Chapter 4 - South Boston GhostsThe car Mrs. Gable found was a ten-year-old gray sedan that smelled like cigarettes and wet carpet.
“It belongs to a gardener,” she said, trembling as she handed Leo the keys. “No tracker. No estate registration.”
Leo looked at her. “Come with us.”
Mrs. Gable shook her head.
Clare stared. “You’re staying?”
The older woman looked toward the burning estate. Smoke rose behind the west wing, black against the rainy night. Sirens sounded somewhere far away, but Clare did not know if they were police, fire, or more of Salvatore’s men pretending to be both.
“I have spent twenty years being afraid of Salvatore Rossi,” Mrs. Gable said. “I know where he keeps records. I know which men he pays. I know which staff members are loyal to him. Someone needs to remain inside.”
Leo studied her.
“Why help now?”
Mrs. Gable’s eyes moved to Clare.
“Because I told myself girls like her were safer if they obeyed.” Her mouth trembled. “Tonight I realized obedience was just another cage.”
Clare did not forgive her.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
But she understood cages.
Leo opened the back door and shoved Tommy inside. Tommy groaned, his wrists now bound in front of him with a strip of torn sheet.
“Was that necessary?” Clare asked.
“He forged your name, delivered you into my uncle’s house, and knows more than he says.”
“He’s my brother.”
“That is why he is breathing.”
Tommy closed his eyes.
Clare had no answer.
Leo got behind the wheel. Clare climbed into the passenger seat. Mrs. Gable leaned down at Leo’s window.
“If you reach Boston, don’t go straight to her apartment.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
Mrs. Gable glanced toward the estate gates. “Because if Salvatore planned this, he has already sent someone.”
Clare’s heart dropped.
“My things.”
Mrs. Gable looked at her with pity. “Your prayer card is the only thing he needs.”
Leo started the car.
“Then we get there first.”
They drove into the storm without headlights until the estate disappeared behind them.
For the first twenty minutes, no one spoke.
Rain hammered the roof. Tommy coughed in the back seat. Clare held a towel to the cut on her temple and stared through the windshield at the dark road.
Her life had become impossible in less than one hour.
At sunset she was a poor housekeeper dusting books.
By midnight she was fleeing a burning mafia estate with a boss, a traitor housekeeper, and her half-drowned brother because a dead woman’s song might prove she had been alive.
Leo drove fast, but not recklessly. His phone had been destroyed before they left. Clare’s cheap phone had no service. Tommy’s phone, when Leo found it, contained only gambling apps and three contacts named things like Lucky Mike and Don’t Answer.
Leo threw it out the window.
“Hey,” Tommy muttered weakly.
“You’ll live.”
Tommy laughed once, then winced.
Clare turned toward him. “Start talking.”
He looked at her.
“Clare—”
“No. Don’t say my name like that. Not like you’re the one who got hurt.”
His face crumpled.
“I didn’t know they wanted you dead.”
“But you knew they wanted me trapped.”
“I thought you’d work at the estate, pay down the debt, and be safe.”
“My wages weren’t paying anything.”
“I know that now.”
“No,” Clare said. “You knew when you signed my name.”
Tommy looked out the window.
The boy she had raised after their mother died had become a man who could sell her and still feel sorry for himself.
Leo’s voice came quietly from the front.
“Who approached you?”
Tommy swallowed. “A man named Nicky.”
“Nicky Vale?”
“I don’t know his last name.”
“Scar under his left eye?”
Tommy nodded.
Leo’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“He works for my uncle.”
Tommy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He said Clare had met someone important in Boston years ago. Said she didn’t know it. Said they needed her close in case she remembered.”
“In case I remembered what?” Clare demanded.
Tommy shook his head.
Leo glanced in the rearview mirror. “Try harder.”
“They mentioned a name.”
Clare leaned toward him. “The name on the prayer card?”
“Maybe.”
“What was it?”
Tommy shut his eyes.
“Marina.”
Leo nearly drove off the road.
The sedan swerved.
Clare grabbed the dashboard. “What?”
Leo corrected the car, jaw clenched.
“Marina DeLuca was my mother’s closest friend.”
“Where is she?”
“Dead.”
Clare almost laughed from exhaustion.
“Of course.”
Leo’s expression darkened. “Officially.”
The word landed heavily.
Officially.
In Leo Rossi’s world, death seemed less like an ending and more like paperwork.
They reached South Boston just before dawn.
The neighborhood looked washed clean by rain, but Clare knew better. Her building leaned between a liquor store and a closed laundromat. The front steps were slick. A garbage bag had torn open near the curb, spilling cans into the gutter.
Leo parked two blocks away.
“Stay here,” he told Tommy.
Tommy gave a bitter laugh. “Where would I go?”
Leo looked at Clare. “You know another entrance?”
“Fire escape.”
“Show me.”
They cut through an alley that smelled of stale beer and wet brick. Clare’s knees trembled so badly she had to hold the wall once.
Leo noticed.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m poor,” she said. “We keep moving.”
Something like respect flashed across his face.
They climbed the fire escape to the third floor. Clare’s window lock had been broken for months. She lifted the frame and slid inside.
Her apartment was destroyed.
Not messy.
Destroyed.
Mattress sliced open. Cabinets dumped. Floorboards pried loose. Closet emptied. The shoebox was torn apart in the center of the room.
Clare stood frozen on the windowsill.
Too late.
Every small possession she had left in the world was scattered, broken, or stolen.
Leo entered behind her with the gun raised.
No one was there.
Clare stepped forward slowly.
Her mother’s rosary lay snapped near the sink.
The photograph of Tommy had been ripped in half.
The shoebox was empty.
Clare crouched and picked up the torn photograph. Her hand shook.
“I had almost nothing,” she whispered. “And they still found something to take.”
Leo lowered the gun.
For the first time since she met him, his voice softened.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked up at him.
The apology shocked her more than the gunfire had.
Before she could answer, the closet door creaked.
Leo swung around, weapon raised.
“Don’t shoot!” a woman cried.
A young nurse stepped out with both hands raised. She wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and fear all over her face.
Clare stared.
“Anna?”
Anna Morales had worked nights at St. Jude’s. She was the only nurse who had ever treated Clare like a person.
Anna’s eyes filled with tears.
“You came back.”
Leo stepped between them.
“Who are you?”
Anna looked at Clare. “I tried to call you. Your number didn’t work. Men came two days ago asking about the prayer card.”
Clare’s heart pounded.
“You have it?”
Anna shook her head.
“No. But I know where she wanted you to take it.”
Leo’s voice cut through the room.
“Where?”
Anna looked at him closely.
Then her face changed.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You have her eyes.”
Leo went still.
Anna reached into her sweatshirt pocket and pulled out a folded envelope.
“She told me if a man with her eyes ever came asking, I was supposed to give him this.”
Leo took it slowly.
On the front, written in shaky Italian, were three words.
For my son.
Leo opened the envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
A younger Isabella Rossi stood beside another woman outside a small blue house.
On the back was an address.
And one sentence in English.
Marina kept the first truth where the sparrows sleep.
Anna began to cry.
Clare looked at Leo.
For the first time all night, he looked less like a dangerous man chasing revenge.
He looked like a son who had just been invited back into his mother’s life.
Then the floorboards in the hallway creaked.
Leo grabbed Clare and pushed Anna behind him.
Someone knocked on the apartment door.
Three soft taps.
A pause.
Three more.
Anna’s face went white.
“That’s how they knocked at the hospice,” she whispered.
May you like
Leo raised the gun.
The doorknob turned.
