Chapter 5 - The Second Ring

Alessandro had buried his father with the black-stone ring on his hand.

He remembered because he had placed it there himself.

Detective Grant asked the obvious question. “Could the ring have been removed before burial?”

“No,” Alessandro said. “The casket was closed after the family viewing.”

Enzo’s mouth twisted. “Then either your memory is wrong, or somebody opened a grave.”

Isabella whispered, “That’s insane.”

Emma watched the adults as if insanity had become normal overnight.

Alessandro sent her upstairs with Maria and two security officers. This time he ordered Marco to remain outside their door.

In the study, Enzo poured himself whiskey at ten in the morning.

“You want the truth?” he said. “Your father gave that ring to someone before he died.”

Alessandro stared. “You just said there were two.”

“There were. Yours was made later. The original set belonged to me and your father. A month before his heart attack, he told me he’d given his away.”

“To whom?”

“He refused to say.”

Alessandro stepped closer. “You waited eleven years to tell me this?”

“I thought it was about a woman.”

That silenced him.

His father had been many things—demanding, proud, impossible to please. Unfaithful had never been one of the accusations.

Enzo set down the glass. “There were rumors. Your mother knew something. She made me promise not to dig.”

“My mother died without telling me.”

“Yes.”

The old anger Alessandro carried toward dead people rose like heat.

Detective Grant entered holding a plastic evidence sleeve. “We found this in Dr. Hale’s car.”

Inside was a folded photograph.

It showed Alessandro’s father twenty years younger, standing beside a woman Alessandro did not recognize. Between them was a teenage boy.

On the father’s right hand was the black-stone ring.

On the boy’s wrist was a hospital band.

Alessandro turned the photo over.

There was one line written in his father’s handwriting:

FOR VICTOR. WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT.

Isabella backed into a chair.

“Victor Hale?”

Alessandro looked again at the boy in the picture.

Same narrow eyes. Same cleft in the chin.

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