Chapter 3 - SOMEONE HAD BEEN INSIDE MY APARTMENT
The photograph followed me home like a warning.
Roman had offered to send security, but I insisted on taking a taxi to my apartment first. I needed Grandma's recipe tin before deciding whether I could trust a man whose name terrified an entire city.
My building's hallway smelled of old carpet and somebody's burnt dinner. Everything looked ordinary until I opened my front door.
The lock wasn't damaged.
The chain was still in place.
But every drawer in my bedroom had been emptied onto the floor.
My grandmother's recipe books lay scattered beneath the window. Her jewelry box was open, although the inexpensive earrings inside remained untouched. Whoever had searched my apartment hadn't wanted money.
They had wanted something specific.
The tin.
I ran to the kitchen and found it missing.
My hands went cold.
Then my phone rang.
Roman's number appeared on the screen.
“Don't panic,” he said. “Victor just received a report about your building.”
“How did you know someone was here?”
“Because the same people have been searching properties connected to my mother for years.”
I heard tires screech outside.
A black SUV stopped across the street, and two men stepped out. One looked up directly at my window.
“Get away from the glass,” Roman ordered.
I crouched beside the kitchen counter.
Within minutes, Victor arrived with two security officers. The strangers disappeared before anyone could identify them, leaving behind a cigarette butt and a small black envelope beneath my mailbox.
Inside was a photograph of my grandmother standing outside an Italian church.
On the back, someone had written a warning.
Leave the Vale family buried where it belongs.
I stared at the photograph, noticing a detail I'd missed before.
May you like
Grandma Lucia was wearing a silver pendant I had inherited.
And beneath the pendant, partly hidden by her collar, was the same crescent-shaped birthmark I had seen on the woman holding baby Roman.
