Chapter 5 - Blood in the TunnelsI threw the wooden cellar hatch open with a loud bang, drawing an immediate barrage of silenced gunfire. Wood splinters exploded around my head as I shoved Mia down the steep stone stairs into the pitch-black abyss.
"Cover your ears!" I yelled, dropping down behind her and slamming the heavy hatch shut just as Vince’s boots thudded toward us.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Bullets pierced the thick oak of the hatch, showering us in lead dust. I grabbed the heavy iron security bolt and slammed it home, locking us inside.
"Flashlight!" I hissed.
Mia fumbled in her pocket, clicking on a small, keychain LED light. Its harsh white beam cut through the damp, claustrophobic darkness of the tunnel. Stone walls glistened with moisture, and rusted narrow-gauge mining rails stretched out into the blackness like ribs of a buried beast.
"Can they break through the door?" Mia asked, her breathing ragged.
"Not quickly," I said, keeping my voice low. "The wood is reinforced with iron plating from the 1920s. But they'll find the exterior vent or another entrance. We have to move."
We jogged down the sloping stone corridor, the air growing colder and thinner with every yard. As we ran, I flipped open the leather ledger using the LED light. The pages revealed a horrifying history.
In March 1996, my father—then the reigning Don of Boston—had ordered a rival family wiped out. But during the massacre, a baby was spared. Ray Kesler, acting against orders, smuggled that baby out of Boston and hid him in Cedar Hollow, swapping identities with a stillborn child of a local coal miner.
That baby was me.
And the "loan shark debt" my father supposedly owed? It wasn't money. It was silence. Ray had traded his loyalty to the Castellano family in exchange for keeping my true identity buried forever.
Until Gino found out.
"Rocco," Mia gasped, grabbing my arm and pulling me to a sudden halt. "Look at the wall."
The beam of the flashlight illuminated a series of old wooden support beams carved with initials and dates. But near the floor, scrawled in fresh red paint, was a symbol I knew all too well:
May you like
The Castellano family crest. A bloody dagger through a rose.
Someone had been here recently. Very recently.
