Chapter 2
Adelaide ate in Salvatore’s private dining room while two trusted women stayed beside her.
He did not question her until she finished half a bowl of soup.
That alone seemed to irritate Hattie when she was brought inside under guard. She watched Adelaide eat as though food itself were something the older woman had stolen.
“She knows what happens when she refuses this family,” Hattie said.
Salvatore looked at her. “She is this family.”
Hattie smiled thinly. “Only when she behaves like it.”
Adelaide’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.
Salvatore noticed.
So did Anthony Russo.
The senior capo quietly moved closer to Hattie.
Salvatore sat opposite his mother. “Tell me about Elena.”
Adelaide’s fingers tightened around the spoon. “The night she disappeared, I couldn’t sleep. I walked toward the rear courtyard and heard voices near the service drive.”
“What voices?”
“Hattie.”
Hattie laughed. “She was confused.”
Adelaide ignored her. “Nolan was there too.”
Nolan looked at the floor.
Salvatore’s eyes shifted toward him.
Adelaide continued. “Elena was fighting them. Not physically at first. She kept saying she would tell you everything.”
“Everything about what?”
Adelaide hesitated.
Hattie answered for her.
“That is exactly the question she has refused to answer for six days.”
Silence.
Salvatore slowly turned.
Hattie realized too late that she had revealed the wrong thing.
“You weren’t starving my mother because she saw Elena taken,” he said.
Hattie said nothing.
“You were starving her because Elena told her something first.”
Adelaide began crying.
Salvatore moved closer. “Mom.”
His voice softened.
“What did Elena give you?”
Adelaide shook her head.
Hattie’s expression sharpened immediately.
“There,” she said. “See? Still protecting her.”
Then she looked at Adelaide with open contempt.
“You went six days without food for a woman who abandoned your son.”
Adelaide finally raised her eyes.
“No.”
Hattie stopped smiling.
“She never abandoned him.”
Salvatore felt the room change.
Adelaide looked directly at him.
May you like
“Elena knew she was going to be taken.”
And before she disappeared, she had hidden something Hattie was still desperate to find.
