Chapter 2 - OPEN THE COFFIN
“The girl,” Marco whispered. “She saw something she wasn’t supposed to see.”
Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
Even Bruno’s growl seemed to lower into something darker.
I stared at Marco Ricci, the man who had stood beside me for twelve years, and tried to reconcile the face in front of me with the man I thought I knew.
“What did she see?”
Marco swallowed.
“Boss—”
“What. Did. She. See?”
His eyes flicked toward the coffin.
That was the first mistake.
The second was taking one more step backward.
Bruno exploded.
One second he was beside Elena’s coffin.
The next, a hundred and twenty pounds of muscle launched across the carpet.
Marco screamed.
Tony and two of my men reached for their weapons, but I threw out a hand.
“Don’t shoot!”
Bruno hit Marco in the chest and drove him into a row of folding chairs.
Metal legs shrieked across the floor.
Marco landed hard.
Bruno planted both front paws on him, teeth inches from his throat.
“Bruno!”
The dog froze.
Not because Marco told him.
Because I did.
Eight years of obedience held him there.
“Off.”
Bruno backed away reluctantly.
Marco scrambled upright, breathing hard.
“You see?” he shouted. “That animal is crazy!”
Bruno ignored him.
He returned to the coffin.
Pressed his ear against it again.
Whined.
Then scratched once at the polished white wood.
I felt the hair on my arms rise.
“Boss?” Tony said.
Bruno scratched again.
Not violently.
Deliberately.
Three slow movements.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Then he looked at me.
I had seen that look before.
Eight years earlier, when gunmen ambushed us near Newark.
I had been bleeding behind a car, half-conscious, and Bruno had found me through smoke and rain.
That night, he stared at Tony exactly the way he was staring at me now.
Help him.
“Open the coffin.”
The funeral director went white.
“No.”
Every head turned toward him.
I looked slowly at the thin man standing near the doorway.
“What did you say?”
He swallowed.
“I said—we shouldn’t. The family requested—”
“Elena’s father is standing ten feet away.”
Gabriel Vasquez stepped forward.
His face was gray from grief.
He had barely spoken since we arrived.
Now he looked at the coffin.
Then Bruno.
Then the funeral director.
“Open it.”
The director shook his head.
“Mr. Vasquez, I strongly advise—”
Gabriel grabbed him by the collar.
“My daughter is in there.”
“Gabriel.”
My voice made him stop.
I walked to the coffin myself.
Bruno moved aside.
His tail did not wag.
His body remained rigid.
I put my hand on the lid.
Cold.
Smooth.
White.
I looked at Gabriel.
He nodded.
I opened it.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Elena lay beneath a pale blanket.
Purple dress.
Purple sneakers.
Her favorite color, Gabriel had told us.
The stuffed bunny rested against her left arm.
She looked peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Gabriel made a sound behind me.
A broken sound.
I almost closed the coffin.
Then Bruno pushed past me.
He put his nose beside Elena’s face.
Inhaled.
Whined.
And licked her cheek.
The funeral director lunged forward.
“Get that dog away from—”
Tony grabbed him.
“Don’t.”
Bruno nudged Elena again.
Her head moved slightly.
My stomach dropped.
“Tony.”
“What?”
“Look at her chest.”
He leaned closer.
For five seconds, I saw nothing.
Then—
Movement.
So small I almost convinced myself I imagined it.
A faint rise beneath the dress.
Then another.
Gabriel screamed.
“My God!”
I reached inside.
Put two fingers against Elena’s neck.
Nothing.
Then—
A flutter.
Weak.
Erratic.
But there.
“She’s alive.”
Chaos erupted.
Gabriel collapsed against the coffin.
Tony started shouting for an ambulance.
Two men grabbed the funeral director when he tried to run.
Marco made it three steps toward the rear exit before Bruno turned his head.
Marco stopped.
Smartest thing he had done all afternoon.
I lifted Elena out of the coffin.
She weighed almost nothing.
Seven years old.
Tiny arms.
Cold fingers.
Her head fell against my chest.
For thirty years, men had called me things I deserved.
Monster.
Criminal.
Murderer.
Devil.
But nothing I had done prepared me for the feeling of carrying a child who had almost been buried alive.
“Stay with me, sweetheart.”
I had no idea whether she could hear me.
“You stay right here.”
Gabriel was beside me, crying openly.
“She was pronounced dead.”
“Who pronounced her?”
“The hospital.”
“Which doctor?”
“I don’t know.”
The funeral director began sobbing.
“I didn’t know!”
I turned.
Tony had him pinned against the wall.
“Then why did you try to stop us?”
“They paid me!”
“Who?”
“I don’t know!”
I walked toward him with Elena in my arms.
“You have five seconds to remember.”
His knees nearly gave out.
“A man called yesterday. He said the body couldn’t be examined again. He gave me twenty thousand dollars. Told me to keep the coffin closed until burial.”
Gabriel stared at him.
“You were going to bury my daughter alive for twenty thousand dollars?”
“I thought she was dead!”
Bruno growled.
The director started crying harder.
Sirens sounded outside.
Thank God.
Paramedics rushed in.
I handed Elena over.
One checked her breathing.
Another touched her neck.
“Pulse is weak.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t know.”
They put her on a stretcher.
Gabriel climbed into the ambulance.
I caught his arm before he left.
“Listen to me.”
His eyes were red.
“If she has breath in her body, nobody touches her except the doctors I approve. Tony is going with you.”
“What about you?”
I looked at Marco.
“I’m finding out who tried to bury your daughter.”
The ambulance doors closed.
Bruno tried to follow.
“Bruno.”
He looked at me.
“Go with Elena.”
Tony opened the second ambulance door.
Bruno jumped in without hesitation.
The doors slammed.
For a moment, the funeral home was silent again.
But it was no longer the silence of death.
It was the silence before war.
I turned toward Marco.
He had lost all color.
“Now.”
I removed my jacket.
Folded it carefully.
Placed it over a chair.
“Start talking.”
Marco looked around the room.
“Boss, I swear, I never knew she was alive.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“She saw me at the old Mercer warehouse.”
“Doing what?”
He closed his eyes.
“Meeting someone.”
“Who?”
Marco said nothing.
I stepped closer.
“You tried to run down a seven-year-old child because she saw your face.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then make it like something else.”
He breathed through his nose.
“She had left her father’s restaurant. She cut through the alley near Mercer because it was raining. I was outside the warehouse.”
“With who?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Tony wasn’t there to stop me.
Maybe that was good.
Maybe it wasn’t.
I grabbed Marco by the throat and drove him against the wall.
“You can tell me.”
His hands closed around my wrist.
“If I give you that name, I’m dead.”
I leaned closer.
“You almost put a living child six feet underground.”
His eyes filled with terror.
“You’re already negotiating with death.”
He whispered something.
I couldn’t hear.
“What?”
“The red ring.”
I released him.
“What red ring?”
“Elena saw the man I was meeting. She didn’t know his name. But she saw his ring.”
My blood went cold.
There were dozens of men in New York who wore gold.
Only one man in my organization wore a ruby signet ring every day of his life.
The man who gave it to him had been my grandfather.
Marco watched recognition spread across my face.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“No.”
“Boss—”
“No.”
Marco’s shoulders sagged.
“I told you.”
My uncle Aldo had raised me after my father died.
Taught me to drive.
Taught me to shoot.
Sat beside my mother during chemotherapy.
Held my cousin’s coffin when betrayal inside our organization got him killed.
Aldo Moretti had been family before I understood what the word meant.
“No,” I said again.
Marco laughed bitterly.
“That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”
I wanted to hit him.
Instead I asked the question that mattered.
“Why was Aldo meeting you?”
Marco stared at the floor.
“To talk about replacing you.”
A chair creaked somewhere behind me.
One of my men swore.
I felt strangely calm.
“Replacing me with who?”
Marco looked up.
“Himself.”
There it was.
The simplest motive in the world.
Power.
All this blood.
All this betrayal.
For a chair.
“What did Elena hear?”
“Not everything. But enough. She heard your name. Heard Aldo talking about shipments, accounts, police. Then she knocked something over.”
“And you chased her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you hit her with the car?”
Marco shut his eyes.
“Yes.”
Somebody behind me moved.
I raised a hand.
Nobody touched him.
Not yet.
“She was still breathing when I got out,” Marco whispered.
I stared at him.
“You knew.”
“I panicked.”
“You knew she was alive.”
“I checked her pulse. It was there.”
“And you left her.”
“I called someone.”
“Who?”
“The man Aldo uses to clean problems.”
“What happened at the hospital?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lie again.”
“I swear! I thought she died later. That’s what I was told. They said everything had been handled.”
Handled.
A seven-year-old girl had become a problem to be handled.
I looked toward the open coffin.
The stuffed bunny was still inside.
Something about it bothered me.
Bruno had protected the coffin.
But when we opened it, he had sniffed Elena.
Then the bunny.
I walked back.
Picked it up.
Cheap stuffed animal.
One ear bent.
Purple ribbon around its neck.
There was a dark stain on the underside.
Not blood.
Grease.
Industrial grease.
The kind used on heavy machinery.
Mercer warehouse.
I squeezed the toy.
Something hard pressed against my palm.
I turned it over.
There was a tiny tear beneath the ribbon.
I reached inside.
My fingers touched plastic.
I pulled out a small black memory card sealed inside a piece of tape.
Marco stopped breathing.
I looked at him.
“What is this?”
His expression answered before his mouth did.
“Elena,” he whispered.
I stared at the tiny card in my hand.
The child hadn’t only seen something.
She had taken something.
Something powerful enough that grown men had tried to kill her.
Something powerful enough that my own family had almost buried her alive.
I closed my fist around the card.
And for the first time in twelve years, Marco Ricci looked relieved.
“Now you understand,” he said.
I didn’t.
Not yet.
But I would.
Because Elena Vasquez had survived.
Bruno had known.
And somewhere across New York, my uncle Aldo still believed the only witness against him was already underground.
May you like
I intended to let him keep believing that.
For as long as possible.
