Chapter 5 - A Dead Woman's Gift
The word hit Salvatore like a physical blow, forcing the massive man to take an involuntary half-step backward.
Lorenzo let out a sharp, strangled sob from behind the bodyguards, pressing his hands against his mouth in disbelief.
"Your mother?" Salvatore repeated, his vocal cords straining against the impossible weight of her simple declaration.
"Yes, my mother!" Clara insisted, her hazel eyes filling with defiant tears as she faced down the terrifying patriarch.
"She gave it to me on my eighteenth birthday before she passed away in hospice care," Clara explained through quivering lips.
"She told me it was the only thing of true value she had left from her youth," Clara added, her voice cracking with emotion.
Salvatore stared at Clara’s facial features, suddenly seeing details he had been too furious to notice moments before.
Her high cheekbones, the slight arch of her dark chestnut eyebrows, and the distinctive golden flecks within her hazel irises.
They were identical to the eyes of Elena Valetti, the beloved woman he had wept over in a darkened chapel fifteen years ago.
The first bodyguard, Marco, took a cautious step closer to Salvatore, his hand hovering near his concealed firearm.
"Boss, what is this? Should we clear the restaurant?" Marco murmured, sensing the dangerous vulnerability in his leader.
"Quiet, Marco," Salvatore commanded without turning around, never breaking his gaze from Clara’s bewildered face.
Salvatore slowly reached into his interior suit pocket, his fingers shaking so hard he struggled to retrieve his reading glasses.
He held the silver pendant between two careful fingertips, refusing to tear the chain from her neck as he turned it over.
The smooth silver back of the oval medallion caught the overhead light, exposing the faint cursive engraving beneath.
Engraved in microscopic Italian script were the words: *Per sempre tua, Elena*—Forever yours, Elena.
Beneath the script was the tiny Roman numeral VIII, representing the eighth of August, their secret wedding anniversary.
Only three people in the entire world had ever known about that private engraving on the back of the medallion.
May you like
The Florentine silversmith who died twelve years ago, Salvatore Valetti himself, and his late wife, Elena.
Salvatore’s hand dropped to his side like lead, his fingers trembling uncontrollably as the room spun around him.
