Chapter 2 - THE BROKEN BELL
Sophia was taken upstairs.
Adriano did not let Victoria near her.
He did not let Lucian leave either.
The gala guests remained in the ballroom under the polite fiction that there had been a family matter.
Music resumed quietly.
Wine returned to tables.
Nobody believed the lie.
Inside a private sitting room, Adriano placed the black key, silver bell, and serpent token on a table.
Victoria remained standing.
Lucian sat.
That told Adriano something.
Victoria was afraid of what was coming.
Lucian believed he could control it.
Adriano pointed toward the token.
“Speak.”
Lucian folded his hands.
“It means nothing.”
Adriano almost smiled.
“When men like you say something means nothing, it usually means someone died over it.”
Victoria shut her eyes.
Lucian turned toward her.
“Do not.”
Adriano heard.
“Do not what?”
Lucian looked back.
“Don’t turn an old tragedy into a new war.”
Adriano leaned forward.
“My brother disappeared twenty-seven years ago.”
“Yes.”
“My wife dies eighteen months ago.”
Lucian said nothing.
“My daughter carries a toy containing the same symbol.”
Silence.
“And you call that old.”
Victoria finally whispered:
“Nico was not killed the night he disappeared.”
Adriano did not move.
That frightened Lucian more than rage would have.
“What did you say?”
Victoria looked at him.
“He survived.”
Adriano stared.
For twenty-seven years the Bellacorte family story had been fixed.
Nico Bellacorte, twenty-one years old, ambitious and reckless, betrayed the family by meeting secretly with the Marcello crew.
The meeting became an ambush.
A warehouse burned.
Nico disappeared inside.
No body was recovered.
Adriano’s father declared him dead.
His name stopped being spoken.
Adriano had believed it.
He had been twenty-two.
Old enough to remember.
Young enough to accept his father’s certainty.
“You knew.”
Victoria’s voice became softer.
“Not then.”
“When?”
“Years later.”
“How many?”
“Eleven.”
Adriano’s eyes hardened.
“You have known my brother may be alive for eleven years.”
“Yes.”
“And never told me.”
Victoria swallowed.
“Yes.”
Lucian said:
“She had reasons.”
Adriano looked at him.
“Careful.”
Lucian stopped.
Adriano picked up the broken silver bell.
“What is this?”
Victoria’s breathing changed again.
“The Bell of Saint Orsin.”
Adriano frowned.
The Bellacortes had once owned a chapel outside New York known as Saint Orsin.
His grandfather held private family meetings there.
It had been abandoned after a fire decades earlier.
“What about it?”
“The old chapel had two bells,” Victoria said. “One large. One small.”
Adriano held up the broken object.
“This is not a church bell.”
“No.”
“It’s a marker.”
“For what?”
Victoria looked at Lucian.
He shook his head.
Adriano saw.
He stepped between them.
“Stop asking permission from your husband.”
Her eyes flashed.
“I’m not.”
“You looked at him before every truth.”
Victoria’s face tightened.
Adriano moved closer.
“Do that again and he leaves the room.”
Lucian stood.
Adriano’s bodyguards moved immediately.
Lucian sat again.
Victoria looked at the small bell.
“Nico used them.”
“Why?”
“To identify people he trusted.”
Adriano frowned.
“Nico was twenty-one.”
“He had already built something.”
“What?”
“A group inside the family.”
Lucian interrupted.
“Enough.”
Adriano turned.
Lucian’s face had changed.
Not fear.
Anger.
That interested Adriano.
“You’re protecting Nico.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Lucian leaned back.
“Your brother did not disappear because he was betrayed.”
Adriano waited.
“He disappeared because your father ordered him gone.”
The room became very quiet.
Adriano stared at Lucian.
“My father searched for him.”
“Publicly.”
“He killed three Marcello men.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To make everyone believe Marcello had taken Nico.”
Adriano felt something old shifting beneath his memories.
His father returning from the warehouse.
Blood on his sleeve.
Telling Adriano his brother was gone.
Telling him never to ask where.
Adriano had interpreted grief.
Maybe it had been something else.
“Why would my father erase his own son?”
Victoria answered:
“Because Nico found out who really controlled the Bellacorte family.”
Adriano looked at the serpent token.
Victoria continued.
“The crown is the family.”
She touched the serpent.
“The serpent is the person wrapped around it.”
Adriano’s eyes narrowed.
“Who?”
Victoria whispered:
“The Custodian.”
Adriano almost laughed.
“A title?”
“Yes.”
“What did the Custodian do?”
Lucian answered this time.
“He made sure Bellacorte survived its own bosses.”
The sentence hung in the room.
Adriano looked toward the locked ballroom beyond the wall.
“A shadow ruler.”
“No,” Victoria said. “Worse.”
May you like
Adriano turned.
“The Custodian could replace one.”
