Chapter 7 - The Palermo Connection
Dante stared at the faded photograph of a young Sarah resting inside the empty coffin.
His mind reeled as he tried to process the impossible reality staring back at him.
Isabella had not died in the fiery explosion that destroyed their car three years ago.
She had somehow faked her own death and vanished into the criminal underworld.
Dante pulled the photograph from the silk lining and handed it to Sarah.
Sarah gasped and dropped the picture onto the damp cemetery grass.
She recognized the background of the photo as the orphanage in Palermo where she lived until she was ten.
Dante demanded to know how his aristocratic wife was connected to a poor orphan from Sicily.
Sarah trembled and confessed a secret she had buried deep in her own memory.
She revealed that her real name was not Sarah Jenkins and she was not Toby's biological sister.
She was the illegitimate daughter of the Palermo mafia boss who had ruled the island ruthlessly.
Isabella was her older half sister who had run away to America to escape their father's cruelty.
Dante realized that the entire car bomb incident was a meticulously crafted illusion.
Isabella had used Toby to build the bomb to erase her past and escape her bloodline.
But now she had returned to Chicago to claim the twin daughters she had abandoned.
Dante knew that Isabella's family was the most dangerous syndicate in the world.
He grabbed Sarah's hand and told her they were going to hunt down the burned woman at the clinic.
They returned to the city just as the morning sun began to pierce the heavy gray clouds.
They broke into the abandoned free clinic and found the back office completely ransacked.
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Lying on the floor in a pool of fresh blood was the doctor who had treated the burned woman.
The doctor used his final breath to whisper that the shadow syndicate was gathering at the shipping docks.
