Chapter 3 - The Prayer CardThe room went silent except for Tommy’s ragged breathing.
Leo Rossi stared at Clare as if the entire world had narrowed down to her face.
“What map?” he asked.
Clare pressed both hands to her temples.
She could see it now.
The prayer card had been faded blue, with the Virgin Mary on the front and a white crease down the middle. On the back were numbers written in a shaky hand. Clare had thought they were nonsense. A confused old woman’s memory. Maybe a hospital room number. Maybe a phone number missing digits.
She had placed it inside a shoebox with the few things she owned that were not useful enough to sell.
Her mother’s rosary.
A photograph of Tommy before he learned how to lie.
A movie ticket from the one night Clare had gone out with a man who later stole forty dollars from her purse.
And the prayer card.
“It’s at my apartment,” Clare said. “In South Boston. Unless my landlord threw everything out.”
Salvatore’s voice filled the speaker.
“Well,” he said, “that is unfortunate.”
Leo did not look away from Clare.
“Can you remember what was on it?”
“Numbers. Maybe an address. A name too, I think.”
“What name?”
“I don’t know. It started with an M.”
Tommy’s head dropped.
Leo turned toward him.
“You know.”
Tommy shook his head weakly.
Leo stepped closer.
Clare moved between them. “He’s hurt.”
“He’s alive,” Leo said. “That means he can answer.”
Tommy’s eyes filled. “Clare, I tried to stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“They told me if I got you inside the estate, your debt would be cleared.”
“My debt?” Clare said.
Tommy looked away.
She understood.
Slowly.
Painfully.
There had never been a debt big enough to justify six months of unpaid labor.
There had only been Tommy.
Her foolish, selfish, terrified brother.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
Tommy cried silently.
“What did you do?”
“I signed papers.”
Leo’s voice was low. “What papers?”
“I don’t know. I swear I didn’t know. They said it was a work guarantee. That Clare agreed to stay until my debt was paid. They said if she quit, I would owe double.”
Clare felt sick.
“You signed my name?”
Tommy could not look at her.
“Clare—”
“You signed my name?”
“I was scared.”
“You are always scared after you ruin someone else’s life.”
The speaker crackled.
Salvatore sighed. “Family disappoints. That is why I prefer contracts.”
Leo raised the gun and fired twice.
Two cameras exploded.
Sparks rained from the ceiling.
A harsh alarm began to shriek.
Tommy flinched, but Leo was already moving.
He shoved the gun into Clare’s hand.
She nearly dropped it.
“Point it at the door.”
“I don’t know how to—”
“Finger off the trigger unless someone comes in.”
Then he crossed to the medical cabinet, ripped it open, and grabbed a metal tray. He smashed it into the keypad beside the sealed door. Once. Twice. Three times.
Nothing.
Salvatore laughed through the damaged speaker.
“You cannot break everything, Leonardo.”
Leo did not answer.
Instead he looked at the ceiling.
Then at the drain.
Then at the air vent above the cot.
He climbed onto the bed, drove his elbow into the vent cover, and ripped it loose.
The opening was narrow.
Too narrow for him.
His eyes dropped to Clare.
“No,” she said immediately.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Clare.”
“I am not crawling into a wall under a mafia mansion while men with guns are trying to kill us.”
Leo looked at her with terrifying calm.
“Then stay here and wait for my uncle to flood this room with gas.”
Tommy whimpered.
Clare stared at the vent.
Her whole body rebelled.
She was tired. Bleeding. Terrified. Betrayed by her own brother. Hunted for a prayer card she had not thought about in years.
And now Leo Rossi, a man people crossed streets to avoid, was asking her to become brave inside a nightmare she never chose.
“I hate this house,” she whispered.
Leo almost smiled.
“Good. Survive it.”
He laced his fingers together and boosted her up.
The vent scraped her elbows as she pulled herself inside. The metal tunnel smelled like dust and rust. Her shoulders barely fit. She heard Leo beneath her.
“Go straight until the first split. Take the left side. It should lead to the laundry shaft.”
“Should?”
“It is an old house.”
“That is not comforting.”
“Move.”
She moved.
The gun was still in her right hand, which made crawling almost impossible. Her knees dragged painfully over metal ridges. Behind her, the alarm screamed.
Then she heard another sound.
Water.
Clare froze.
Water began pouring into the white room below.
Tommy screamed.
“Leo!”
Clare twisted her head, trying to look back.
“Keep moving!” Leo shouted.
“I can’t leave you!”
“You are not leaving me. You are opening the door from the outside.”
The water rose fast.
Too fast.
Clare crawled harder.
Left at the split.
Down a sloping tunnel.
Her breath came in panicked bursts. The vent narrowed, then opened toward a dark shaft. Warm air rose from below, carrying the smell of detergent.
Laundry.
She pushed the grate.
It did not move.
She hit it with the gun.
Once.
Twice.
The grate broke loose.
Clare fell.
She landed on a pile of sheets with a painful gasp.
For one second, she saw stars.
Then she rolled off the cart, stood, and almost collapsed.
She was in the laundry room.
Two kitchen girls stared at her.
One crossed herself.
The other screamed.
Clare raised the gun with both hands, horrified by herself.
“Don’t scream,” she said.
They screamed louder.
Footsteps pounded in the hall.
Clare ran.
She had cleaned enough of the house to know the servants’ corridors better than Salvatore’s men. She cut through the linen closet, down the back stairs, past the pantry, and into the wine corridor.
Mrs. Gable was still outside the red door, slapping the glass panel with both hands.
“Open it!” Clare yelled.
“The system locked me out!”
Clare looked at the keypad.
0418 did nothing now.
Water had risen behind the glass to Tommy’s waist.
Leo was standing on the cot, working at the vent from inside, trying to lift Tommy up.
Tommy was too weak.
Clare saw the fear on her brother’s face.
Real fear.
Not the selfish kind he used when he needed money.
The kind that comes when a person understands the cost of every lie.
“Leo!” Clare screamed.
He looked through the glass.
For one second, their eyes met.
He pointed to the floor.
Clare looked down.
A small steel emergency panel was built near the base of the wall. Locked.
She dropped to her knees and searched blindly. No keyhole. No handle.
Mrs. Gable sobbed. “It needs a security card.”
Clare turned on her.
“Yours.”
“I don’t have clearance.”
“Then who does?”
Mrs. Gable did not answer quickly enough.
Clare lifted the gun.
She hated how natural it felt now.
“Who has it?”
Mrs. Gable whispered, “Salvatore.”
Clare wanted to scream.
Then she remembered the prayer card.
The old woman’s trembling hand pressing it into hers.
The whisper Clare had not understood.
Not words.
A rhythm.
Numbers.
She looked at the keypad.
Not 0418.
Another sequence came to her.
Not fully.
Just pieces.
Seven. Two. Two.
A pause.
Nine.
She typed them.
Red light.
Wrong.
Behind the glass, Tommy disappeared under the water for one terrifying second.
Leo dragged him up.
Clare sobbed.
Think.
Boston. Hospice. Snow outside. The old woman singing.
Hush now, the winter is long.
The sparrow stays.
The sparrow dies.
Clare remembered the old woman tapping the prayer card.
Three taps.
Then one.
Then five.
A date?
A room?
A warning?
She typed 315.
Nothing.
Then she added 0418.
The keypad flashed green.
The emergency panel opened.
Mrs. Gable gasped.
Clare pulled the lever inside.
The red door unlocked.
Water burst outward, knocking her backward.
Leo came through first, dragging Tommy by the collar.
He dumped Tommy onto the floor and bent over him.
“Breathe.”
Tommy coughed violently, vomiting water.
Clare crawled to him, shaking.
Leo stood, soaked from the waist down, his hair plastered to his forehead, his white shirt clinging to his body.
He looked at Mrs. Gable.
“Get a car.”
She nodded frantically.
“Not mine,” he said. “One my uncle doesn’t track.”
Mrs. Gable ran.
Leo turned to Clare.
“We are going to Boston.”
“My apartment might be empty.”
“Then we find who emptied it.”
“And Tommy?”
Leo looked down at him.
Tommy coughed again, crying.
“He comes,” Leo said.
Tommy’s eyes widened. “Why?”
Leo leaned down.
“Because my uncle wants you dead too. That makes you useful.”
They moved through the cellar toward a side exit. Leo took back the gun but stayed close to Clare, one hand near her elbow as if expecting the house itself to attack.
At the final door, Clare looked back.
The red room was flooding.
The estate above them was burning.
May you like
And somewhere inside that mansion, Salvatore Rossi was smiling.
Because men like him did not start wars unless they believed they had already won.
