The Barren Wife He Buried Came Back With The Donna Crown Chapter 07
The Falcon Comes Home
Luca’s body swayed.
Like someone had smacked him full across the face.
“That’s impossible…” His throat worked. His voice came out cracked. “She can’t have divorced me. She promised. She said she’d stay. We’ve had a good few years, haven’t we… and besides, she leaves me, she dies. Her father made that call. She…”
The consigliere hadn’t finished before the phone rang again.
His face changed color this time.
He held out a grainy long-lens photo.
“Boss. This just came in from our man in Chicago.”
The picture was blurry.
Sharp enough.
A phalanx of Falcone soldiers, all in dark suits, escorting a woman in a heavy coat onto the family’s private yacht. The wind caught the collar of the coat and lifted it away from her face for one frame.
Me.
Luca went rigid on the dock.
The first thing he felt wasn’t rage.
It was terror.
“Lock it down.” He forced the words through his teeth. “Kill the divorce story. Send our people to Chicago. Protect her. Don Vittorio doesn’t find out she came home. He doesn’t find out she divorced me.”
The next second.
A new push notification.
[DON VITTORIO FALCONE OFFICIALLY NAMES MIA FALCONE SOLE HEIRESS TO THE FAMILY.]
Luca’s breath stopped.
Every bone in him seemed to go missing at once.
He sat down hard on the edge of the dock.
Atlantic wind cut through him. He didn’t feel a thing.
He just felt like it was a joke.
He hadn’t gotten his head around it before another headline flashed.
[FUSELLI EMPIRE ON THE ROPES. FALCONE MOVES TO WORK WITH THE COMMISSION FOR A FULL CLEAN OUT. DON FUSELLI, STOP LOOKING FOR YOUR WIFE. START LOOKING FOR AN ESCAPE.]
Luca’s eyes darkened, inch by inch.
“Boss. The men who tracked Stone Moretti’s phone got a hit. The tip that told him to come tonight, the one that told him who’d be in the room… it came from her.”
Luca finally understood, standing there.
Tonight’s blast hadn’t been an attack.
It had been my exit.
His eyes went flat and dead.
“Mia. You think this is how you get back at me? You’ve got no idea what you’re doing…”
The man he’d left back at the estate to inventory the house came stumbling out. Voice pitched too high.
“Boss! We got a problem!”
“The safe. The safe is empty. Every ledger. Every tape. Every book. Gone!”
Luca’s face went the color of old bone.
The blast tonight hadn’t just been my exit.
It had been the perfect cover to walk out with every scrap of evidence he’d ever kept.
…
Ten seconds after I hit the water, a diver dropped from the pilings above me.
The freezing sea barely covered my head before a hand hooked hard around my waist and pulled me up.
The boat was right there.
They dragged me onboard. Wrapped me in a heavy blanket. My breath was still ragged when the man beside me said, low, “Ma’am. Our guy’s already inside the study.”
I closed my eyes. “Stick to the plan.”
The boat cut fast away from the blast zone. Every running light killed.
The sirens and searchlights fell behind us and got smaller.
I sat in the cabin. My phone buzzed once.
One line.
[Safe’s cleared. All of it’s with us.]
Only then did I let out a breath.
Luca never once thought to watch me.
Of every person around him, he trusted one. Me.
Because I’d burned everything for him.
Ran from my father. Cut ties with my family. Carried his child. Lost his child. Lost my body’s ability to ever carry one again.
Got dragged through every paper in Atlantic City, my reputation shredded.
And more than any of it, I couldn’t leave.
Which meant I couldn’t turn on him.
So he gave me the keys to his study.
The combination to his safe was my birthday.
Every off-book account, every gray dealing, every body and every deal he’d ever made, I knew all of it.
He made me the strongest lock he owned.
He forgot.
A lock that turns is just an open door.