Chapter 5 - The Relic on 31st Street
The smell of pulverized plaster and broken timber hit my nostrils before we even reached the second-floor landing.
Dante moved up the stairwell like a shadow, his weapon held low against his thigh, his tread making no sound on the worn linoleum.
Frank was right behind him, carrying a short-barreled shotgun tucked beneath his heavy wool overcoat.
I followed between them, my heart beating so loudly against my ribs I was terrified the men upstairs would hear it.
The door to apartment 3B had been kicked off its hinges, splintered wood hanging like jagged teeth from the frame.
Inside, the tiny living room where I had spent twenty years of my life was completely destroyed.
My grandmother’s faded floral sofa was sliced open, its yellow foam guts spilling out onto the floorboards.
The porcelain statues of Saint Anthony and Saint Jude lay shattered into dust near the radiator.
From the back bedroom, two voices were cursing in harsh, flat Chicago accents.
“There’s nothing in this damn wall except lead pipes and dead mice!” one of them yelled.
“Keep digging!” the second voice barked. “Carbone said the old witch hid the book behind the heater!”
Dante held up one hand, signaling Frank to hold his position by the kitchen door.
He glanced back at me, his dark eyes giving an unspoken order to stay flat against the plaster wall.
I pressed my spine into the cold drywall, biting down on my lower lip until I tasted blood.
Dante stepped into the bedroom doorway with fluid, terrifying speed.
Two muffled thuds echoed through the apartment, sounding like heavy books falling onto thick carpet.
There was no shouting, no dramatic struggle, and no shattering glass.
Just two heavy bodies slumping against the plaster walls, followed by the metallic click of Dante clearing his chamber.
Frank walked in after him, dragging two heavy canvas painter’s tarps from the hallway closet.
“Clear,” Frank muttered, stepping over a heap of broken drywall.
I stepped into my grandmother’s bedroom, my boots crunching on fragments of broken picture frames.
On the wall beside the window, an old photograph of me as a seven-year-old on my first communion day lay trampled in the dust.
I ignored the two motionless shapes lying under the painter's tarps in the corner.
I knelt down beside the cast-iron gas heater, ignoring the freezing drafts coming through the busted windowpanes.
The baseboard was loose, splintered where Leo’s men had used a crowbar, but they had missed the secret lever.
Rosa had carved a hidden notch directly into the iron pipe behind the shut-off valve.
I reached my fingers into the soot-stained gap, pressed the notch upward, and felt a hollow compartment click open inside the baseboard.
I pulled out a heavy object wrapped in oilcloth and yellowed linen.
It was Rosa’s Bible, its dark leather cover cracked with age, bound with an ancient brass clasp.
I blew the thick layer of plaster dust off the cover and turned back toward Dante.
He was standing over me, looking down at the book with an expression that bordered on reverence.
“Open it,” he instructed softly.
My fingers trembled as I slipped the brass clasp free.
The yellowed pages fell open to the Book of Kings.
Between the thin, translucent pages of scripture lay dozens of hand-drawn charts, numeric grids, and lines of archaic Sicilian script.
The handwriting was sharp, jagged, and unmistakably my grandmother’s.
At the very bottom of the page, written in dried brown ink that looked like faded blood, was a single sentence:
“To Bernardo, who sold our mother’s soul for three docks in America: May the earth spit your bones back out.”
Beside the inscription was an antique photographic plate from 1952.
It showed three young people standing on the stone docks of Palermo: a teenage Bernardo Marcone, a fierce-eyed Rosa Bellomo, and an older man with Dante Romano’s exact facial structure.
I stared at the photograph, the cold realization freezing the breath in my throat.
“This isn't just Bernardo’s sister,” I whispered, looking up into Dante’s face.
“This man standing beside her... who is he?”
Dante knelt down beside me, his long fingers gently touching the edge of the photographic plate.
“That was my grandfather, Salvatore Romano,” Dante said, his voice unusually low and stripped of all arrogance.
“Your grandmother wasn't just Bernardo’s sister, Clara.”
“She was Salvatore’s betrothed before Bernardo betrayed him to the Palermo police to take the shipping lines for himself.”
I looked between the fading photograph and the living man kneeling in the dust of my destroyed bedroom.
“She ran away because your family was going to murder her for Bernardo’s treason,” I breathed.
“She ran away to save her life and the ledger that proved the Romano family owned the port rights, not the Marcones,” Dante said.
“Then Bernardo didn't hire you to protect the family,” I said, my voice rising in panic.
“He hired you to hunt down the proof before Leo could use it!”
Before Dante could answer, the floorboards in the hallway groaned beneath a heavy, deliberate tread.
Frank lunged toward the doorway, but a deafening blast tore through the kitchen wall, sending wood splinters and buckshot flying through the air.
Frank took the hit in his shoulder, grunting with fury as he slammed against the doorframe, returning fire with his shotgun.
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“Dante! Out the fire escape!” Frank roared, blood soaking through the wool of his navy overcoat.
“They didn't just send four cleaners, boss! Leo’s whole crew is downstairs on the street!”
