Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN ROMAN NEVER FORGOT
Nothing prepares you for hearing a mafia boss say your dead mother’s name like a prayer.
I stared at Roman.
“My mother died eight months ago.”
The color left his face.
He looked away for the first time since I’d met him.
“I’m sorry.”
“You were looking for her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Roman didn’t answer immediately.
That made me angry.
“If I’m going to cook breakfast for thirty armed lunatics, Mr. Duca, I think I’ve earned a complete sentence.”
From somewhere beyond the door, someone shouted:
“We can hear you!”
I yelled back:
“Then wash the breakfast dishes!”
Silence.
Roman almost smiled.
Then he walked toward the old brick fireplace at the far end of the kitchen.
“This room used to belong to my mother.”
I frowned.
“Your mother cooked?”
“She owned this house before my father turned it into… something else.”
He touched a small photograph sitting on a high shelf.
I hadn’t noticed it before.
He handed it to me.
The picture showed two young women standing in this exact kitchen.
One was elegant, dark-haired, smiling.
The other wore an apron covered in flour.
My knees nearly gave out.
“Mom.”
Eleanor Sullivan couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.
Roman nodded.
“The woman beside her was my mother, Isabella.”
I looked at him.
“You knew her?”
“I was twelve when Eleanor came to Ravenwood.”
My mother had never mentioned Chicago.
Never mentioned Ravenwood.
And certainly never mentioned the Duca family.
Roman continued.
“She ran this kitchen for almost nine years. But that wasn’t why my family loved her.”
“Why did they?”
His expression changed.
“Because she saved my life.”
Before I could ask how, someone knocked hard on the door.
Vincent.
“Roman.”
“What?”
“You need to see this.”
He slid a white envelope under the door.
Roman picked it up.
There was no stamp.
No name.
Only five words written across the front:
THE RED COAT CAME BACK.
Roman’s jaw tightened.
I felt cold despite the kitchen’s heat.
“Who sent that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Roman turned toward me.
“No. I expect you to question everything.”
Then I noticed something odd.
The envelope had been sealed with dark green wax.
My mother had owned one piece of jewelry her entire life.
A small green-stone ring.
She never took it off.
And suddenly I remembered the final thing she told me before she died.
If anyone ever asks about Chicago, Maggie…
Tell them I took the key with me.
May you like
Until that moment, I had thought she was confused from medication.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
