Chapter 3 - The Photograph Inside His Coat
Doctor Russo ordered everyone from the room except Salvatore.
Salvatore refused to leave.
Matteo lay beneath thick blankets in one of the second-floor guest rooms, his wet clothes replaced with an old cotton shirt borrowed from a servant’s grandson. His breathing rasped lightly in his chest.
“Pneumonia?”
“Not yet,” Russo said. “Exposure. Dehydration. Fever. Exhaustion. His feet are torn open.”
Salvatore looked at the child’s bandaged feet.
Nine miles.
The boy had walked nine miles through a storm.
“Anything else?”
Russo hesitated.
Salvatore noticed.
“What?”
“Bruising.”
Salvatore’s eyes lifted.
“Where?”
“His ribs. Older. Several days, perhaps a week.”
“Someone beat him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Russo closed his medical bag.
“There’s also a healing cut behind his ear.”
Salvatore’s jaw worked once.
“Wake me the moment he opens his eyes.”
“You’re not sleeping?”
“No.”
Russo studied him.
The doctor had known Salvatore since childhood, which made him one of six living people who sometimes spoke to him without fear.
“You believe him.”
Salvatore looked at the bed.
“I believe Elena gave him that medallion.”
“That doesn’t make him your son.”
“No.”
Russo moved toward the door.
Salvatore spoke without turning.
“But his eyes do.”
Russo stopped.
Salvatore sat beside Matteo.
“I saw those eyes every day for twenty years.”
“Elena’s?”
Salvatore shook his head.
“Mine.”
Russo left without answering.
For nearly an hour, Salvatore sat alone with the boy.
Rain tapped the windows.
Matteo slept.
Every few minutes he mumbled something.
Once: “Mama.”
Once: “Don’t open it.”
Once: “Blue door.”
Salvatore remembered Elena laughing on a dock twenty years earlier, barefoot, furious because he had pushed her into the lake.
He remembered her at twenty-four, standing beneath a streetlamp outside Moretti House, telling him she could not spend her life inside a family that solved grief with bullets.
He remembered the final argument.
“You don’t love me enough to leave.”
“I love you enough to keep you alive.”
“You don’t understand, Salvatore. Those are not the same thing.”
Then she disappeared.
Eight years ago.
He had searched for eighteen months.
Every city.
Every bank record.
Every hospital.
Nothing.
Eventually, his father had told him she had chosen another man.
Salvatore had believed him because anger hurt less than abandonment.
Now an eight-year-old boy slept in his house wearing Elena’s medallion.
A knock sounded.
Carmine entered.
“Dario’s gone.”
Salvatore did not turn.
“How?”
“Service tunnel beneath the old greenhouse.”
“That tunnel was sealed.”
“Apparently not.”
Salvatore finally looked at him.
“Who knew about it?”
“Family. Older staff. Security captains.”
“Find him.”
“We’re trying.”
“Don’t try.”
Carmine nodded.
“There’s something else.”
He placed a plastic evidence bag on the table.
Inside was a folded photograph.
“We found this sewn inside the boy’s coat lining.”
Salvatore put on gloves before touching it.
The picture showed Elena.
Older than he remembered.
Thinner.
But undeniably Elena.
She stood outside a small brick apartment building, one hand resting on Matteo’s shoulder.
On the back was handwriting.
Salvatore recognized it immediately.
His fingers trembled.
SAL,
IF MATTEO REACHES YOU, I FAILED TO KEEP HIM HIDDEN.
DO NOT TRUST VITTORIO.
DO NOT TRUST THE LEDGER.
TRUST THE CHILD.
E.
Salvatore read it twice.
Then a third time.
Carmine said nothing.
Vittorio Moretti was Salvatore’s uncle.
His father’s younger brother.
The man currently sitting downstairs negotiating Salvatore’s marriage to Vittorio’s business partner’s daughter.
Salvatore rose.
“Where is my uncle?”
“East wing.”
“Keep him there.”
Carmine looked at the message again.
“What ledger?”
“I don’t know.”
Matteo made a sound.
Both men turned.
The boy’s eyes were open.
He stared at the photograph in Salvatore’s hand.
His face crumpled.
“That’s Mama.”
Salvatore sat beside him.
“Matteo.”
The boy reached for the picture.
Salvatore gave it to him.
For the first time since arriving, Matteo cried.
Not loudly.
That made it worse.
Tears slipped sideways into his hair as he held the picture against his chest.
Salvatore waited.
Eventually Matteo whispered:
“They came through the kitchen.”
“Who?”
“Two men.”
“Did you see them?”
“One.”
“Can you describe him?”
Matteo nodded.
“He had a snake on his hand.”
Carmine’s expression changed.
Salvatore caught it.
“You know that mark.”
Carmine said, “Vittorio’s dock crew used it years ago.”
Matteo pushed himself upright.
“My mother put me in the wall.”
Salvatore frowned.
“What wall?”
“There was a little door behind the washing machine. She said stay inside. Don’t come out even if I hear her scream.”
His voice became very small.
“I heard her scream.”
Salvatore’s hands clenched.
“She told me before they came that if something happened, I had to take the red envelope and find you.”
“What envelope?”
Matteo looked confused.
“I hid it.”
“Where?”
“At Saint Agnes.”
Carmine said, “The orphanage?”
Matteo nodded.
“Inside the angel.”
Salvatore stood.
“We leave now.”
Matteo grabbed his wrist.
“No.”
Salvatore looked down.
The child’s fingers barely went around two of his.
“No what?”
“Don’t go.”
“Why?”
Matteo swallowed.
“Because the bad man knows I came here.”
“How?”
“He followed me.”
Cold moved through the room.
Salvatore looked toward the window.
Across the estate, lightning flashed.
For half a heartbeat, a figure stood beyond the garden wall.
Then vanished.
A gunshot shattered the glass.
Salvatore threw himself over Matteo.
Carmine drew his weapon.
May you like
The bullet buried itself in the headboard exactly where Matteo’s skull had been seconds earlier.
And from somewhere below them, the mansion lights went out.
