Chapter 6
The first physical clue came from Ella.
The three-year-old had awakened and wandered into the room carrying one of Elena’s old silk scarves.
Salvatore recognized it immediately.
He had kept Elena’s things boxed away after months of staring at them like accusations. He had no idea how Ella found the scarf.
“Where did you get that?”
Ella pointed toward Adelaide.
“Grandma showed me.”
Adelaide’s face changed.
Salvatore looked at her.
“Mom.”
She began crying again.
Not fear this time.
Shame.
“I lied about one thing.”
Hattie smiled from across the room.
“Finally.”
Salvatore ignored her.
Adelaide reached into the inside seam of her cardigan and pulled out a tiny brass key.
She had sewn it into the lining.
For eight months.
“Elena gave me this.”
Salvatore took it.
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know.”
Hattie surged to her feet.
That reaction answered more than words.
Anthony forced her back into the chair.
“You starved her for this,” Salvatore said.
Hattie’s expression turned ugly. “That key belongs to the Carbone family.”
Adelaide looked at her.
“No.”
“Everything in this house belongs to the family.”
“No,” Adelaide repeated. “That is what men like your uncle used to say.”
Hattie went still.
Salvatore noticed the reference.
“My father?”
Adelaide shook her head.
“His brother.”
Salvatore had almost forgotten there had been one.
August Carbone.
Dead twenty years.
Adelaide looked at the brass key in her son’s palm. “Elena told me if they ever came for her, I should hide this where Hattie would never think to search.”
Hattie laughed. “Inside a starving old woman?”
Adelaide turned toward her.
“No.”
Her voice became stronger.
“Inside the one person you thought was too afraid to resist you.”
Hattie’s smile disappeared.
Anthony inspected the key.
Old.
Hand-cut.
Carbone crest stamped into one side.
Then he looked toward Salvatore.
“There’s only one lock in this estate old enough for this.”
Salvatore already knew where he meant.
The sealed room beneath the original wine cellar.
May you like
A room his father had ordered closed when Salvatore was twelve.
And apparently Elena had found a reason to open it again.
