Chapter 3

Eleanor set the cigar back on the cherrywood ashtray.

Her eyes returned to Vivian.

The temperature in the room dropped.

“Miss Sinclair.”

“The Moretti Family put roots in this country in 1891. A hundred and thirty-five years, four generations of Dons.”

“In all that time, women showing up at this door claiming to carry a Moretti child? I’d put the count somewhere north of eighty. Every one of them swore it was love. Every one of them came with a child. Every one of them had a DNA test in hand. Real or fake.”

“Not one of them ever walked back out.”

She reached into a hidden compartment along the armrest of the couch, one I never knew existed, and took out a small brass bell.

She set it on the coffee table.

“Miss Sinclair. I’ll lay it out plainly.”

“Either you give me the truth.”

“Or I ring this.”

“Our Consigliere, Vincent Moretti, is on his way from Manhattan to Long Island right now. Do you know what a Consigliere actually does? He handles the things in this Family that need to be handled cleanly.”

“When this bell rings, Vincent walks in through the side door with six soldiers and a lawyer.”

“From that moment, your life isn’t yours anymore.”

Eleanor looked up.

“Choose.”

The color drained out of Vivian’s face in a single second.

She clearly hadn’t expected Eleanor to come down this hard. In her five years abroad, every book she’d read about Mafia families, every report she’d paid someone to dig up on the Morettis, they’d all told her the same thing. Eleanor Moretti is a soft, old-school, sentimental Italian grandmother.

She was wrong.

Eleanor isn’t a sweet Italian grandmother.

At thirty-six she watched her husband take seven bullets at the door of a restaurant in Little Italy. Then, alone, she pulled the Moretti Family up from the weakest of the five families to the most rock-solid on the East Coast.

She’s worn Valentino. She’s worn Armani with blood on it. She’s worn the Donna ring, and she’s pulled a trigger.

She is Eleanor Moretti.

Vivian’s fingers dug into the armrest, her knuckles white.

“Mother, everything I said is true...” She was going to try the tears one more time.

“True?” Eleanor’s eyes lifted, calm. “Then tell me. The first time you were alone with Adrian, where, what time of day? The first time you two had dinner, which restaurant, what did you order? Adrian has a scar on the inside of his left ring finger. How did he get it?”

Vivian opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“Nothing comes out because none of it ever happened.” Eleanor’s hand came down on the brass bell. “Last chance.”

Her fingers closed around it.

Vivian’s head snapped up.

In one motion the wronged-woman act, the soft little victim, the heartbroken-mother routine, all of it came off like a mask being ripped off a face.

She bit down on the inside of her cheek, and her voice came out sharp and rushed.

“Fine. You want it? Here it is. The kid wasn’t something Adrian agreed to.”

“I got pregnant on my own.”

“Five years ago, when Clara went to Chicago on business for two weeks, I came over here. Watered Adrian’s basil plant. Fed the dog, Bruno.”

She pointed at me.

“I took a used condom out of the trash can in your upstairs master bedroom.”

“I had it frozen. I took it to an IVF clinic. I used Adrian’s sample. I did the insemination myself.”

When she said it, the entire room went still, like someone had pressed pause.

Martha’s silver cigar cutter slipped out of her hand. The clang in that silent room sounded like a bullet dropping.

I couldn’t breathe.

A used condom.

The Moretti Family’s master bedroom.

Five years ago.

The picture rushed back at me.

The Wednesday before my Chicago trip. At the front door, I’d handed her the spare key to the second floor. She’d laughed, looked sincere, pulled me into a hug. “Clara, when you get back, I’m taking you to Le Bernardin. Last girls” dinner before I leave.”

She’d known exactly when I was traveling. She’d known the master bedroom was at the far east end of the second floor. She’d known our schedule. She’d even known the cleaning service came every Tuesday and Friday.

She’d spent at least a month setting it up.

Using twenty years of trust.

I looked at Eleanor.

She hadn’t moved.

The Cohiba was still in her fingers, and the ash had grown into a long, pale column, almost broken off.

She didn’t say anything right away.

I’d never seen that look on her face before.

It was a quiet, struck stillness.

The GenoTrace report sat on the table in front of her.

If Vivian really had taken a used condom out of our master bedroom, that 99.998% on the page wasn’t pulled from thin air.

That boy really was Eleanor Moretti’s grandson.

The heir the Moretti Family had waited twenty years for.