Chapter 4 - The Snake Unmasked
“Matteo!” I stumbled toward the console, pressing the transmit button. “We’re at the cabin. Lily is safe! Are you alright? Where are you?”
Heavy breathing rattled through the speaker, accompanied by the sound of rain pounding against metal.
“I’m ten miles south,” Matteo replied, his voice strained, raw with pain. “Silas took the main house, but he didn't get what he wanted. He knows I survived. He’s released a statement to the syndicate capos claiming I executed my own wife’s brother years ago and that I’m mentally unstable. He’s calling an emergency council of the five families at midnight to declare himself regent.”
“He framed you,” I breathed into the microphone. “Just like he framed my father.”
“Yes,” Matteo grunted. “If the council votes in his favor at midnight, every mercenary in the state will have open hunting orders on me, on my daughter, and on you. We have three hours to prove the truth.”
“We have the proof, Matteo!” I yelled into the radio. “My father kept a complete ledger! Names, bank accounts, chemical purchases from European pharmaceutical companies, and taped phone transcripts between Silas and the rival families! It was all in the cedar box!”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. The crackle of static felt agonizingly loud.
“Your father kept the chemical receipts?” Matteo asked, a sudden sharp edge returning to his voice.
“Yes! Everything!”
“Then we don't just survive tonight, Maya,” Matteo growled, the cold, lethal authority returning to his tone like an armor plating. “We execute him in front of his own peers. Stay inside. Lock the perimeter defense grid. I am coming to get you.”
Thirty minutes later, the heavy iron gate outside the cabin groaned open.
A single black sedan, its headlights off, rolled into the gravel driveway. The driver’s door opened, and Matteo stepped out into the pouring rain.
He looked terrifying. His black shirt was torn at the shoulder, soaked in rain and blood. He had a makeshift bandage wrapped around his left forearm, and his jaw was bruised dark purple. But his eyes—his eyes were burning with a fierce, absolute light that could have ignited the night sky.
I threw open the cabin door and ran out into the rain.
I didn't think about mafia protocol. I didn't think about his reputation as the most feared boss in the city. I just saw the man who had fought through hell to return to his daughter and me.
I threw my arms around his broad, soaked shoulders.
Matteo stiffened in shock for a fraction of a second before his good arm wrapped fiercely around my waist, lifting me slightly off my feet, pulling me hard against his chest. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a war drum.
“You’re alive,” I sobbed into his neck, smelling gunpowder, rain, and blood.
“I told you I would come back,” he murmured, his voice rough against my ear. “I don't break promises to my family.”
He pulled back gently, his dark gold eyes scanning my face, checking every inch of me for injuries. Then he looked over my shoulder to where Lily was standing in the doorway, holding her crayon drawing.
Matteo walked over, dropping to his knees on the wet porch. Lily ran forward and threw herself into his arms.
For two minutes, nobody spoke. The rain poured around us, but inside that small porch, the silence felt like a fortress.
When Matteo stood up, he looked down at the cedar box sitting on the table inside.
“The council meeting is at the Grand Harbor Hotel at midnight,” Matteo said, turning to me. “Silas thinks he’s stepping onto a throne. He doesn't know you exist, Maya. He thinks your father’s bloodline ended in silence.”
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I picked up the leather journal, clutching it to my chest, and looked him dead in the eye.
“Then let’s show him what happens when the silent speak.”
