Chapter 7 - The Children Beneath the Chapel
I had faced gunmen without fear.
I had watched men sentenced to death after betraying my family.
But nothing had prepared me for the possibility that the two little girls sleeping beneath my roof were not the babies Isabella had delivered.
I looked at Lily.
Then Sofia.
They were my daughters.
Blood could not undo three years of midnight fevers, first words, scraped knees, bedtime stories, and tiny hands reaching for mine.
Still, the question tore through me.
Where were the children born to Isabella?
Marco examined the report.
“The samples could have been switched.”
“Or the document could be fabricated,” I said.
Elena shook her head.
“My sister’s signature is on the verification page.”
“You recognize it?”
“Yes.”
I closed the laptop.
“We confirm everything later. Right now, we go to the church.”
Elena looked toward Sofia.
“You cannot bring the girls.”
“I’m not.”
“Then who stays with them?”
I trusted almost no one.
That was the Crown’s greatest weapon. It did not need to kill everyone around me. It needed only to make me suspect them.
Marco spoke.
“My brother owns a farmhouse thirty miles north. No one connects it to us.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“With my life.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Marco accepted the insult.
“With theirs.”
We moved quickly.
Marco’s brother, Father Gabriel Bellini, was a Catholic priest who had left his parish after refusing to conceal financial crimes committed by a bishop. I had met him only twice.
He arrived in an old pickup truck wearing jeans beneath his clerical coat.
When he saw the girls, he did not ask questions.
He knelt in front of them.
“My house has chickens.”
Lily brightened.
“Real chickens?”
“Very rude ones.”
Sofia looked uncertain.
“Do they run fast?”
“Not as fast as you will.”
That won her.
Before they left, Sofia wrapped her arms around Elena’s neck.
“You’re coming back?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
Elena closed her eyes.
“I promise.”
Then Sofia reached for me.
I lifted her.
“Daddy, Grandma said Elena was bad.”
“Grandma was wrong.”
“Is Grandma bad?”
The question hurt more than it should have.
“I don’t know yet.”
Sofia touched my cheek.
“People can be wrong without being bad.”
I looked at my three-year-old daughter and wondered when she had become wiser than all of us.
“Yes,” I said. “They can.”
After Gabriel drove away, Elena, Marco, and I prepared for Santa Lucia.
I wanted an army.
The kidnappers demanded one car.
So I gave them one visible car and placed teams throughout the surrounding blocks under orders not to approach unless I signaled.
We reached the church at eleven forty-eight.
Rain had begun to fall.
Santa Lucia stood between two modern towers like a piece of another century. Stone saints watched from the roof. The bronze bells hung black against the clouds.
The front doors were open.
Inside, candles burned along the aisle.
My mother sat before the altar, tied to a chair.
Blood stained her silver hair.
I began walking toward her.
Elena caught my arm.
“Something is wrong.”
I saw it then.
My mother’s feet were not touching the floor.
A wire ran beneath the chair.
“Bomb.”
Marco moved toward the side aisle.
A red light appeared near the altar.
Motion sensor.
My mother lifted her head.
“Adrian,” she whispered. “Don’t come closer.”
Her face was swollen.
“Who did this?”
She looked toward the confessional booths.
A woman stepped from the shadows.
She wore black gloves and a veil.
Mother.
The founder of the Crown.
“You brought Elena,” she said.
The voice was no longer distorted.
I knew it.
Not from business.
Not from family dinners.
From childhood.
She had sung to me after nightmares. She had bandaged my knees. She had taught me to read before I entered school.
“Teresa,” I said.
My childhood governess lifted the veil.
She appeared older, but her eyes were unchanged.
Teresa Vale had supposedly died in a house fire when I was fifteen.
I had attended her funeral.
“You remember me,” she said.
“I remember burying you.”
“You buried a woman whose face had been destroyed.”
My mother began crying silently.
Teresa smiled at her.
“Your mother has always been useful when frightened.”
“What do you want?”
“The key.”
“What is in Locker 317?”
“A mistake your wife should never have found.”
“Where are my daughters?”
Teresa’s expression sharpened.
“You have your daughters.”
“The report says the babies were switched.”
“Reports say whatever the writer is paid to say.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
“The key first.”
I held it up.
“Release my mother.”
“I cannot.”
“Then you leave without it.”
Teresa sighed.
“You sound like your father.”
“That is not a compliment from you.”
“No. Your father was weak.”
My mother jerked against the ropes.
“Don’t listen to her.”
Teresa pressed a remote.
The red light beneath the chair blinked faster.
“One button completes the circuit.”
I kept my voice steady.
“If she dies, so do you.”
“Perhaps. But Elena dies first.”
A laser point appeared on Elena’s chest.
Marco searched the balconies.
Sniper.
I threw the key toward the center aisle.
Teresa watched it strike the floor.
“Kick it to me.”
“Release the wire.”
She pressed another control.
The ropes around my mother loosened.
My mother slid from the chair and crawled toward the aisle.
“Now the key.”
I kicked it.
Teresa bent to retrieve it.
Marco fired toward the balcony.
A body fell through the railing.
I grabbed my mother.
Elena rushed toward us.
Teresa pressed the remote.
Nothing happened.
Marco had severed the wire with his first shot through the stone floor.
Teresa ran behind the altar.
I followed.
She disappeared through a door leading to the crypt stairs.
We descended into darkness.
Beneath the chapel, a steel corridor had been built behind the old burial chambers.
Cells lined both sides.
Men and women stared through glass doors.
Hostages.
Witnesses.
Children.
Clara’s son pounded against one cell.
“Help us!”
Elena searched the faces.
Then froze.
In the final cell stood a young woman with Elena’s eyes.
Lucia Rossi.
Alive.
Elena ran toward her sister.
Before she reached the door, Teresa’s voice came through the speakers.
“Choose carefully, Adrian.”
A timer appeared above every cell.
Five minutes.
“If you open the wrong door, all the others lock permanently.”
A diagram lit up on the wall.
Fourteen cells.
One release sequence.
Then the final screen activated.
Two little girls appeared on a live video feed.
They looked exactly like Lily and Sofia.
Teresa laughed through the speakers.
“You wanted to know where Isabella’s real twins were.”
May you like
The timer changed to four minutes and fifty-nine seconds.
“There they are.”
