Chapter 10 - THE BLOODLINE LIE
They hid Sofia in the safest place Dante could think of.
It was not the estate.
It was not a Moretti property.
It was a twenty-four-hour pediatric clinic owned by a doctor who had delivered Dante and owed Rosa a debt older than most of the men chasing them.
Two off-duty federal marshals who were not connected to Moretti security guarded the hall.
Dante did not explain how he knew them.
Brielle stopped asking questions that had obvious criminal answers.
Sofia refused to release Brielle's hand until Mara entered the room.
The child stared at her.
"Are you Brielle's sister?"
Mara nodded.
"I am."
"She thought you were dead."
Mara's eyes moved to Brielle.
"I know."
Sofia considered this with the grave seriousness only children could give impossible facts.
Then she held out her stuffed rabbit.
"You can hold him if you're scared."
Mara looked at the rabbit.
Her face nearly broke.
"Thank you."
She took it with both hands.
Dante turned away and pretended to check his phone.
Brielle understood why.
Some moments deserved privacy even in crowded rooms.
When Sofia finally fell asleep, Brielle led Mara into an empty examination room.
Dante and Luca stayed outside.
Mara placed the rabbit on the paper-covered table.
Brielle shut the door.
"Why did Vittorio call you his niece?"
Mara looked at the floor.
"Because that's what he called all of us."
"All of who?"
"The Bellweather kids he controlled."
"That doesn't sound like the whole answer."
"It isn't."
Brielle waited.
Mara rubbed the scar beneath her chin.
"After Ashland, a woman took me to Rockford."
"She told me Mom was dead."
"She told me you were dead too."
Brielle felt the room narrow.
"You thought I was dead?"
"For four years."
"Who told you?"
"Vittorio."
"Why?"
"Because grief makes children easier to rename."
Brielle pressed her lips together.
Mara continued.
"They called me Marie Vale."
"I went to school under that name."
"I had a birth certificate that said I was born in Peoria."
"A dead woman's social security number was attached to me."
"Every six months, somebody from Bellweather checked whether I was obedient."
Brielle's hands began to shake.
"What happened if you weren't?"
Mara's eyes became distant.
"You lost privileges."
"Food."
"School."
"Sometimes a bedroom door."
Brielle swallowed anger so hard it hurt.
"Did Vittorio hurt you?"
Mara looked at her.
"Not with his own hands."
The answer was worse.
"Why keep you alive?"
"Because Mom hid the ledger before she died."
"They thought she told me where."
"Did she?"
"No."
"Then why keep you eleven years?"
Mara laughed without humor.
"Because eventually I became useful."
"I knew Bellweather houses."
"I knew how the fake records worked."
"I knew which kids would run and which ones would freeze."
Brielle flinched at the word.
Mara saw it.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize for his language."
"It became mine for a while."
Brielle sat on the edge of a chair.
"What did you do?"
Mara looked at the door.
"I moved people."
"For Vittorio?"
"Yes."
"Children?"
Mara's face tightened.
"Sometimes."
Brielle wanted to ask whether she had harmed them.
She was afraid of the answer.
Mara answered anyway.
"I told myself I was keeping them alive."
"Sometimes I was."
"Sometimes I was delivering them to another cage."
Tears filled her eyes.
"I don't know how to make that clean."
Brielle stood.
"You don't."
Mara looked at her as if struck.
"What?"
"You don't make it clean."
"You tell the truth."
"You help the people you can still help."
"And you live with the part you can't undo."
Mara stared at her.
"Is that what you did?"
Brielle thought of eleven years spent blaming herself for not moving.
"I'm trying."
Mara began to cry silently.
Brielle hugged her again.
This time Mara did not keep one hand free for a weapon.
After a while, Brielle whispered.
"What about the niece thing?"
Mara exhaled.
"Vittorio liked calling Bellweather his family."
"He said names were more powerful when people believed they came from blood."
"But there is another reason he used it with me."
Brielle pulled back.
"What reason?"
Mara reached into her boot and removed a folded piece of paper sealed in plastic.
It was a laboratory report.
Brielle read the header.
Paternity Probability: 99.997%.
The alleged father was listed as VITTORIO MORETTI.
Brielle stared at the page.
"No."
Mara nodded once.
"Mom had an affair?"
"I don't know."
"You were nine when she died."
"You were old enough to remember Dad leaving."
Brielle did remember.
Thomas Dawson had disappeared from their lives when Mara was a baby.
Elena had said he was not capable of being a father.
Brielle had never questioned it because Thomas had not returned.
"This could be fake."
"It could."
"Bellweather made fake identities."
"Yes."
"Then why believe it?"
"Because Nico ran a second test without telling Vittorio."
Mara pulled out another page.
Same result.
Brielle sat down again.
"Does Dante know?"
"No."
"Does Rosa?"
"I don't know."
A knock came at the door.
Dante entered before Brielle answered.
His eyes moved from Mara's face to the papers.
"We have nine minutes before we leave."
Brielle held out the test.
"Read this."
Dante did.
Nothing moved in his expression at first.
Then he sat.
"Vittorio is your father."
Mara looked at him.
"Apparently."
Dante read the result again.
"My uncle was married twenty-two years ago."
"He still is."
Brielle's anger sharpened.
"Wonderful detail."
Dante ignored the tone.
"Elena never told my father."
"How do you know?"
"If Enzo knew Vittorio had a daughter, he would have put guards around her whether Elena wanted them or not."
Mara gave him a bitter look.
"Your family solves everything with guards."
"Not everything."
"Enough."
Dante accepted that.
"Why would Vittorio take his own daughter?"
Mara's laugh was empty.
"You still think blood means the same thing to him that it means to you."
Dante looked down at the report.
"Maybe I do."
Brielle saw something difficult pass through his face.
Vittorio was not an enemy on a map anymore.
He was an uncle who had sat at birthdays.
A man who had toasted Celeste at their wedding.
A man who had apparently kept Dante's cousin imprisoned while eating at Rosa's table.
"What happens now?"
Brielle asked.
Dante stood.
"We go home."
"Vittorio asked for us."
"Which means he believes he controls the meeting."
Mara picked up the stuffed rabbit and carried it back to Sofia.
"He usually does."
Dante looked at her.
"Not tonight."
They entered the Moretti estate through the south service tunnel twenty-three minutes later.
Luca had discovered the tunnel on old architectural plans and cursed three generations of Morettis for failing to mention it.
"Family communication is clearly a strength."
Dante looked at him.
"Keep going."
The tunnel opened behind the wine cellar.
No guards waited there.
That worried Brielle more than guards would have.
The house above was silent.
They found Nico in the cellar exactly where the photograph showed him.
The chair was empty.
Only blood remained on the floor.
Mara crouched beside it.
"Fresh."
Dante checked the connecting door.
"They moved him."
Brielle saw something carved into the wooden chair arm.
Three lines.
Then seventeen tiny marks.
Then nine.
"Nico knew our code."
Mara nodded.
"I taught him."
Below the marks, Nico had carved one word.
CHAPEL.
Dante's face changed.
"The family chapel."
They climbed the cellar stairs.
Rosa's voice echoed faintly from the east hall.
They moved toward it.
The chapel doors stood open.
Vittorio Moretti waited at the altar.
He was sixty-two and looked enough like Dante's late father to make the resemblance disturbing.
Rosa sat in the front pew with her wrists bound.
Nico lay on the floor beside her.
He was conscious but bleeding badly.
Three armed men stood along the walls.
Vittorio smiled when Mara entered.
"There is my girl."
Mara raised her pistol.
"Don't call me that."
Vittorio's smile remained.
"Blood is blood."
"You taught me names are paperwork."
"I taught you many things."
"Most of them were lies."
Vittorio looked at Brielle.
"And Elena's oldest daughter."
Brielle felt Dante shift beside her.
"You were at Ashland."
Vittorio's smile faded.
"Eventually."
"Did you kill my mother?"
Rosa's eyes closed.
Brielle saw it.
"You know."
Rosa shook her head.
"Brielle—"
"You know who killed her."
Vittorio laughed softly.
"Rosa has carried so many secrets she can barely stand upright."
Dante's voice cut through the chapel.
"Enough."
Vittorio looked at him.
"Your father used to say that the same way."
"My father is dead."
"Because he became sentimental."
Dante's eyes narrowed.
"You killed him too?"
Vittorio did not answer.
That was answer enough.
Rosa made a broken sound.
Dante's face went still.
"Heart attack."
Vittorio shrugged.
"The heart did stop."
Luca swore under his breath.
Dante lifted his gun.
Vittorio's men aimed at Rosa.
Dante stopped.
Vittorio smiled.
"There is the problem with loving people."
"They become handles."
Brielle looked at Mara.
Mara looked back.
They both understood the same thing.
Vittorio had said it as a lesson.
He believed it.
That meant he would always look at the people he loved as leverage too.
"You want the ledger."
Brielle spoke.
Vittorio's eyes moved to her.
"I want the key."
"I don't know what it is."
"You do."
"Then tell me."
Vittorio smiled.
"Your mother made it something no search could recognize."
"Something you would carry because it meant more to you than money."
Brielle thought of the few objects from childhood.
The photograph frame was gone.
The brass button.
Mara's bracelet.
The music box.
Her breath caught.
The music box.
She had left it in a storage locker after moving apartments two years earlier because the spring had broken.
Nobody searching her current home would have found it.
Vittorio saw the answer on her face.
"There."
Brielle cursed herself.
Vittorio smiled wider.
"Now we're getting somewhere."
Dante looked at her.
She gave the smallest shake of her head.
Not here.
Vittorio raised his hand.
One of his men dragged Nico upright.
Nico's face was almost unrecognizable beneath blood.
"Tell them, Nicholas."
Nico spat blood onto the chapel floor.
"Go to hell."
Vittorio sighed.
"So disappointing."
He raised a pistol toward Nico.
Mara fired first.
May you like
The chapel exploded into motion.
