Chapter 1 - The Splintered Ebony Beads
“My grandmother was interred holding these beads in her palms.”
Genevieve Dupont froze, the champagne coupe in her hand tilting until three drops of vintage Dom Pérignon splashed across the flagstones.
My fingers remained locked around the hinged lid of the cracked leather case resting on the prep table.
Opposite us, Clara stood with both arms pressed hard against the waistband of her uniform apron, trembling as if terrified the gold-linked crucifix might leap through the air and fasten itself around her throat.
I shifted my focus to Genevieve.
“Deliver your defense one more time.”
Her painted lips parted.
Absolute silence.
Good.
I had personally placed that antique gold-and-ebony rosary into my grandmother Donna Isabella’s cold, lifeless hands fifteen years earlier inside the cathedral vault.
Not an undertaker.
Not an altar boy.
Not a paid attendant.
Me.
She had spoken the directive to me twelve hours before her pulse stopped, her clouded eyes fixing on mine with terrifying lucidity.
“Let the cross stay in the stone with me, Dante. No living hand must turn that silver screw.”
I had fulfilled that sacred promise. I had watched the marble tomb sealed with lead and stone-mortar under my own armed watch.
So either the angels had begun unsealing the dead—
or a grave-robber had dragged an iron crowbar through my family’s cathedral.
“Who handed you this case, Genevieve?”
Genevieve swallowed the lump in her throat, her pearl necklace rattling against her collarbone.
“I discovered it.”
“Where?”
“In the cedar chest behind the organ loft.”
A blatant lie.
The organ loft had been gutted by a grease fire seven years ago and rebuilt into a concrete choir balcony.
The cedar chests had been incinerated before she ever set foot in this state.
Clara took a ragged breath and whispered:
“She carried the leather pouch through the private sacristy passage, Don Dante.”
Genevieve whipped her head around toward the girl.
With terrifying, venomous precision.
There it was.
The sudden panic of a caught predator.
I stepped between them, my towering frame completely obscuring Clara from Genevieve’s view.
“At what hour did you see her, Clara?”
“Shortly after three this afternoon,” Clara whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of her terror. “I was carrying the fresh altar cloths from the laundry room. Miss Genevieve walked out of the crypt vestibule with a man dressed in a dark trench coat.”
“Did you recognize the man?”
“No, sir. He had his collar turned up and was carrying a canvas duffel bag smelling of industrial stone dust.”
Genevieve shrieked:
“She is an uneducated scullery girl inventing fantasies to cover her petty theft!”
Clara flinched back against the copper shelving.
I did not yield an inch.
“What occurred next, Clara?”
Clara lifted her chin, tears tracking through the soap dust on her cheek.
“Miss Genevieve spotted me by the water cistern.”
Then:
“She demanded to know how long I had been standing by the archway.”
“What was your answer?”
“I told her I had only just unlocked the service door.”
“And tonight before the banquet?”
Clara looked at the leather case on the table, her breath hitching.
“She cornered me behind the china cabinets. She told me that if I valued my mother’s life, I would swear to the guards that I found the rosary in the trash and slipped it into my pocket.”
My teeth ground together until my jawbone ached.
“And then?”
“She wrapped the chain around my wrist, pushed me into the dining hall, and screamed that she had caught a thief.”
Precisely as I had witnessed from the library mezzanine.
A staged confrontation.
A convenient scapegoat manufactured in front of forty guests to conceal a desecration.
I stepped directly in front of Genevieve, my presence blotting out the overhead sconce light.
“You didn't accuse Clara because you uncovered a domestic theft, Genevieve.”
My voice was flat, carrying the lethal weight of an iron anchor dropping through water.
“You needed an immediate culprit so no one would ask why my grandmother’s burial slab was pried loose this afternoon.”
Genevieve’s aristocratic composure fractured completely, her fingers trembling as she dropped her glass onto the table.
She leaned in, her whisper hoarse and frantic:
May you like
“You don't understand what is engraved beneath the base of that crucifix, Dante.”
Fascinating.
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