🐰 The Stuffed Rabbit and the Mafia Boss’s Secret Ledger

Chapter 11 - The Confession in the Rabbit

The first thing Sebastian did was knock over the table.

It was old oak, heavy enough to stop shrapnel and most men’s optimism. Hannah pulled Nori behind it, covering the child’s ears as glass rained across the floor. Matteo moved with a limp but not slowly; he drew a pistol from behind the stair rail and fired once toward the ceiling.

The sound froze everyone for half a heartbeat.

Then Jasper’s men came through the back.

The fight that followed was brief and ugly, but not heroic. Real violence rarely looked good. Men slipped on broken glass. Someone cried out for his mother. Snow blew through the windows and turned blood on the floor a thin, watery pink.

Sebastian hated that Nori saw any of it.

Hannah kept her face pressed into the child’s hair and whispered the alphabet over and over, as if letters could build a wall.

When it was over, three intruders were tied near the fireplace. One had a broken nose. Another kept insisting he had only been paid to scare them, which convinced nobody.

Jasper handed Sebastian a phone taken from the leader.

Recent call: Owen Pierce.

Sebastian looked at Matteo.

“You said he was the bookkeeper.”

“He is.”

“Then who sent him?”

Matteo looked toward the memory card in Sebastian’s palm. “Listen.”

They used Jasper’s secure tablet in the kitchen because the parlor had too much glass on the floor and too many ghosts standing around pretending to be memories.

The video opened in a dim hospital room.

Daniel Carter sat beside a bed, face bruised, shirt collar stained with blood. Matteo lay in the bed, half his face bandaged. A woman stood with her back to the camera.

Evelina Vale.

Daniel’s voice said, “I’m recording this because they’ll kill us both otherwise.”

Evelina turned. She was younger by three years, but her eyes already knew how the story ended.

Then another voice entered.

Uncle Carlo.

Sebastian had not heard his uncle’s voice since the man’s funeral. Apparently, death was becoming less reliable by the hour.

Carlo said, “Matteo stays dead. Sebastian keeps the empire. Evelina keeps her favorite son. And I keep what Anthony promised me.”

Evelina’s voice shook. “You burned that warehouse.”

Carlo laughed. “I corrected succession.”

The recording jolted as Daniel moved.

Matteo, from the bed, whispered, “Seb didn’t leave me?”

“No,” Evelina said. “Never.”

Carlo’s voice sharpened. “Tell him that again and I’ll bury the accountant’s wife with him.”

The video ended.

No one spoke.

Hannah’s face had gone pale with rage. “Daniel had this?”

Matteo nodded. “He helped me remember. He was trying to get it to Sebastian when they ran him off the road.”

Sebastian looked at the frozen image on the tablet: his mother, his uncle, his brother bandaged and breathing, Daniel Carter alive enough to be afraid.

Carlo had supposedly died two years ago in Sicily.

Sebastian no longer believed in supposedly.

Jasper’s phone buzzed again. He checked it and swore.

“Boss. Owen Pierce just entered the estate.”

Hannah stood. “Nori.”

“Mrs. Alvarez has her safe room,” Jasper said.

But Sebastian’s phone rang before he could speak.

Mrs. Alvarez’s voice came through, shaking.

“Mr. Vale, I am so sorry. He had your mother with him. I opened the door.”

A child cried in the background.

Then Owen Pierce’s smooth voice replaced hers.

“Come home, Sebastian. Bring the file, the brother, and the widow.”