Chapter 1
Nobody in the family hall moved after Dominic hit the chair.
Vincent stood beneath his own funeral portrait, one hand still resting on the heavy frame.
Three days earlier, his armored sedan had been forced off a rural road north of Chicago. The driver had died. Vincent had escaped through a shattered rear door before the vehicle caught fire, then spent nearly forty-eight hours in a private medical clinic while his security chief quietly determined whether the attack had come from outside the Caradonna organization or from within it.
Vincent had told only two people he was alive.
Neither stood in this room.
Yet Helena’s question had removed any doubt that his supposed death was not simply a misunderstanding.
Why are you still alive?
Not where have you been.
Not thank God.
Why.
Vincent looked toward his bodyguards.
“Take their phones.”
Dominic pushed himself upright.
“You think you can humiliate me and then search me like some street soldier?”
Vincent glanced at the chair Dominic had nearly overturned.
“You attacked me.”
“You walked in here playing dead.”
“I survived an ambush.”
Helena recovered enough composure to lift her chin.
“We were told you were dead.”
“By whom?”
Silence.
Vincent looked around the hall.
The funeral flowers were fresh.
The portrait was professionally enlarged and framed.
Black mourning cards had already been stacked on a side table.
Someone had planned efficiently.
Too efficiently.
He picked up one of the cards.
VINCENT CARADONNA — PRIVATE FAMILY MEMORIAL
Tomorrow’s date was embossed beneath his name.
“You prepared all this in less than two days?”
Helena answered first.
“The family needed certainty.”
“My body wasn’t recovered.”
“The car burned.”
“So you skipped identification and went directly to flowers?”
Dominic stepped forward again, more carefully this time.
“Everybody believed you were gone.”
Vincent studied him.
“Everybody?”
Dominic looked away.
That small hesitation mattered.
Vincent handed the mourning card to Marco Bellini, his head of security.
“Find out who ordered these.”
Helena’s expression tightened.
“They’re funeral cards, Vincent.”
“And I’m not dead.”
He looked toward the portrait.
“Which makes them evidence.”
An hour later, Marco returned with the first answer.
The portrait had been ordered from a Chicago print shop at 10:17 on Monday morning.
Vincent’s car had not gone off the road until 6:40 that evening.
The funeral portrait existed as an order eight hours before anyone outside the ambush could have believed he was dead.
Vincent placed the invoice on the council table.
Dominic stared at it.
Helena did not.
She looked toward the door.
Vincent noticed.
“You knew.”
Helena’s mouth tightened.
“Knew what?”
“That there was going to be a funeral.”
Nobody spoke.
May you like
Vincent sat in the chair at the head of the table.
“Now we find out why.”
