Chapter 2
The bright, cinematic sunlight seemed to mock the chilling discovery unfolding in the center of the room. Raffaele stepped forward, his polished leather shoes making no sound against the hardwood. He crouched beside the exposed floor seam, his large, tattooed hands reaching out.
"Let it go, Anna," Raffaele ordered quietly, the danger in his low voice absolute.
Anna released the white fabric as if it had burned her, scrambling backward on her hands and knees until her flat shoes hit the baseboard of the wall. She pulled her knees to her chest, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs.
Raffaele took the delicate tulle from her trembling hands. The fabric was soft, expensive, and devastatingly familiar. He remembered the day she had chosen it. He remembered Evelyn’s fair, rosy skin glowing with excitement. Evelyn Hart, the woman he had loved, the woman who had supposedly vanished into thin air on the morning of their wedding. For three years, he had believed she abandoned him.
"Stay back, Ethan," Raffaele commanded without looking over his shoulder.
"Dad? What is it?" the three-year-old asked, his tiny voice echoing in the vast, bright room.
"Do not move from that doorway," Raffaele whispered slowly.
With his jaw set into a rigid line of suppressed fury and disbelief, Raffaele wrapped the delicate lace around his tattooed fingers. He took a steadying breath and gently pulled the same veil again, testing the resistance beneath the floorboards.
To his absolute horror, the wood moved.
The narrow seam was not a joint in the floorboards; it was the edge of a perfectly concealed panel. As Raffaele applied tension to the veil, the wooden floor panel lifted slightly, cracking open a half-inch gap into an abyss of darkness beneath the suite.
Then, the impossible happened.
From beneath the narrow, suffocating opening, a woman’s hand suddenly reached up. The skin was pale, filthy, and trembling with desperate exhaustion, but the fingers forcefully gripped the fabric of the veil from the other side.
Anna let out a strangled, terrified gasp, clapping both hands over her mouth to stifle a scream. Ethan recoiled sharply, stumbling backward until his small back hit the doorframe, his blue eyes wide with fear.
Raffaele stared down at the pale hand gripping the lace. The world around him slowed to a crawl. He did not flinch. He did not pull away. The cold, sharp, intimidating eyes of the Mafia boss widened in sheer, paralyzing disbelief. He recognized the shape of those fingers. He recognized the faint, pale scar on the knuckle.
"Evelyn," Raffaele breathed, the word tearing out of him like a jagged piece of glass.
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The hand beneath the floorboard tightened its grip on the veil, the knuckles turning white as if begging him not to let go. A faint, muffled whimper echoed from the dark space beneath the wood, a sound so utterly broken it made the bright, sunlit room feel like a tomb.
Raffaele did not hesitate. His hands, adorned with their refined, sharp tattoos, gripped the edge of the heavy wooden panel. The calculated, measured demeanor of the boss shattered, replaced entirely by a desperate, violent urgency to tear the floor apart.
