Chapter 10 - THE TWO WOMEN WHO CAME BACK
Bianca Conti and Lucia DeLuca had been working together.
That was the first truth.
The second was worse.
They arranged Alessandro’s presence behind the restaurant.
Not the attack.
The meeting.
Bianca had contacted Alessandro anonymously, promising evidence against Carlo.
Gianni intercepted the plan.
His men arrived first.
Alessandro was beaten and left in the alley.
Bianca and Lucia fled.
Then Elena found him.
Not destiny.
Not entirely coincidence.
A failed meeting had collided with a broke mother searching for bread.
Matteo traced Bianca’s emergency phone to an old convent in Brookline.
They went carefully.
Elena insisted on going.
Again.
Nobody argued much anymore.
Bianca opened the convent door herself.
Seventy-three.
White hair.
Alessandro’s eyes.
Her son stopped three feet away.
“You’re alive.”
Bianca cried.
“I’m sorry.”
He did not hug her.
Not immediately.
“Why?”
Gianni.
Always Gianni.
Bianca discovered decades earlier that her husband used threats against children to control rivals.
She tried leaving.
He told her Alessandro would die if she did.
So she staged her death with help from an old family doctor and disappeared, believing Gianni would leave her son alone if she became irrelevant.
“He didn’t.”
“No.”
Alessandro’s voice cracked.
“He made me into him.”
Bianca stepped closer.
“No.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I watched.”
He looked at her.
She had watched from a distance for years.
The violence.
The businesses.
The attempts Alessandro quietly made to reduce criminal operations.
“You became dangerous.”
Her voice shook.
“But you never became Gianni.”
Elena understood why that distinction mattered.
Then Lucia entered.
Elena stared at the sister she did not remember.
Lucia stopped.
Neither woman knew what sisters were supposed to do after thirty-one years and multiple lies.
Mila would have hugged immediately.
Adults make everything harder.
Finally Lucia whispered:
“You have Mom’s eyes.”
Elena started crying.
So did Lucia.
They met halfway.
For several minutes, the mafia war disappeared.
There were only two sisters holding decades they would never get back.
Then Lucia told them the final plan.
Gianni and Carlo were preparing to transfer DeLuca assets offshore before Mila’s legal claim could be established.
To stop them, Lucia needed to authenticate Michael’s records inside the vault.
Both keys.
The recording.
And one living witness.
“Who?”
Elena asked.
Lucia looked at Alessandro.
“Your father.”
Gianni had to be drawn into acknowledging the records.
“That sounds unsafe.”
“It is.”
Elena shook her head.
“No.”
Lucia stared.
“We don’t have another option.”
“There is always another option.”
Alessandro looked at Elena.
That sentence had become strangely familiar.
Then Bianca said:
“There may be.”
She had preserved letters Gianni wrote years ago.
Admissions.
Instructions.
Descriptions of the DeLuca holdings.
Enough to support legal action.
Maybe.
But one letter referenced Michael directly.
Michael Carter has become inconvenient. Carlo will handle the pressure.
Not murder.
Still not enough.
Then Lucia placed a small recorder on the table.
“I have more.”
She had met Gianni secretly two weeks earlier.
He believed she wanted reconciliation.
Instead, she recorded him.
Gianni said Michael’s name.
Said the accident “solved the problem.”
And said something else.
“If Elena Carter had any sense, she would have sold the child’s claim and disappeared.”
Elena’s skin went cold.
Lucia whispered:
“He knows you have the key now.”
“How?”
The answer came from behind them.
Father Grady’s voice:
“Because I told him.”
Everyone turned.
May you like
The priest stood in the doorway.
And he was holding a gun.
