Chapter 1 - The Last Request
At 11:47 p.m., seventeen minutes before Salvatore Bianke was scheduled to die, he asked to see the Virgin Mary.
Nobody in the corridor of Stateville Correctional Center moved.
Officer Wade had escorted condemned men through that hallway for nearly twenty years. He had heard requests for cigarettes, steak dinners, photographs, mothers, sons, lawyers, and once, strangely, a baseball score.
But never this.
“I want to see the Blessed Mother.”
Salvatore’s voice was quiet.
Not desperate.
Not trembling.
Quiet.
That was what disturbed Ruth Delgado most.
She stood three steps behind him, clutching a small black Bible against her chest.
Salvatore Bianke was thirty-six years old, tall and broad-shouldered even after months of confinement. His dark hair was combed back, silver beginning to appear near his temples. Tattoos disappeared beneath the collar and sleeves of his orange prison uniform. A faint scar crossed the left side of his jaw.
His wrists were cuffed.
A short chain connected them.
Yet somehow he seemed calmer than everyone surrounding him.
Warden Doyle glanced toward Ruth.
“The chapel stop was approved.”
Ruth knew.
She had signed the paperwork herself.
But paperwork was different from standing seventeen minutes from a man’s death and watching him stare through an open doorway toward a statue glowing in candlelight.
Salvatore stepped inside.
Ruth followed.
The chapel was small. Dark wooden pews faced a simple altar. Blue light from the stained-glass windows mixed with the gold of dozens of candles.
Above the altar stood the Virgin Mary.
Salvatore stopped.
For the first time in three weeks, Ruth saw something break through his composure.
His eyes filled.
He lowered his head.
Then he whispered, “Mama.”
Ruth’s chest tightened.
She hated that reaction.
She hated the tiny part of herself that could still recognize another person’s grief.
Because this was Salvatore Bianke.
The man the city blamed for destroying her family.
Three years earlier, Ruth had been walking to a grocery store with her husband, Miguel, and their four-year-old daughter, Sophia.
Miguel had been singing badly.
Sophia had been laughing.
Ruth remembered holding Sophia’s hand.
She remembered the yellow grocery-store windows.
She remembered headlights.
Then nothing.
She woke days later in a hospital.
Miguel was dead.
Sophia was dead.
Police told her they had been caught in a gangland shooting.
The intended target had been connected to organized crime.
The organization responsible, prosecutors said, belonged to Salvatore Bianke.
His name became the name Ruth gave her nightmares.
During his trial, she attended every day.
When the judge sentenced him to death, Salvatore turned toward her.
Their eyes met.
For three years, Ruth had believed the expression on his face was indifference.
Then, three weeks before his execution, Ruth received an assignment that seemed almost cruel.
Salvatore Bianke had requested her personally as his final chaplain.
Their first meeting had been behind thick glass.
“I’m Ruth Delgado,” she told him. “I will perform the duties required of me. If you want prayers, I’ll read them. If you want confession, I’ll arrange a priest.”
Salvatore nodded.
“I understand.”
“I’m not here to forgive you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want an apology.”
Another nod.
“I know.”
That calmness infuriated her.
Then she noticed the battered leather Bible beneath his cuffed hands.
“My mother’s,” Salvatore explained. “She wrote inside it.”
Ruth had almost walked away.
But at the door she turned.
“Why me?”
Salvatore said nothing.
For three weeks, she asked again.
He never answered.
Until tonight.
Now, inside the chapel, Ruth watched him approach the statue.
Officer Wade and Warden Doyle remained near the doors.
Salvatore opened his mother’s Bible.
A faded photograph slipped from between the pages.
Ruth caught only a glimpse before Salvatore covered it with his hand.
“What is that?”
He looked at her.
“Something I should have given you three years ago.”
Ruth’s heartbeat changed.
“Given me?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Salvatore stared toward the statue again.
Then he asked the officers, “May I speak privately with Chaplain Delgado?”
Doyle hesitated.
“We’ll remain outside.”
The door closed.
Ruth immediately faced Salvatore.
“Tell me.”
He remained silent.
“Salvatore, you have less than twenty minutes.”
“I know.”
“Then stop protecting whatever secret you’ve been protecting.”
His eyes met hers.
“I wasn’t protecting the secret.”
“Then what?”
“I was protecting you.”
Ruth almost laughed.
“Protecting me?”
“Your husband and daughter weren’t supposed to die.”
“I know that.”
“No.” Salvatore shook his head. “You don’t.”
Her fingers tightened around her Bible.
“The shooting wasn’t ordered by me.”
Ruth’s face hardened.
“I listened to your lawyers say that.”
“My lawyers didn’t know what happened.”
“The prosecutors had witnesses.”
“They had one witness who mattered.”
“Marco Vescari.”
Something flickered in Salvatore’s eyes.
That name had been everywhere during the trial.
Marco Vescari had been Salvatore’s lieutenant. He testified that Salvatore ordered a hit against a rival named Anthony Russo.
According to prosecutors, Russo had been standing outside the grocery store.
The shooters missed him.
Miguel and Sophia died instead.
Salvatore was convicted partly because Marco claimed he had heard the order himself.
“Marco lied,” Salvatore said.
Ruth stared at him.
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
“You waited until minutes before your execution to tell me?”
“No. I waited three years.”
“That makes it worse.”
“It does.”
Ruth turned away.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
That answer stopped her.
Salvatore removed the photograph from his Bible.
He placed it on the altar.
Ruth looked down.
Her breath disappeared.
It was Sophia.
Her daughter was sitting on a park bench holding her teddy bear.
The photograph had been taken only weeks before she died.
Ruth staggered backward.
“Where did you get that?”
Salvatore said nothing.
“Where did you get my daughter’s picture?”
“A man brought it to me three days after the shooting.”
“Who?”
“Marco.”
The chapel seemed suddenly too small.
Ruth stared at the photograph.
“Why?”
“He wanted me to understand what he’d done.”
“What he had done?”
Salvatore’s jaw tightened.
“The shooting outside that grocery store wasn’t a failed hit on Anthony Russo.”
Ruth stopped breathing.
“Then what was it?”
“Marco arranged it.”
“Why?”
“To destroy me.”
Ruth shook her head.
“That makes no sense.”
“It will.”
Salvatore opened his mother’s Bible again.
Inside the back cover was a handwritten number.
Locker 317.
Union Station.
Ruth stared.
“What is that?”
“The reason I requested you.”
He looked toward the chapel doors.
“Three years ago, I knew Marco betrayed me. But I couldn’t prove it without putting someone else in danger.”
“Who?”
Salvatore looked at Ruth.
“You.”
A knock came from the door.
“Five minutes,” Warden Doyle announced.
Ruth’s eyes widened.
Five minutes.
“No.”
She crossed the chapel and opened the door.
“Warden, wait.”
Doyle looked apologetic.
“The order is final.”
“He has evidence.”
“Of what?”
“My family.”
Salvatore stepped forward.
“Ruth.”
She turned.
His expression was strangely peaceful.
“Locker 317. Union Station. The key is sewn inside the spine of my Bible.”
Ruth stared at him.
“You’re telling me this now?”
“I tried before.”
“What?”
“The letters.”
“What letters?”
His face changed.
“You never received them.”
Ruth felt cold.
“What letters?”
“I wrote you seven times after my conviction.”
“I never got anything.”
Salvatore closed his eyes.
And for the first time that night, fear appeared on his face.
Not fear for himself.
Fear for her.
“Then Marco still has someone inside the prison.”
Warden Doyle stepped into the chapel.
“We have to go.”
Ruth grabbed Salvatore’s arm.
“No. You can’t take him yet.”
“Chaplain—”
“He may be innocent of the murders that put him here!”
Salvatore gently pulled his arm away.
“I’m not innocent, Ruth.”
She stared at him.
“I did terrible things. I hurt people. I built a life I should never have built. But Miguel and Sophia…”
His voice cracked.
“I did not kill them.”
The officers approached.
Salvatore placed his mother’s Bible into Ruth’s hands.
“Find the locker.”
Ruth looked down.
When she looked back up, Salvatore was being led toward the door.
Then every light in the chapel went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Someone shouted.
Emergency lights flashed red.
A radio erupted with voices.
Warden Doyle grabbed his radio.
“What happened?”
Static.
Then a voice answered.
“Emergency stay! Repeat, emergency stay of execution from the governor’s office. Do not proceed.”
Nobody moved.
Ruth stared through the red darkness at Salvatore.
He stared back.
And from somewhere inside the prison, an alarm began to scream.
Because someone had submitted new evidence.
Evidence that had been hidden for three years.
May you like
And it carried the signature of a dead man.
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