Chapter 1 - THE MAN BENEATH THE HOUSE
Three-year-old Emma Rossi followed a calico cat through a pantry door her mother had forbidden her to open.
At the bottom of the stone stairs, she found Lorenzo Duca tied to an iron chair beneath his own mansion.
His white shirt was covered in blood.
Plastic restraints held his wrists and ankles.
Black tape covered his mouth.
Lorenzo was the most feared man in the city, but Emma knew him only as the quiet man who stopped in the foyer every Tuesday and allowed her to hug his leg.
“Uncle Lorenzo?”
His eyes opened slightly.
Emma began crying.
Then she reached into the pocket of her red dress and pulled out her pink craft scissors.
“Emma gets you out.”
She tried cutting the restraint around his wrist, but the small blade snapped.
Her scream brought her mother running.
Sophia had worked as a housekeeper at the Duca estate for seven years.
When she saw Lorenzo, she reached for her phone and almost called Vincent Romano—his closest lieutenant and most trusted friend.
Then she remembered what she had seen two hours earlier.
Vincent had been sitting alone in Lorenzo’s private chair.
Smiling.
Sophia moved her finger away from his number and called the family doctor instead.
Before help arrived, Lorenzo opened his eyes and looked toward the ceiling.
Then he forced one word through the tape:
“Vincent.”
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Sophia’s blood went cold.
Continue to Part 2 to discover whether Lorenzo was naming the man who betrayed him—or warning Sophia about the person already coming downstairs.
