The Mafia Boss Came Home Six Hours Early and Heard His Silent Daughters Singing—Then One Whispered the Name of the Man Who Murdered Their Mother

Six hours before anyone expected me home, I walked into my Long Island mansion with a loaded gun beneath my coat, another man’s blood drying on my cuff, and the kind of reputation that made armed men study the floor when I entered a room.

Then I heard my daughters singing.

For fourteen months, Olivia, Sophie, and Nora had not spoken a single word.

Not one.

Their mother had been murdered outside a preschool in Garden City on a bright Wednesday morning while autumn leaves crossed the parking lot and parents hurried children toward waiting cars.

Isabelle had been thirty-five.

Olivia had been six.

Sophie had been five.

Nora had barely turned three.

After that morning, my daughters simply stopped speaking.

They did not scream when nightmares woke them.

They did not ask where their mother had gone.

They did not tell me when they were hungry, frightened, angry, or cold.

Worst of all, they stopped saying Daddy.

I hired specialists from Manhattan, Boston, California.

I bought puppies, ponies, music boxes, art supplies, dolls, therapy animals, private vacations and every expensive solution desperate money could invent.

Nothing worked.

The house only became quieter.

That afternoon, when I crossed the marble foyer and heard laughter from beyond the central hall, I thought exhaustion had finally broken something inside my skull.

Then came the song.

“You are my sunshine…”

Soft.

Uneven.

Fragile.

“My only sunshine…”

I stopped beneath Isabelle’s portrait.

She was laughing in the photograph because she had hated posing and the photographer had caught her turning toward me between shots.

For one terrible second, the dead and the living seemed separated by nothing but a hallway.

Then Nora’s voice rang through the mansion.

“You make me happy when skies are gray!”

I ran.

Not like Dominic Romano.

Not like the man who controlled warehouses, construction contracts, card rooms, freight routes and men who knew better than to disappoint me.

I ran like a father.

I reached the kitchen doorway and stopped so violently my shoulder struck the frame.

Olivia sat on the butcher-block table swinging her legs.

Sophie stood on a chair in an apron twice her size.

Nora sat on Grace Bennett’s shoulders, laughing so hard her curls bounced.

Grace.

The twenty-nine-year-old housekeeper Mrs. Donnelly had hired two months earlier.

Brown hair usually tied back. Gray eyes. Quiet manner. The irritating habit of noticing everything.

I had spoken to her perhaps seven times.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Where are the girls?

Tell Mrs. Donnelly I’ll be late.

To me, she had been staff.

To my daughters, apparently, she had become something else.

Nora’s fingers were tangled in her hair.

Sophie was laughing.

Olivia was singing.

My children looked alive.

And something ugly twisted inside me.

Jealousy.

This woman had done what money, experts and their own father had failed to accomplish.

She had given them back their voices.

Just not to me.

My briefcase slipped from my hand.

It struck marble with a crack.

The song died.

Three faces turned toward me.

Nora immediately slid from Grace’s shoulders and hid behind her skirt.

That hurt worse than the bullet I had taken outside Newark fifteen years earlier.

“Mr. Romano,” Grace said. “You’re home early.”

“What the hell is this?”

Her expression tightened.

Not fear.

Disapproval.

Almost everyone in my life feared me enough to hide what they thought.

Grace apparently had missed that lesson.

Sophie grabbed her hand and whispered.

Grace’s face lost its color.

“What did she say?”

Grace looked at Sophie, then at me.

“She said the man who killed their mother is still inside this house.”

The kitchen became colder.

I could hear the pantry clock.

Tick.

My hand had automatically moved beneath my coat.

I pulled it away.

Then I removed the coat completely and laid it across a chair, turning the holster toward the wall.

Olivia noticed.

So did Grace.

“What did she mean?”

Grace crouched beside Sophie.

“Sophie?”

She did not pressure her.

Did not repeat the question.

Did not promise candy, safety or rewards.

She waited.

Every specialist I had hired had asked questions.

Grace simply gave Sophie silence she could control.

Finally Sophie whispered, “The picture.”

She pointed into the hallway.

All three girls walked toward the library.

Grace and I followed.

Isabelle had loved that room before we even bought the mansion.

The house had been built in 1926 for a shipping family with more money than restraint. Carved walnut shelves climbed toward a ceiling tall enough to hold weather.

When Isabelle first saw the library, she ignored the fireplace and gardens.

She pointed toward two empty alcoves.

“Window seats.”

“We don’t own the house yet,” I had said.

“We will.”

“We don’t have children.”

“We will.”

Now Olivia walked directly toward the western window seat.

Above it hung a photograph taken at Nora’s second birthday.

Isabelle stood beside me.

My daughters were crowded around a cake.

And behind us stood my younger brother.