Chapter 2 - The Sump Beneath the Sarcophagus
Bianca backed into the driving rain.
Her heels slipped on wet limestone.
"Lorenzo, that isn't her! It's a trick!"
"Matteo," Lorenzo said softly.
"Break the floor."
Three bodyguards drove sledgehammers into the crypt flagstones.
Mortar shattered.
Rotting cypress boards gave way.
A black abyss opened beneath the altar.
The smell of stagnant water and cold moss rushed out.
Lorenzo dropped down without waiting for a ladder.
I grabbed a high-powered flashlight and jumped in after him.
Cold, muddy water reached my knees.
In the corner of the brick cistern lay Donna Maria.
She was shivering on a rusted iron shelf above the waterline.
Her lips were blue.
Her fingers were raw and bloody from scratching the pipes.
"Mother," Lorenzo choked out.
The terrifying mafia boss fell to his knees in the filth.
He wrapped his wool coat around her tiny, trembling body.
Donna Maria looked up with sunken, feverish eyes.
"Richie... they put me in the dark..."
She coughed violently.
"Bianca gave me the wine... in the garden chapel... my throat burned..."
"I've got you, Ma," Lorenzo whispered, lifting her into his arms.
His jaw clenched until bone clicked.
"You're safe."
I shone the flashlight toward the back of the cistern.
Resting on a dry brick ledge was a green glass bottle.
And a syringe.
I scooped them into my apron pocket.
"Mr. Moretti," I called out. "Look."
Lorenzo glanced at the bottle.
The label read: Potassium Cyanide Solution.
"She didn't just want her dead," Lorenzo snarled.
"She wanted her buried alive to hide the autopsy."
We climbed out into the rain-swept cemetery.
Donna Maria was breathing in ragged gasps.
Matteo wrapped her in heavy dry blankets.
Then a sharp whistle cut through the storm.
Across the courtyard, Bianca was sprinting toward the carriage house.
And she wasn't alone.
Six men in black rain slicks stepped from the cypress shadows.
They weren't Moretti soldiers.
They wore the red crest of the Delacroix cartel.
The rival family from the Gulf.
"Kill the don!" Bianca screamed through the thunder.
May you like
"Wipe out the whole bloodline!"
Muzzle flashes lit the stormy darkness.
