Chapter 8 - Four Daughters, One Impossible Choice
For one second, I forgot the timer.
Forgot Teresa.
Forgot the armed men who might still be inside the church.
Two girls sat in a white room on the screen.
They appeared older than Lily and Sofia by several months, though the difference could have come from poor lighting and fear. One had Isabella’s dark curls. The other possessed my eyes.
My blood knew them before science could confirm anything.
Or perhaps grief was inventing certainty.
“Adrian,” Marco said. “The timer.”
Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
Fourteen cells.
Each door displayed a symbol instead of a number.
Crown.
Rose.
Wolf.
Cross.
Flame.
Key.
Elena stood before Lucia’s cell.
Her sister pressed both hands against the glass.
Lucia looked thin and exhausted, but alive.
“Don’t open mine,” she shouted through the speaker. “Find the children.”
Elena began crying.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Listen to me. The sequence is in Isabella’s ring.”
I pulled the ring from my pocket.
The engraving read 317-42-9.
“Three, one, seven, four, two, nine,” Marco said.
“There are no numbers,” I replied.
Lucia pointed toward the wall.
“Count the crown points.”
Each symbol contained a different number of small points.
The Crown had three.
The Rose one.
The Wolf seven.
The Cross four.
The Flame two.
The Key nine.
I pressed the symbols in order.
Nothing happened.
The timer continued.
Three minutes and forty seconds.
“Wrong sequence,” Marco said.
“Wait,” Lucia shouted. “The ring was Isabella’s. Read it from the inside out.”
I reversed the sequence.
Nine.
Two.
Four.
Seven.
One.
Three.
The wall panel turned green.
All cell doors opened.
The prisoners stumbled out.
Lucia collapsed into Elena’s arms.
Clara’s son ran toward us.
The screen with the two girls remained active.
“Where are they?” I demanded.
Lucia struggled to stand.
“That room isn’t here.”
“Then where?”
“I don’t know.”
The timer stopped at two minutes and eleven seconds.
Teresa appeared on the screen between the girls.
“Very good,” she said. “Isabella always believed you would solve it.”
I raised my gun toward the camera.
“Where are the children?”
“You ask the wrong question.”
“What is the right one?”
“Which children belong to you?”
The screen split into four images.
Lily sleeping at Father Gabriel’s farmhouse.
Sofia beside her.
The two unknown girls in the white room.
Teresa had surveillance on Gabriel’s property.
My stomach turned cold.
“Do not touch them.”
“I have touched every part of your life, Adrian. Your marriage. Your daughters. Your mother. Your empire.”
“What do you want?”
“The ledger.”
“You have the key.”
“The locker is empty.”
I looked at Elena.
Isabella had said the ledger was in Locker 317.
Either someone had removed it or the key opened something else.
Teresa’s face hardened.
“Your wife deceived both of us.”
The video ended.
Every light beneath the chapel went out.
Gunfire erupted from the corridor.
Marco pushed the freed prisoners behind the stone walls.
I fired toward the muzzle flashes.
Elena dragged Lucia into an open cell.
The attackers advanced in pairs, using tactical shields.
We could not hold the corridor for long.
A door opened behind the final cell.
My mother stood there.
I had forgotten she followed us down.
“This way!”
We moved the prisoners through a narrow passage.
Marco remained behind, firing controlled bursts.
“Go!” he shouted.
I turned back.
A bullet struck his shoulder and spun him against the wall.
I rushed to him, pulling him through the door as my mother slammed it shut.
The passage led into the old burial crypt.
Stone coffins lined the walls.
Marco pressed a hand against his wound.
“Through-and-through,” he said.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve done that before.”
Lucia tore fabric from her shirt and bound his shoulder.
We climbed into the church through a concealed panel behind a statue.
My teams had secured the main floor.
Teresa was gone.
So was the key.
Outside, ambulances and unmarked vehicles filled the street.
I called Father Gabriel.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
I contacted the guard team watching the farmhouse.
Static.
Then one of them finally responded.
“Boss, we were attacked.”
My throat closed.
“The girls?”
“They’re safe. Father Gabriel moved them before the assault.”
“Where?”
“He didn’t tell us.”
Smart.
Terrifying.
I turned toward my mother.
She stood beneath the church awning with blood drying on her face.
“You knew Teresa was alive.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Since the night she returned.”
“When was that?”
“The day your father died.”
My father had suffered a heart attack eight years earlier.
Or that was what the doctor said.
“What did she want?”
“To continue the arrangement.”
“What arrangement?”
My mother looked toward the freed prisoners being led into ambulances.
“Your father worked with the Crown.”
Marco stared at her.
My mother continued.
“He gave them information about judges and politicians. In return, they protected our family from prosecution.”
“And Sofia?”
“I did not know they would hurt her.”
“But you helped frame Elena.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Teresa told me Sofia’s improvement would expose everything. She said Lily and Sofia would both be killed if I did not remove Elena.”
“You believed her?”
“I had seen what she could do.”
“You put my wife’s necklace in Elena’s coat.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I thought Elena would be arrested and sent away. I did not know Teresa planned the attack.”
I wanted to believe her.
But she had lied for years.
“What happened to Isabella’s babies?”
My mother looked at the ground.
“When the twins were born, Teresa ordered a switch.”
“Why?”
“One child was needed for leverage. The other…”
She stopped.
“The other what?”
“The other child carried something Teresa wanted.”
“What?”
“A blood marker.”
My mother looked at me.
“Your father was not your biological father, Adrian.”
The statement should have shocked me.
It did not.
Nothing felt impossible anymore.
“Who was?”
“I never knew his real name.”
She reached into her damaged coat and removed a folded envelope.
“Your father gave me this before he died. He said to open it only if Teresa returned.”
Inside was a photograph of Teresa as a young woman standing beside a man whose face had been crossed out.
She held a newborn baby.
On the back, my father had written:
May you like
Teresa is not the Crown’s Mother.
She is Adrian’s.
