Chapter 9 - The Reunion in the Chapel Sacristy
The sacristy behind the main altar of St. Margaret’s chapel smelled of old beeswax, incense, and damp stone.
A single votive candle flickered on a small oak table beneath a tarnished crucifix.
Sister Beatrice was sitting on a wooden bench, holding a small blanket-wrapped bundle against her chest.
When the heavy oak door creaked open, she flinched, clutching the child tighter.
Then she saw my face through the dim, golden candlelight.
“Mr. Vitelli,” she whispered, letting out a long, shuddering breath.
The bundle moved.
A small head poked out from beneath the grey wool blanket.
Sophia rubbed her eyes with the back of her sleeve, looking up at me with those slate-grey eyes that belonged to my mother, my family, and my entire vanished past.
“Daddy?” she whispered, her voice thick with sleep. “Did we catch the bad guys?”
I walked across the stone floor, dropped to my knees in front of the bench, and gently lifted her out of Sister Beatrice’s arms.
She felt light.
Impossibly light, like a bird made of paper and heartbeat.
I wrapped my arms around her small shoulders, burying my face in her dark hair, feeling the steady, rhythmic drumbeat of her heart against my ribs.
For six years, I had believed that power was control.
That safety was measured in bank accounts, armed guards, concrete walls, and invisible ledgers.
I had been wrong about every single thing that mattered.
“We got them, sweetheart,” I said, my voice cracking for the first time in twenty years. “We’re going home.”
Sister Beatrice stood up quietly, brushing down her grey skirt.
“The federal warrant was filed an hour ago, Mr. Vitelli,” she said softly, not looking me in the eye. “The U.S. Attorney’s office seized your downtown offices at midnight. Your name is on every news broadcast from here to New York.”
“Let them take the buildings,” I said, holding my daughter tighter against my chest. “Let them take the logistics companies, the hotels, and the warehouses.”
“What about the syndicate? Salvatore won’t stop until—’
“Salvatore won't have an organization left by morning,” I said, looking up with a cold, absolute clarity that made the elderly nun take half a step backward. “Matteo gave them the wrong ledgers. By dawn, the federal strike force will have every high-ranking member of the Commission in custody on federal racketeering charges.”
“And you?”
May you like
I stood up, carrying Sophia in my arms. She had already wrapped her small arms around my neck, her heavy eyelids drooping as she rested her head against my shoulder.
“I’m going to be a father,” I said.
