Chapter 8 - The Night the Mansion Burned
The gasoline ignited along the eastern wall.
Flames climbed the metal shelves and raced toward the roof.
Luca fired at the lock on the warehouse doors, but the rounds flattened against reinforced steel.
“Back office!” I shouted.
We ran through smoke while Sofia’s recording continued behind us.
“Your earliest memories were altered by trauma and repetition. You were told Bellini gunmen attacked your family’s country house. You were told your father carried you through the fire.”
The screen flickered through the flames.
“That was a lie.”
In the back office, Luca overturned a desk and found a maintenance hatch beneath the carpet.
The screws were new.
Someone wanted us to find it.
“That tunnel could be trapped,” he said.
“So can staying here.”
We dropped into darkness.
The hatch closed above us.
The tunnel smelled of saltwater and fuel. Emergency strips lit along the floor, leading east beneath the salvage yard.
Sofia’s voice came through hidden speakers.
“They burned the house because your birth mother threatened to reveal that your father had built his empire with Carlo Bellini.”
I stopped walking.
Luca looked at me.
“Our mother?”
“Your mother was not in that house,” Sofia said through the speakers. “Marco’s was.”
The distinction made Luca recoil.
“What does she mean?” he asked.
I had no answer.
The tunnel opened into an underground chamber filled with photographs.
My childhood covered the walls.
School pictures.
Hospital records.
Surveillance images taken from across streets and through windows.
At the center stood a steel table with a projector.
Sofia appeared again.
“Marco, the woman who raised you loved you, but she did not give birth to you. Your biological mother was Nora O’Shea.”
Maeve’s surname.
Elena’s family.
The room tilted.
“Nora discovered the first ledger,” Sofia continued. “She tried to escape with you. Carlo and Alessandro Moretti stopped her.”
My father.
The man whose ring I had given Elena.
The man whose grave I visited every year.
“They killed Nora and took you. Alessandro raised you as his son because your mother had hidden information inside memories only you possessed.”
Luca sank against the wall.
“That isn’t possible.”
I remembered fragments.
A woman singing.
Seven stars painted across a ceiling.
A silver key against her neck.
Smoke.
A black lion ring striking her face.
For years, I believed they were nightmares.
They were memories.
A phone began ringing on the steel table.
I answered.
Damon Crowe’s voice filled the chamber.
“Welcome home, Marco.”
“You killed Sofia.”
“I performed many services.”
“You’re going to regret surviving prison.”
He laughed.
“I was never in prison. We placed another body in the riot.”
“What do you want?”
“The original ledger.”
“I don’t have it.”
“But the girl can find it.”
“If you touch her—”
“I already have.”
A video appeared on the wall.
The safe house.
Men in tactical gear moved through its corridors.
My guards lay dead.
Enzo dragged Elena toward a hidden stairwell while Maeve fired a pistol behind them.
The camera angle shifted.
Damon’s men surrounded the estate.
The attack was happening live.
I looked at Luca.
He had gone pale.
“Your mansion security codes,” I said. “Who has them?”
“Only you, me, Enzo, and the systems chief.”
“The systems chief died last year.”
Luca shook his head.
“No. We were told he died.”
Another ghost.
Damon spoke through the telephone.
“Bring Elena to Saint Matthew’s before dawn, or everyone in that house burns.”
The line disconnected.
We found a motorbike at the end of the tunnel and reached the estate in nineteen minutes.
Half the western wing was burning.
Gunfire flashed among the trees.
I entered through the kitchen, shooting two intruders before they turned.
Luca moved behind me.
For all his lies, he fought like a Moretti.
We found Enzo near the library, bleeding from a wound in his thigh.
“Where are they?”
“Tunnel beneath the chapel,” he gasped. “Maeve took Elena.”
“Who gave them the codes?”
His eyes moved toward Luca.
Luca raised his hands.
“It wasn’t me.”
A ceiling beam collapsed behind us.
We carried Enzo outside as my remaining men pushed the attackers toward the lake.
Then the chapel exploded.
The blast threw me across the courtyard.
I hit the ground hard enough to lose breath.
Through smoke and fire, a small figure emerged.
Elena.
Bruno ran beside her.
She was alone.
I staggered upright.
“Where is your mother?”
Elena reached me, her face streaked with ash.
“They took her.”
“Who?”
She opened her hand.
The black lion ring lay in her palm, covered in blood.
“Uncle Luca.”
I turned.
May you like
My brother stood twenty feet away.
In his hand was a detonator.
