincenzo tackled me to the floor.
Another bullet struck exactly where my head had been one second earlier.
Outside...
Chicago traffic continued as if nothing had happened.
Inside...
Someone had just declared war on the Russo Empire.
May you like
And somehow...
I had become the center of it.
