I stared out the window of Vincent’s high-security apartment, my mind racing. The city of Chicago sprawled beneath me, a maze of streets and shadows. I had never felt more trapped, not even after the funeral. The life I had known—the one I’d taken for granted—was gone. My father was dead, and with him, all the illusions of safety.
Vincent had been appointed my official protector by Salvatore, and I had no choice but to follow his orders. For now. But under my mask of compliance, I was digging for answers. I had to know the truth about my father’s death—and Vincent. Especially Vincent. Every time I looked at him, a mix of confusion, anger, and... something else churned in my chest. He protected me, yes, but there were secrets in his eyes, things he was hiding from me.
I needed to find them.
Isabella, Vincent’s younger sister, had always been my friend, and though she had her loyalties to the family, I knew I could count on her to help. She was the only one who still treated me like Lena, not the widow of Moretti’s second-in-command.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked, her voice low as she handed me a key. "Giuseppe’s old, but he’s sharp. If anyone knows what your father was up to, it’s him."
I nodded, my throat tight with the weight of everything. "I need answers. I don’t care how we get them."
We made our way to the family’s archive room, an old, musty building tucked away in the heart of the old district. The air was thick with dust and the scent of ancient leather-bound books. Giuseppe, the elderly archivist, was hunched over a stack of papers when we entered.
“Ah, Lena,” he greeted me, his gnarled hands pausing in their work. His eyes, however, were sharp, focused, as though he had been waiting for me all along. “Your father... he was always one for secrets. But he trusted you.”
My pulse quickened. "He trusted me with something? What is it?" I asked, stepping closer.
Giuseppe’s hand trembled as he slid a thick, worn book across the table. "He said if you ever came asking about iris, you'd know where to look."
I froze, my blood running cold. Iris. The symbol my father had given me as a child. The silver necklace I wore to this day. But what did it have to do with all this?
I took the book from Giuseppe, a 1910 missal, the kind used in churches, the edges of the pages worn by years of handling. Inside, wedged between the yellowed paper, was a single sheet of encrypted pages. My fingers trembled as I studied the cryptic numbers and letters, my father’s handwriting scrawled at the top. My heart pounded as I realized what I was holding. This wasn’t just any account ledger. These were transactions—large sums of money flowing into and out of shadow accounts.
And at the bottom of each page, a faint symbol. An iris.
My father had been involved in something much bigger than I had ever known. This wasn’t just about the Moretti family’s business—it was global, and far more dangerous than I could imagine.
I looked up at Giuseppe, my heart in my throat. “What is this? What was my father involved in?”
Giuseppe’s eyes flickered, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he just nodded towards the back of the room. "You need to be careful, Lena. Some things are better left buried."
But it was too late. I had already uncovered a part of my father’s life that I was never meant to see.
Later, as Isabella and I walked toward the church where we had planned to meet Vincent, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was wrong. The church was old, steeped in the history of the family. The same place my father had taken me when I was younger to teach me the importance of loyalty, honor... secrets.
Isabella kept glancing at me, her expression a mix of concern and hesitation. “Lena,” she said quietly, “there’s something you need to know. About Vincent.”
My stomach tightened. “What about him?”
“He’s not from here,” she said, her voice dropping lower. “Seven years ago, he showed up, claiming he was from Sicily. But Salvatore never told anyone much about him. He just... appeared. And whenever we asked, he always said he came from a ‘broken place.’”
I froze, the words settling over me like ice. What was Vincent hiding? And why had he never told me the truth?
Just as I was about to press Isabella further, I felt a presence—someone watching us from the shadows. I looked around, but there was no one. Just the echo of footsteps and the unsettling sense that someone was following us.
Before I could react, a dark figure lunged from the alleyway, trying to grab me. Isabella screamed, but before I could react, Vincent appeared out of nowhere, pulling me behind him as he drew his gun, firing off a few quick shots. The attacker collapsed, but not before his eyes locked onto mine—eyes that seemed all too familiar.
“You’re safe,” Vincent said, his voice cold. But I could hear the underlying tension, the way his hand shook as he helped me to my feet.
But I was too shaken to ask questions now. I could only stare at the man’s tattoo. The symbol—an iris—etched into his arm, just like the one my father had given me.
This wasn’t just some random attack. Someone was sending a message. And I was their target.
That night, Vincent took me to a private shooting range. He handed me a gun—cold, heavy, foreign in my hands.
“You want to survive?” he said, his voice calm and controlled, though his eyes betrayed a flicker of something else. "Learn to shoot."
As I hesitated, I caught sight of his left shoulder. The scar, the one I had never noticed before, ran in a pattern that perfectly aligned with the bullet’s trajectory that had killed my father.
“Did you shoot my father?” I asked, my voice trembling with anger and betrayal. Vincent stood frozen for a long moment before he answered.
“I aimed at him, yes,” he said quietly. "But I wasn’t the one who killed him.”
My breath caught in my throat. What was he not telling me?
That night, as I sat alone in the apartment, I opened the ledger again, desperate for answers. I was able to crack the encryption, and what I found made my blood run cold. The money had flowed to an account marked with the abbreviation D.C. I typed the letters into the family computer and a newspaper headline popped up—Federal Agent’s Family Killed in Mob Hit, Only Son Survives.
The boy in the photo... his eyes were unmistakable. Vincent.
Everything I thought I knew was about to crumble.