Chapter 3 - A Child Hidden Inside an Empire of Lies
“Everybody out except Marco.”
Nobody moved.
Sylvio Romano did not raise his voice.
He didn’t need to.
“Now.”
Chairs scraped across marble.
Men filed toward the adjoining dining room while Vincent remained beside the doorway.
Sylvio looked at him.
“That includes you.”
Vincent frowned.
“Sylvio—”
“Out.”
Vincent reluctantly obeyed.
Lucy sat wrapped in Sylvio’s jacket, clutching the bottle of water with both hands.
Sylvio turned toward her.
“You stay.”
Marco Bellini looked at him sharply.
“You’re keeping a child here for this?”
“She’s the reason we’re having this conversation.”
Marco’s expression hardened.
“This isn’t something a kid should hear.”
Sylvio approached him.
“Interesting. You seem very concerned about what she hears.”
Marco said nothing.
Sylvio placed the photograph on the table between them.
“Explain.”
Marco stared at Isabella’s face.
Thirty years seemed to fall across his features.
“I can’t.”
Sylvio almost smiled.
It wasn’t amusement.
It was disbelief.
“For forty-two years, you’ve stood beside me. You’ve seen me buried under investigations, wars, funerals and betrayals. Now you’re telling me there’s something you can’t say?”
Marco looked toward Lucy.
“Not here.”
Lucy stood.
“I can go.”
“No,” Sylvio said immediately.
Marco exhaled.
“Sylvio.”
“Tell me why my dead sister is holding a child I was never told existed.”
Marco closed his eyes.
When he opened them, they looked exhausted.
“Because Isabella begged us not to tell you.”
“Us?”
The word landed like a stone.
Marco looked toward the doorway.
Sylvio followed his eyes.
“Who else?”
“I won’t drag everybody into this.”
Sylvio slammed his palm against the table.
Lucy jumped.
Sylvio immediately regretted it.
He lowered his voice.
“You’re already in it.”
Marco turned toward the windows.
Outside, rain glistened on black cars parked along the street.
“When Isabella was thirty-six, she started seeing someone.”
Sylvio’s jaw tightened.
“Tony.”
Marco nodded.
Sylvio laughed once.
The sound contained no humor.
“My sister and the man who betrayed me.”
“They loved each other before you and Tony fell apart.”
“And nobody told me.”
“Isabella was afraid of what you’d do.”
“What I’d do?”
Marco turned around.
“You were different then.”
Sylvio stared at him.
Marco continued.
“You were at war with half the city. Tony was trying to disappear. Isabella thought if you found out, you’d force her to choose.”
“I was her brother.”
“You were also Sylvio Romano.”
Those four words hit harder than an insult.
Lucy watched them quietly.
Sylvio lowered himself into the chair.
“The baby?”
Marco looked at Lucy.
“Isabella had a daughter.”
The girl’s breathing changed.
Sylvio stared at her.
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
Lucy’s face crumpled.
“You knew her?”
Marco nodded.
Lucy rushed toward him.
“What was she like?”
Marco looked suddenly helpless.
“She was… stubborn.”
Lucy gave a tiny laugh through tears.
“Mom said that about herself.”
“She loved music. Terrible cook. Best person in any room.”
Lucy covered her mouth.
Sylvio couldn’t speak.
He had spent nine years grieving Isabella.
He remembered standing beside her hospital bed when she died after a long illness.
She had asked him one strange question.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Sylvio had joked.
She hadn’t.
He understood now.
“Why wasn’t Lucy with her?”
Marco’s face darkened.
“Because Tony took her.”
Lucy stiffened.
Sylvio stood.
“What?”
“When Isabella became sick, Tony appeared again.”
“I was told he was already dead.”
“That came later.”
Marco rubbed his forehead.
“He convinced Isabella that enemies around you would use Lucy to hurt the family. He said he could protect her somewhere nobody knew.”
“And you allowed it?”
“I tried to stop her.”
“Not hard enough.”
“She was dying, Sylvio!”
The words echoed.
Marco immediately lowered his voice.
“She was dying and terrified. She trusted Tony.”
Sylvio pointed toward Lucy.
“And she ended up homeless.”
Marco’s eyes filled with shame.
“I didn’t know.”
“Where was Tony supposed to take her?”
“A family in Connecticut.”
Lucy shook her head.
“I never lived there.”
Marco stared at her.
“My mother took me with her when she got really sick. After she died, Tony said I had to go with him.”
“How old were you?” Sylvio asked.
“Six.”
Sylvio’s hands curled.
“What happened?”
“He moved me a lot.”
Apartments.
Motels.
Spare rooms.
Sometimes Lucy was left with strangers.
Sometimes Tony disappeared for weeks.
He had told her Sylvio was dangerous.
That Sylvio had hated Isabella.
That if Lucy ever went looking for him, she would disappear too.
Sylvio listened without interrupting.
Every sentence built something terrible inside him.
He had been feared by criminals for decades.
Yet while his name frightened half the city, his niece had been sleeping in abandoned buildings only a few miles away.
He had never known.
Or perhaps he had never looked.
“Why did Tony keep you?”
Lucy shrugged.
“I think because Mom gave him things.”
“What things?”
“Papers.”
Sylvio and Marco exchanged looks.
“What kind of papers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are they?”
Lucy hesitated.
“Hidden.”
Marco crouched beside her.
“Lucy, those papers could matter.”
Her face hardened instantly.
“No.”
Sylvio noticed the reaction.
“What did Tony tell you?”
“That people would hurt me if they found them.”
“Did he hurt you?”
The girl looked away.
Sylvio regretted asking.
He changed the question.
“Did he threaten you?”
Lucy nodded.
“He said the papers belonged to him.”
“What are they about?”
“My mom said they proved something.”
“What?”
Lucy swallowed.
“That Tony wasn’t who everybody thought he was.”
Marco went completely still.
Sylvio noticed.
“What?”
Marco walked toward the bar.
He poured water instead of whiskey.
“For years before Tony supposedly died, we suspected someone was feeding information to rival crews.”
Sylvio remembered.
Warehouses raided minutes before deliveries.
Deals collapsing.
Safe houses compromised.
Someone always one step ahead.
They blamed outsiders.
Some men had paid heavily for crimes they may never have committed.
Marco continued.
“Maybe Isabella discovered who was actually doing it.”
“Tony.”
“Maybe.”
Sylvio’s eyes narrowed.
“You knew more than you told me.”
“I suspected.”
“For fifteen years?”
Marco faced him.
“I thought Tony was dead.”
“So did I.”
Lucy whispered.
“He isn’t.”
Neither man answered.
She continued.
“And he’s not alone.”
Sylvio looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
“The man with him yesterday.”
“You saw another man?”
“Yes.”
“Describe him.”
Lucy began.
Older.
Gray hair.
Heavy shoulders.
Gold ring.
Walked with a slight limp.
Marco dropped the glass.
Sylvio’s stomach turned.
Because this description belonged to someone else who had been dead for years.
Frankie Rizzo.
The former lieutenant whose murder had nearly triggered the bloodiest conflict in Romano history.
The official story said Frankie had been killed by a rival family.
His death had started a war.
Dozens of lives ruined.
Territory changed hands.
Businesses burned.
Families disappeared from neighborhoods they had lived in for generations.
If Frankie was alive—
Then the war had been manufactured.
Sylvio looked at Marco.
Marco was thinking the same thing.
“They staged it,” he whispered.
Sylvio nodded slowly.
Tony’s death.
Frankie’s death.
Possibly others.
All designed to rearrange the city while Sylvio fought enemies chosen for him.
His empire hadn’t simply been threatened.
It had been manipulated.
Lucy hugged the oversized jacket tighter.
“There’s something else.”
Both men turned.
“Yesterday, when they thought I was asleep, Tony said the dinner wasn’t really about killing you.”
Sylvio’s expression changed.
“What was it about?”
“He said after you died, everyone would blame Vincent.”
The silence between Sylvio and Marco became immediate.
“And then?”
“He said Marco would kill Vincent.”
Marco’s face drained.
“And after that?”
“Everybody would choose sides.”
Sylvio understood.
A civil war.
His organization would destroy itself from within.
“And Tony?”
Lucy whispered the answer.
“He said he’d come back when there was nobody strong enough to stop him.”
Marco stepped backward.
“That was his plan twenty years ago.”
Sylvio looked at him.
“You knew?”
“I knew he wanted your position. I didn’t know how far he’d go.”
A pounding came from the restaurant entrance.
Everyone turned.
Three heavy knocks.
Pause.
Three more.
One of Sylvio’s guards entered from the adjoining room.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We have someone outside.”
“Who?”
The guard looked uncomfortable.
“He says his name is Anthony Duca.”
Lucy dropped the water bottle.
It hit the floor.
Sylvio felt every instinct sharpen.
“Is he alone?”
The guard nodded.
“He says he wants five minutes.”
Marco stepped closer.
“No.”
Sylvio ignored him.
“What else?”
“He told me to give you a message.”
“What message?”
The guard swallowed.
“He said, ‘Ask Sylvio whether Isabella ever told him what happened the night their father died.’”
Sylvio stopped breathing.
His father’s death was the one subject even his closest men never mentioned.
Gabriel Romano had supposedly died of a heart attack thirty-one years ago.
Sylvio had found him on the kitchen floor.
Isabella had been there too.
She had been eighteen.
For years afterward, she suffered nightmares.
She would never explain them.
Now Sylvio understood why.
He walked toward the front door.
Marco grabbed his arm.
“It’s a trap.”
Sylvio looked at his oldest friend.
“Everything tonight is a trap.”
Then he looked toward Lucy.
A child who had crossed a frozen city barefoot to save a man she had been taught to fear.
He removed Marco’s hand.
“But this time I know I’m walking into it.”
Outside the glass doors, beneath the restaurant awning, stood a gray-haired man.
The scar between his thumb and index finger was clearly visible.
Anthony Duca smiled.
May you like
And beside him sat an unopened black suitcase.
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