Chapter 4 - The Boy Who Knew the Secret Passage
Darkness swallowed Moretti House.
Salvatore did not shout.
Men who needed to shout when frightened usually did not survive long in his world.
He rolled Matteo off the bed and onto the floor as Carmine fired twice toward the broken window.
“Stay down.”
Matteo grabbed Salvatore’s shirt.
The boy was shaking now.
Not crying.
Shaking.
That was worse.
“Carmine.”
“Shooter moved.”
“Inside or outside?”
“No way to know.”
Footsteps thundered in the corridor.
Salvatore pulled his weapon.
“Password.”
“San Luca!” someone shouted.
His men.
The door opened.
Three guards entered.
“Generator’s dead.”
“Phones?”
“Jammed.”
Salvatore looked at Matteo.
Someone had known which room.
Someone had known exactly which bed.
This was not an attack from the street.
This was intelligence from inside the house.
“Take him to the bunker.”
Matteo jerked.
“No bunker.”
Salvatore looked at him.
“What?”
“They know about the bunker.”
“How?”
“My mother told me.”
Salvatore crouched.
“When?”
“She said if I got here and people started shooting, don’t go downstairs.”
Carmine stared.
“Elena knew the house security?”
“She grew up here,” Salvatore said.
The guards exchanged glances.
Few younger soldiers knew that Elena Bellini had once been almost family.
Matteo pulled at Salvatore’s sleeve.
“There’s another place.”
“What place?”
“The room behind the saints.”
Salvatore froze.
The chapel.
At the end of the west corridor stood a private family chapel his grandmother had built. Behind the carved statues of Saint Michael and Saint Francis was an old priest’s passage dating to Prohibition.
Salvatore had not entered it since he was twelve.
“How do you know about that?”
“Mama drew me a map.”
“Where?”
“In my head.”
The boy touched his temple.
Despite everything, Carmine almost smiled.
Salvatore lifted Matteo into his arms.
“Show me.”
They moved through dark corridors.
Emergency lamps had failed.
Too convenient.
Every detail of the attack had been designed by someone familiar with the estate.
As they crossed the gallery, gunfire erupted from the east wing.
“Contact!” someone shouted.
Salvatore’s men returned fire.
Matteo buried his face against Salvatore’s neck.
“Don’t look,” Salvatore told him.
“I’m not.”
“Good.”
“Are people dying?”
Salvatore’s stride faltered.
Children asked questions adults spent careers avoiding.
“Yes.”
“Because of me?”
Salvatore stopped walking.
Carmine turned.
The guards watched the corridor.
Salvatore lowered his voice.
“No.”
“But they came for me.”
“They came because grown men made evil choices long before you were born.”
Matteo looked at him.
“Then why do I feel bad?”
Salvatore had no answer.
He continued walking.
At the chapel, Matteo pointed behind Saint Michael.
“Left wing.”
Salvatore pressed the carved stone.
Nothing.
Matteo reached around the statue and found an iron lever hidden inside the folds of its robe.
The wall clicked open.
Carmine stared at him.
“Your mother taught you that?”
“She said you’d forget.”
Salvatore almost laughed.
Elena would have said exactly that.
They entered.
Carmine followed.
Two guards remained outside.
The hidden passage smelled of stone and dust.
Salvatore pulled the door closed.
For several seconds, nothing existed except their breathing.
Then Matteo whispered:
“There’s a box.”
Salvatore turned on his phone flashlight, though there was no signal.
“What box?”
“Under the floor.”
He pointed.
Third stone from the left.
Salvatore knelt and pried it up.
Beneath lay a rusted metal container.
Inside were papers.
Photographs.
A cassette tape.
And a small black ledger.
Carmine stared at it.
“The ledger.”
Salvatore’s stomach dropped.
But Elena’s note had said:
DO NOT TRUST THE LEDGER.
Salvatore opened it.
Names.
Payments.
Dates.
Police officers.
Judges.
Businessmen.
Moretti captains.
At the center of nearly every page were two initials.
V.M.
Vittorio Moretti.
Carmine exhaled.
“This could destroy half the city.”
“No.”
Salvatore turned another page.
“This could start a war.”
Matteo crouched beside him.
“That’s not the real one.”
Salvatore looked at him.
“What?”
“My mother said the black book is a lie.”
Carmine stared.
“Then why hide it?”
“So the bad people would think they found the secret.”
Salvatore remembered the note.
DO NOT TRUST THE LEDGER.
“Where’s the real one?”
Matteo shook his head.
“She didn’t tell me.”
A muffled explosion shook dust from the ceiling.
Someone had breached the west side.
Carmine moved toward the passage exit.
Salvatore grabbed the photographs.
One showed Elena with Salvatore’s father, Don Antonio Moretti.
Another showed Vittorio handing an envelope to a man Salvatore recognized as a federal prosecutor.
The third photograph stopped him.
Elena stood beside a hospital bed.
In the bed lay Salvatore’s mother.
The date in the corner was the night she died.
Officially, Sofia Moretti had suffered a heart attack.
In the picture, Elena held a medical vial toward the camera.
Written on its label was a medication Salvatore did not recognize.
On the back, Elena had written:
SHE DIDN’T DIE NATURALLY.
Salvatore stared at those words until they blurred.
Carmine whispered:
“Sal…”
Then the hidden chapel door opened.
A flashlight beam cut through the darkness.
Someone stepped inside.
Salvatore raised his gun.
“Don’t shoot.”
The voice was old.
Familiar.
Vittorio Moretti emerged from the shadows with both hands raised.
Blood covered one sleeve.
May you like
“My nephew,” he said, looking at the ledger.
“You finally found what Elena died trying to hide.”
