Chapter 4 - The Orchard and the Bees
By 4:30 in the morning, the sleet had tapered off into a dense, hanging mist that clung to the apple orchards behind the main estate.
Gabriel carried an iron spade and a heavy canvas duffel bag over his shoulder. I walked beside him, wrapped in one of his heavy wool hunting jackets that smelled of dried moss and gunpowder, holding a high-powered tactical halogen lantern. Sophie was asleep upstairs, under the watchful, armed protection of Rosa and Teresa.
The orchard was dark, the bare, skeletal branches of the trees dripping cold water onto our collars. At the far southern edge of the property, sheltered against an old limestone retaining wall, sat four traditional wooden beehives—Clara’s personal passion project.
"She kept bees because they didn't care that she couldn't hear," Gabriel said, his boots crunching over the frost-crusted grass. "She said they communicated through dance and vibration. She said they were the only creatures on this earth that understood how she felt."
We reached the third hive. The wooden box was weathered gray, covered in a patina of green lichen. The bees were dormant, huddled in their winter cluster within the dark frames.
Gabriel set down his bag, knelt in the damp soil, and cleared away the wet leaves around the limestone foundation slab. With the edge of the spade, he pried up the heavy slate stone.
Beneath it lay a watertight Pelican case, wrapped in heavy military grease-cloth.
Gabriel picked up the case, sliced through the industrial zip-ties with his pocketknife, and flipped open the four heavy latches.
Inside lay two items: a thick, leather-bound volume with blue Moroccan leather, and a sealed manila envelope marked with Clara’s personal wax seal.
Gabriel picked up the blue ledger first. He flipped through the pages under the glare of my lantern.
I couldn't read the Italian shorthand, but I could see the columns of names, dates, and amounts. Beside every fifth name was a red asterisk and a series of coordinates.
"These aren't maritime routes," Gabriel muttered, his eyes darting across the ink. "These are the storage depots for the federal witness protection program in Illinois and Wisconsin."
I gasped. "Clara had access to that?"
"Her father was the chief logistics contractor for the federal courthouses in the Midwest for twenty years," Gabriel said, his face hardening into absolute stone. "The Bellandi family didn't just move liquor and tobacco, Hannah. They moved people. Protected witnesses. Former capos who turned state’s evidence and were given new identities."
He opened the sealed manila envelope. Inside was a handwritten letter on Clara’s personal stationery, dated three weeks before her sudden death.
Gabriel read it in silence, his jaw muscles clenching until I thought the bone would snap.
"Read it," he whispered, thrusting the parchment into my hands. "Read it out loud."
My fingers trembled as I held the paper under the lantern light:
My dearest Gabriel,
If you are reading this, my heart has failed, or someone has finally found the courage to slip the digitalis into my tea. I know you believe my illness is natural. Do not blame yourself for not seeing it; they have been very careful.
The Marconi family has been working with the Moretti syndicate since the spring of 2020. They are selling the witness relocation lists to the Russian cartels in New York. Each name is worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
I refused to give them the keys to my father’s vault. That is why I am dying, Gabriel. They are using an odorless cardiac toxin developed in St. Petersburg. My heart will stop within a month, and the doctors will call it a natural complication of my childhood rheumatic fever.
Protect Sophie. Do not trust Isabella. She was chosen by her father specifically to step into my place once I was buried.
I have hidden the digital keys inside Sophie’s purple butterflies. Teach her to be brave. Teach her that silence is not weakness.
I will wait for you by the sea.
Clara.
The silence that followed was suffocating. The only sound was the distant hum of the highway and the dripping of mist from the apple branches.
Clara hadn't died of heart failure.
She had been assassinated in her own bed, over the course of months, by the very family whose daughter Gabriel had intended to marry.
Gabriel did not shout. He did not drop to his knees. He reached into his coat, pulled out his silver lighter, and held the flame beneath the corner of the handwritten letter until the paper caught, burning bright and orange in the cold mist.
"Hannah," he said, his voice entirely steady, chilled to absolute zero.
"Yes, Mr. DeLuca."
"Take the lantern. Walk back to the house. Tell Daniel to assemble the entire inner council in the wine cellar."
"Gabriel... what are you going to do?"
May you like
He looked at the burning ash falling from his fingers into the wet soil of Clara’s orchard.
"I am going to erase the Marconi family from the history of this city," he said. "And then I am going to buy the facility in Quebec."
