Mafia Legacy (Book #1 - Mafia Series) - COMPLETE

Gabriella

The first time her grandfather forgot her name, Gabriella cried in the parking lot of the residence with her forehead pressed to the steering wheel and mascara drying beneath her eyes.

Nearly a year later, she’d learned to do what everyone else did.

Smile. Nod. Pretend it didn’t hollow something out of her chest every single time.

“Can you not look like you’re heading to your own execution?” Mia asked as she cut the engine. “He notices moods.”

Gabriella looked at her mother over the rim of her sunglasses. “You say that like I’m the dramatic one in this car.”

Santi snorted from the back seat.

Mia shot them both a look. At forty-three, she was still gorgeous in that unfair, effortless way Gabriella hoped she’d inherited somewhere beneath the messy ponytail and ripped jeans. Dark hair twisted neatly at her neck, gold hoops, lipstick perfect even for a Tuesday afternoon at a long-term care home.

“Just be patient today,” Mia said more softly. “The nurse said he’s been confused since this morning.”

“More than usual?” Gabriella asked, then immediately regretted it.

Mia’s mouth tightened.

“Sorry.”

Santi leaned between the seats, all dark curls and restless eleven-year-old energy. “If Nonno doesn’t know us again, can I wait outside?”

“No,” Mia and Gabriella said together.

He groaned and fell back against the seat.

Gabriella twisted to look at him. “Nobody likes this, Sant.”

“I hate it.”

“So do I.”

That shut him up.

It also made something pinch beneath her ribs. Santi looked too much like their father when he sulked—same dark eyes, same stubborn chin. Their dad had died young enough that Santi remembered him mostly in pieces, but somehow long enough to leave his whole face behind. Gabriella remembered more, which wasn’t always the gift people assumed it was. She remembered hospital hallways. Her mother’s red eyes. Angelo arriving at their house the next morning and quietly making breakfast because nobody else had remembered children still needed to eat.

After that, her grandfather had simply become part of the structure of their lives. Not a replacement for their father—nobody could be that—but the person who showed up when something broke, when Mia needed help, when Gabriella needed someone to tell her she wasn’t being ridiculous even when she absolutely was.

Losing him now felt like losing that whole period of her life a second time.

Mia opened her door. “Come on.”

The residence looked pleasant from the outside, flower boxes beneath the windows and maples just beginning to turn gold, but Gabriella hated the forced cheer inside. Floral wallpaper. Overheated hallways. The sharp smell of disinfectant pretending not to be there.

The receptionist greeted Mia by name and immediately reached for the visitor stickers without asking who they were there to see.

That was how often they came.

Gabriella used to hate that. Now she hated the idea of one day walking in and having no reason for anyone behind the desk to know them.

“Sunroom today,” the receptionist said. “He’s had a busy morning.”

A busy morning. As if losing your mind were a hobby.

Gabriella followed her mother down the familiar hallway with the usual knot tightening in her stomach.

Angelo Conti had once seemed indestructible to her. Stern with everyone else, secretly soft with Gabriella. He’d taught her cards, smuggled her candy when Mia said no, and after her father died, stepped into the empty space without ever making a production of it.

Which made watching him disappear by inches especially cruel.

They found him beside the sunroom window with a plaid blanket across his knees. At first glance, he looked almost like himself. Thick silver hair combed back. Sharp nose. Shoulders still broad beneath his sweater.

Then he lifted his head.

His eyes moved past Mia.

Past Santi.

Stopped on Gabriella.

Something sharpened in them.

“Isabella.”

Mia sucked in a breath.

Gabriella gave him the practiced smile. “Hi, Nonno.”

His hand shot out and caught her wrist.

Gabriella startled.

“You came back,” he whispered.

She went still.

This wasn’t the cloudy confusion she knew. His gaze was fixed, urgent, almost feverishly clear.

“Papa,” Mia said carefully. “That’s Gabriella.”

He didn’t seem to hear her.

“Did you put it back?”

Gabriella frowned. “Put what back?”

“The knife.” His voice dropped. “In the attic.”

The room seemed to narrow around her.

Mia gave a quick laugh. “Okay. That’s enough excitement.”

But Angelo’s fingers tightened.

“Before that loose-lipped bastard finds it.”

Santi’s eyes widened. “Mom—”

“Hush.”

Gabriella barely heard them. “What knife?”

“The one with the blood.”

Every small hair along her arms lifted.

Angelo looked over her shoulder toward the hallway, and fear crossed his face so suddenly that Gabriella forgot to breathe.

“He can’t know. Do you understand me, Isabella? He can’t know.”

Her grandfather had said strange things before. Wrong dates. Wrong people. Whole conversations with someone who’d been dead for twenty years.

But this didn’t feel like that.

It had details.

It had fear.

Mia pried his fingers away. “Papa, stop. You’re upsetting her.”

Angelo blinked.

The clarity vanished.

He stared at Mia as if seeing her for the first time. “Why are you in my house?”

And just like that, he was gone again.

Mia closed her eyes for half a second before sitting beside him and launching into safe conversation—weather, dinner, Santi’s soccer. Gabriella stood where he’d left her, rubbing her wrist.

Knife. Attic. Blood.

Ten minutes later, a nurse arrived with medication.

“He’s had one of those days,” she said apologetically.

Gabriella glanced toward Angelo. “Does he ever say things that are… really specific?”

“Sometimes old memories sit closer to the surface.” The nurse lowered her voice. “He talks about his wife a lot.”

Isabella.

Gabriella looked back at him.

The nurse smiled gently. “You look very much like her when she was young. He keeps a photograph in his drawer.”

That wasn’t new. Gabriella had heard it her whole life. Same pale hair. Same eyes. Same face, apparently.

Still, when they left forty minutes later, the thought followed her out.

He hadn’t just confused her with Isabella.

He’d trusted Isabella with something.

On the drive home, Gabriella tried to tell herself it was exactly what the nurse said: old memories surfacing without context. Maybe the knife belonged to a story Angelo had read fifty years ago. Maybe the attic wasn’t even their attic. Maybe the blood wasn’t literal.

Unfortunately, her grandfather had spent most of her childhood teaching her that details mattered. He was the one who’d refused to accept I don’t know when she lost her house key at fourteen and made her retrace every step until they found it beneath a vending machine at school.

Now he had handed her four very specific details.

Isabella. Attic. Knife. Blood.

And her brain refused to leave them alone.

By the time they got home, Mia was rage-unpacking groceries.

Gabriella leaned against the kitchen island. “You really think all of that was nonsense?”

“Yes.”

“That fast?”

“Gabriella.”

“He sounded clear.”

“He called you Isabella.”

“I know, but the knife—”

“There is no knife.”

The answer came too quickly.

Gabriella frowned.

Mia shoved eggs into the refrigerator. “He’s sick. Sometimes he says things that sound real because to him, they are real.”

“You grew up in that house. You never saw anything weird?”

“I grew up in this house, which is exactly why I’m telling you there wasn’t a bloody murder weapon hidden over our heads.”

“I didn’t say murder weapon.”

Mia stared at her.

“Fine. It sounded implied.”

“Please don’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“Dig. Obsess. Turn one confused sentence into a conspiracy.” Mia sighed and rubbed her temple. “You get that from him.”

“Love that for me.”

“I’m serious, Gabby.”

So was Gabriella.

That was the problem.

Her grandfather’s face kept returning to her—the sharpness in his eyes, the way he’d checked the hallway, the terror behind he can’t know.

She helped with dinner because that was what normal people did after being told by their grandfather to hide a bloody knife. Santi complained about a teacher who apparently “had it out for him,” Mia corrected his exaggerations without looking up from the salad, and Gabriella nodded in all the appropriate places while mentally replaying every word Angelo had said.

Afterward, she opened her laptop and attempted to work on an assignment due Friday. Forty minutes later, she’d read the same paragraph enough times to practically memorize its punctuation without understanding a single sentence.

She Googled dementia false memories.

Then Alzheimer’s specific memories real or false.

Then, because she had apparently surrendered all dignity, old blood turns brown how long.

Gabriella slammed the laptop shut.

At ten-thirty, she gave up pretending.

The house was dark and quiet when she stepped into the hallway. Santi’s door sat half open, soft snores coming from inside.

Gabriella stopped beneath the pull-down attic ladder.

“This is stupid,” she whispered.

She was proving Mia right. That was all.

She’d climb up, find Christmas decorations and old clothes, confirm there was no knife, then go to bed.

She pulled the cord.

The ladder unfolded with a groan.

Dust and stale heat greeted her when she climbed through the hatch, her phone flashlight carving a narrow path through boxes, suitcases, broken lamps and bins of childhood junk. There were old baby clothes Mia had apparently never managed to throw away, a Christmas wreath flattened beneath a suitcase, and the rocking horse Santi had been terrified of as a toddler for reasons nobody had ever figured out.

“Definitely murder-attic vibes.”

Her own voice sounded too loud.

She stepped over a plastic bin and nearly put her hand through a spiderweb thick enough to qualify as structural support.

“Absolutely not.”

She ducked around it and moved deeper, sweeping the light across handwritten labels. SCHOOL. CHRISTMAS. DAD’S TOOLS. TAXES.

Nothing that said BLOODY FAMILY SECRETS, which seemed inconsiderate.

At the far end, behind a rolled carpet and a box marked TAXES 1998, sat an old cedar trunk.

Gabriella stopped.

The trunk looked older than everything around it. Less forgotten than hidden.

Her pulse ticked faster.

“Okay. If a demon pops out, I’m blaming Nonno.”

She dragged the carpet aside and fought with the rusted latch until it snapped open.

Inside were folded linens, an old lace runner, a faded shawl that might once have belonged to her grandmother.

Gabriella lifted them.

A narrow wooden box sat underneath.

Her mouth went dry.

No.

She reached for it anyway.

The box was heavier than it looked. Its lid creaked open.

A knife rested inside.

Gabriella stared.

Long. Narrow. Old. A dark carved handle and dulled metal fittings. It looked like something that belonged behind glass.

Then she saw the blade.

Dark brown residue crusted the steel near the hilt, almost black where it had dried into the grooves.

Her stomach turned.

“No way.”

She lowered her phone closer.

Against every instinct she possessed, Gabriella scraped one fingernail lightly over the blade.

The residue flaked.

A faint metallic smell reached her.

Her hand jerked back.

Blood.

Old blood.

Real blood.

For a moment, all she could hear was her own breathing.

Her grandfather had known exactly where it was.

The attic.

The knife.

The blood.

Gabriella looked around at the dark rafters and stacked boxes, suddenly aware of every creak in the old house.

She’d gone upstairs to prove there was no mystery.

Instead, she’d found one waiting for her.