Chapter 11 - THE MUSIC BOX
Mara's bullet struck Vittorio's pistol and sent it spinning across the altar.
Dante moved at the same instant.
He shot the man nearest Rosa.
Luca tackled the second guard into a pew.
Brielle dropped behind the stone baptismal font as gunfire shattered a stained-glass window.
Rosa threw herself sideways.
Nico rolled beneath the front pew.
Vittorio disappeared through the sacristy door.
"He's running."
Dante fired at the third guard, forcing him behind a column.
"Luca, Rosa."
"Got her."
Mara sprinted after Vittorio.
Brielle caught her coat.
"No."
"Let go."
"That's what he wants."
"He killed Mom."
"We don't know that."
"He killed Enzo."
"And he raised you to run exactly where he points."
Mara froze.
The truth hurt.
Brielle saw it.
"Stay."
Mara's chest rose and fell.
Then she lowered her weapon.
The third guard fired again.
Dante shot him in the shoulder.
Luca kicked the weapon away.
Silence fell over the chapel except for Nico's breathing.
Rosa crawled toward him.
"Nicholas."
Nico tried to sit.
"I'm fine."
"You look like a truck hit you."
"Small truck."
Luca cut Rosa's restraints.
Dante stared at the sacristy door.
Every instinct in him wanted to chase Vittorio.
Brielle could see it.
Instead, he turned toward his mother.
"Are you hurt?"
Rosa shook her head.
Dante knelt and held her for one brief second.
Then he looked at Nico.
"Can you stand?"
"Eventually."
"You have thirty seconds."
Nico laughed and immediately regretted it.
"There he is."
Brielle crouched beside him.
"Mara said you helped her."
Nico looked at Mara.
"She wasn't supposed to tell you while people were shooting."
"The timing has been bad all week."
Nico's mouth twitched.
"True."
"Did you know Vittorio was her father?"
"Yes."
"Did you know he took her?"
"Not until years later."
Brielle wanted to ask more.
Dante cut in.
"First, we survive the house."
He looked at Luca.
"How many of our people are still outside?"
Luca checked his radio.
"Hard to know who is ours."
"Then assume none."
Dante turned toward Brielle.
"What did Vittorio make you remember?"
She hesitated.
"A music box."
Mara looked at her.
"Mom's blue one?"
Brielle nodded.
"You kept it?"
"It's in storage."
Mara's eyes filled.
"I thought it burned."
"I grabbed it the next day when social services let me take clothes."
"Why?"
Brielle looked at her.
"Because you loved it."
Mara turned away.
Nico closed his eyes.
"Storage where?"
Brielle looked at him.
"You're asking very directly for a man I met ten minutes ago."
"Fair."
Dante stood.
"Nobody says the location out loud."
"Vittorio may have audio in the house."
Luca looked around the chapel.
"He definitely does."
"How do you know?"
"Because this family has never met a privacy violation it didn't fund."
Rosa gave him a tired look.
"Your mother says hello."
"That explains where I learned disrespect."
Even Mara almost smiled.
They moved through the sacristy into a service corridor that led to the garage.
The estate felt abandoned.
A grandfather clock ticked in the hall.
Somewhere upstairs, an alarm chimed every thirty seconds.
Brielle wondered how many dinners had happened beneath these ceilings while Mara was being moved under fake names.
Rosa seemed to read the thought.
"I didn't know."
Brielle did not look at her.
"You knew there was no body."
"Yes."
"You let me believe she was dead."
"Yes."
"Why should I trust anything else?"
Rosa's voice broke.
"You shouldn't."
Brielle looked at her then.
Rosa continued.
"Not yet."
"Make me earn it."
The answer was not forgiveness.
It was at least honest.
They reached the garage.
Two vehicles were missing.
Dante looked at the open side gate.
"Vittorio is gone."
Luca checked a tire mark.
"Maybe five minutes."
"Let him run."
Everyone looked at Dante.
His eyes were cold.
"He thinks he knows where we're going next."
"He doesn't."
Brielle understood.
"But he knows I have the music box."
"He knows you remembered it."
"That's enough."
Nico leaned against the wall.
"He'll pull every storage account under Dawson."
"The locker isn't under my name."
Dante looked at her.
"Whose?"
"A woman I worked with at a shelter."
"She died two years ago."
Nico nodded.
"Good."
Brielle frowned.
"That sounded terrible."
"It did."
"I mean good that Vittorio can't trace the locker."
"Still terrible."
"Concussion making you mean?"
"No."
"She was like this before."
Dante said it without thinking.
Brielle looked at him.
He looked away.
Luca grinned.
"This is becoming uncomfortable."
They split into two cars.
Brielle gave the storage address only after they were moving and after Luca swept the vehicles for tracking devices.
The facility sat near Cicero Avenue behind a row of warehouses.
A tired clerk buzzed them through without looking up from a basketball game.
Brielle's locker was on the second floor.
She unlocked it with a key hidden inside the sole of her spare boot.
Dante watched.
"You hide keys in shoes."
"Poor people don't have safes."
"Noted."
The locker contained three plastic bins, a winter coat, an old lamp, and one cardboard box marked KITCHEN even though nothing inside belonged in a kitchen.
Brielle opened it.
The blue music box rested beneath a folded sweater.
Mara made a sound behind her.
"You really kept it."
Brielle handed it to her.
The paint was chipped.
A tiny ballerina remained frozen on one foot beneath the lid.
Mara turned the key.
Nothing happened.
"Spring broke years ago."
Mara looked at the bottom.
"Mom fixed this twice."
Brielle remembered.
Elena at the kitchen table with a screwdriver too small for her fingers.
Mara watching as if surgery were being performed.
"She always removed the bottom plate."
Mara looked at Brielle.
They both understood.
Dante found a screwdriver in a maintenance cabinet.
Brielle removed four tiny screws.
The bottom plate lifted.
Beneath the mechanism was a thin plastic strip.
Not paper.
Not a flash drive.
Microfilm.
Nico exhaled.
"Elena."
Brielle stared at it.
"Is that the ledger?"
"Part of it."
"How do you know?"
"Because Celeste found another strip in Enzo's files."
Dante turned.
"You told me she found nothing."
Nico looked at him.
"I lied."
The air went cold.
Dante stepped forward.
"You have ten seconds to make that sound reasonable."
"Celeste made me promise."
"She was my wife."
"And she believed you would go after Vittorio before she had proof."
"She was right."
Dante's voice sharpened.
"She died anyway."
Nico looked down.
"I know."
"Where is her strip?"
"Hidden."
"Where?"
Nico looked at Mara.
"She knows."
Mara stiffened.
Brielle stared at her.
"Do you?"
Mara closed her eyes.
"Yes."
"How many secrets are we doing before breakfast?"
"Bri—"
"No."
Brielle's voice rose.
"Everybody keeps handing me one truth wrapped around another lie."
"I am done unwrapping."
Mara's face hardened defensively.
"I was trying to keep you out of this."
"You left a note in my destroyed apartment."
"Because they found you first."
"Then tell me everything now."
Mara looked at Nico.
He nodded.
"Celeste gave me the second strip the night she died."
Dante stopped moving.
"You saw her that night."
Mara nodded.
"At Bluebird."
"She was the one I was meeting."
Dante's face emptied.
"Celeste was meeting you."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because she found out I was alive."
Dante's eyes closed.
For three years he had wondered where his wife had been driving.
Now the answer stood ten feet away.
"What did she give you?"
"A strip of microfilm and a list of safe names."
"She told me if anything happened to her, I should disappear."
"I did."
"Where is the film now?"
Mara looked at Brielle.
"Inside Mom's grave."
Silence.
Brielle stared at her.
"What?"
"I put it beneath the headstone seven months ago."
"You were at the cemetery?"
"Yes."
"You were feet from where I buried you."
Mara looked down.
"Yes."
Brielle had to turn away.
That hurt in a place anger could not cover.
Dante gave her a moment before speaking.
"We need both strips together."
Nico nodded.
"And a reader that isn't connected to any network."
"I know where."
Luca's phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed almost immediately.
"What?"
Dante turned.
Luca lowered the phone.
"The clinic."
Brielle's stomach dropped.
"Sofia?"
"She's safe."
Dante exhaled once.
"Then what?"
Luca looked at Mara.
"Someone sent a package to the clinic."
"No return address."
"Inside is a finger."
Mara went white.
Nico looked at his left hand.
All fingers were present.
Dante's voice became flat.
"Whose?"
Luca held up his phone.
"There's a ring on it."
Brielle saw the photograph.
A silver ring.
Vincent Caruso's ring.
A note lay beside it.
THE OLD WAR IS OVER.
May you like
THE CHILDREN PAY NOW.
