Chapter 2 - THE BLOOD UNDER THE CHAPEL FLOOR
The engagement party ended without an engagement.
Vincent ordered every guest escorted out through the front entrance while his own security team collected names, photographs, and staff records.
Vivian was moved to a private sitting room.
Not locked.
But guarded.
Carlo DeMarco could not be reached.
His driver claimed he had left his Manhattan townhouse thirty minutes earlier.
No destination.
That told us enough.
I should have left too.
I wanted to.
My hands were still shaking from the humiliation in the ballroom, and the idea of staying inside a house connected to my mother’s disappearance made every instinct scream at me to run.
Vincent stopped me near the servants’ stairs.
“You’re free to go.”
I looked at him.
He understood immediately.
“You thought I was going to order you to stay.”
“I don’t know you.”
“That’s fair.”
He stepped aside.
“I won’t trap you in this house.”
Those words mattered more than he probably realized.
I looked at the locket in my palm.
Then toward the west hallway.
“I’m staying.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother spent my whole childhood afraid of something she never explained.”
I swallowed.
“And tonight I finally learned what.”
Vincent nodded.
“Then we do this together.”
The old chapel had been sealed for twenty-five years.
Vincent said Elena had loved it.
She attended Mass there every Sunday even after Antonio’s businesses expanded and the Moretti family became one of the most feared names in New York.
When Elena supposedly died from pneumonia, Vincent was nine.
The chapel closed after her funeral.
At least that was the story.
Maria led us through a narrow hallway behind the library.
Salvatore carried a flashlight.
Mrs. Bell came too.
Vivian remained upstairs under guard.
The chapel door was carved oak.
A brass cross hung at eye level.
Vincent inserted an old key from his mother’s desk.
It turned.
The smell hit first.
Dust.
Cold stone.
Old wax.
The pews were covered in white sheets.
A faded painting of the Virgin Mary hung behind the altar.
Nothing looked like a crime scene.
Then Maria pointed.
“Third stone.”
“Where?” Vincent asked.
“Beside the altar.”
Salvatore knelt.
A square marble tile looked slightly different from the others.
He inserted a knife into the edge.
The tile lifted.
Underneath was a metal ring.
Vincent pulled.
A hidden compartment opened.
Inside was an old revolver wrapped in cloth.
A rosary.
And a small ledger.
Maria crossed herself.
“I thought they removed it.”
“Who?” I asked.
She looked at us.
“Carlo.”
Vincent opened the ledger.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Most were twenty-eight years old.
One appeared repeatedly.
Antonio Moretti.
Another:
Carlo DeMarco.
Then:
Teresa Romano.
My stomach tightened.
Beside my mother’s name was an amount.
$75,000.
Purpose:
HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTING REVIEW.
“She was an accountant?” I asked.
Maria nodded.
“She worked for Antonio.”
Not cleaning.
Accounting.
My mother had always told me she was a bookkeeper before I was born.
She never said for whom.
Vincent turned pages.
His expression darkened.
“These are protection payments.”
Maria nodded.
Antonio had begun questioning money disappearing from Moretti businesses.
The records pointed toward Carlo DeMarco, then a trusted lieutenant.
Carlo managed shipping contracts.
Construction.
Political payments.
And something much worse.
Human trafficking routes hidden inside legitimate cargo operations.
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“My father would never allow that.”
“He didn’t,” Maria said.
“That’s why he died.”
Silence.
According to Maria, Antonio discovered Carlo was using Moretti-controlled warehouses to move vulnerable women through forged employment contracts.
Antonio planned to expose him internally and turn over evidence to federal authorities through an intermediary.
Teresa had found the accounts.
Elena knew.
The night of November 4, 1997, Antonio summoned Carlo to Belladonna House.
They met in the chapel because Antonio believed nobody had listening devices there.
Maria was serving tea in the hallway.
She heard shouting.
Then a gunshot.
“What happened?” Vincent asked.
Maria’s hands shook.
“I opened the door.”
Antonio lay near the altar.
Carlo held the gun.
Elena was screaming.
Teresa stood beside the wall with blood on her dress.
Not her blood.
Antonio’s.
“Was he alive?”
“Barely.”
“And Carlo?”
“He said Antonio had attacked him.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
Maria looked at me.
“Teresa didn’t either.”
My mother had grabbed the ledger.
Carlo tried to stop her.
Elena helped Teresa escape through a servants’ passage.
Then everything fractured.
Salvatore asked, “Where were Antonio’s guards?”
“Reassigned.”
“By who?”
“Carlo.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
His father’s death in Sicily had been invented.
Antonio died in Manhattan.
His body removed through an underground service tunnel.
The family was told he had been killed while negotiating overseas.
Why create such an elaborate lie?
“Because Carlo needed Vincent’s uncle to believe Sicily was responsible,” Maria said.
A family war followed.
Three men died.
None had killed Antonio.
Carlo used the chaos to strengthen his own influence.
My stomach turned.
“And my mother?”
Maria wiped tears.
“Teresa escaped that night.”
“For twenty-eight years?”
“No.”
Maria looked at Vincent.
“She came back three days later.”
“What?”
“She wanted Elena.”
Vincent stepped forward.
“Why?”
“Because Elena had been taken.”
“By Carlo?”
“Yes.”
Vincent’s breathing changed.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Maria had tried to help Teresa.
But Carlo caught them in the servants’ tunnel.
He threatened Maria’s children.
Then made Teresa a choice.
Disappear permanently.
Or Isabella would disappear too.
I stared.
“I was alive?”
Maria nodded.
“You were six months old.”
My mother had never told me we had lived anywhere near Belladonna House.
“She chose me.”
“Yes.”
Carlo provided a new identity arrangement.
Teresa Romano remained Teresa Romano, but every connection to the Moretti estate vanished.
She was ordered never to return.
Never contact Elena.
Never tell Isabella.
If she did, Carlo would know.
“How?”
“He had people watching.”
I thought about my childhood.
The apartment changes.
My mother refusing family photographs online.
The way she panicked whenever unfamiliar black cars parked outside.
I had assumed she was anxious.
She had been hunted.
Vincent looked at the revolver.
“Is this the murder weapon?”
Maria nodded.
“Antonio’s blood should still be on the original cloth.”
Salvatore immediately called a trusted forensic investigator.
Then I noticed the rosary.
A tiny silver medal hung from it.
The same M and olive branch as my locket.
Vincent picked it up.
“My mother’s.”
The chapel door slammed.
We all turned.
Vivian stood there.
Two guards behind her.
She had apparently insisted on coming.
Her face was pale.
“You’re digging up things you don’t understand.”
Vincent stared.
“You knew my father died here.”
“No.”
“You knew Teresa.”
“My father told me stories.”
“What stories?”
“That Teresa stole from the family.”
Maria shouted, “Liar!”
Vivian flinched.
I stepped toward her.
“You brought me here because of the locket.”
She looked at me.
“Yes.”
The admission surprised everyone.
“Why?”
Vivian’s eyes filled with something that looked dangerously close to panic.
“Because my father found out Teresa was dying.”
My heart stopped.
“My mother isn’t dying.”
Vivian looked at me.
“You haven’t spoken to her in eight months.”
That hit hard.
It was true.
My mother and I had fought.
She wanted me to move back to New Jersey.
I refused.
She stopped answering after Christmas.
I assumed she was angry.
Vivian whispered, “Teresa disappeared again three months ago.”
My legs nearly gave out.
“What?”
“I thought you knew.”
“No.”
“Carlo found her.”
Vincent’s face hardened.
“Where is she?”
Vivian started crying.
“I don’t know.”
“Why bring Isabella here?”
“Because my father was searching for the locket.”
She looked at me.
“He believed Teresa hid something inside it.”
The message.
November 4.
Elena.
But maybe there was more.
“Why humiliate me?”
Vivian looked ashamed.
“To make you leave the house angry.”
I stared.
“That makes no sense.”
“I was supposed to have your coat and purse searched after you were thrown outside.”
My blood went cold.
The firing.
The crop.
The demand that I leave without my belongings.
All staged.
Vivian wanted my locket separated from me.
“Why didn’t you just steal it?”
“Because Carlo said if you realized it was missing, you’d call Teresa.”
“And that mattered because?”
Vivian’s lips trembled.
“Because Teresa is still alive.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Where?”
“I said I don’t know.”
Vincent stepped closer.
“What is 317?”
Vivian looked toward the altar.
Then whispered:
“Not a room.”
“What?”
“A grave.”
Maria crossed herself.
Vivian continued.
“Plot 317 at Saint Michael’s Cemetery.”
Vincent went pale.
“My mother is buried there.”
“No.”
Vivian looked directly at him.
“The woman in Elena Moretti’s grave isn’t your mother.”
May you like
Then she turned to me.
“It’s the reason Teresa spent twenty-eight years hiding.”
