Chapter 2 - THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE
Mason's flashlight rounded the corner before the rest of him did.
Lorenzo stepped out of the recess and leveled his pistol at Mason's chest.
"Drop the light."
Mason froze.
The flashlight slipped from his hand and rolled across the stone floor.
Its beam stopped on his face.
I almost did not recognize him.
Three weeks earlier, Mason had been broad-shouldered and arrogant, with the easy smile of a man who believed apologies could erase bruises.
Now one eye was swollen shut.
Dried blood covered his upper lip.
His expensive leather jacket had been torn at the shoulder, and both hands shook above his head.
"Don't shoot," he said.
Lorenzo took one step closer.
"You entered my home through a sealed passage."
"I was brought here."
"By whom?"
Mason looked past him at me.
The color drained from his face when he saw Leo against my chest.
Then his gaze dropped to Celeste lying on the floor.
"We have to get out," he whispered.
"They're cleaning the house."
Lorenzo struck him across the mouth with the barrel of the pistol.
Mason hit the wall and slid to one knee.
"You will answer the question I asked."
I should have felt satisfaction watching Mason bleed.
Instead, the old terror moved through my body before I could stop it.
My shoulders tightened.
My breath shortened.
I remembered his hand gripping my wrist at the top of the stairs.
I remembered the look in his eyes when he shoved me.
There had been no shock afterward.
No panic.
Only calculation.
He had watched me fall.
Then he had walked away while I screamed for Lily.
"How do you know my lullaby?" I asked.
Mason wiped blood from his mouth.
"Mara, please."
"How do you know it?"
He looked toward the darkness behind him.
"Because they played it."
"Who played it?"
"The people who took your baby."
The passage seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
I tightened my hold on Leo.
"Lily was stillborn."
Mason closed his good eye.
That small movement told me more than any confession could have.
Lorenzo grabbed him by the throat and forced him against the wall.
"Speak carefully."
Mason's fingers clawed at Lorenzo's wrist.
"I don't know everything."
"Then start with what you do know."
"They paid my debts."
The words came out in a rush.
"They said Mara had seen something she wasn't supposed to see at Saint Agnes."
I stared at him.
"I had never been to Saint Agnes."
"Not before the fall."
Mason swallowed against Lorenzo's grip.
"They needed you taken there."
Saint Agnes Medical Center was where the ambulance had brought me after I tumbled down the staircase.
I had not chosen the hospital.
I had barely been conscious when the paramedics loaded me into the ambulance.
"Who are they?" Lorenzo asked.
"A doctor."
"Name."
"Mercer."
Lorenzo's expression changed.
Dr. Adrian Mercer was Leo's pediatric specialist.
He had visited the mansion twice that week, arriving in a black sedan and leaving with the grim patience of a man dealing with an incurable illness.
I had once carried coffee into the library while Mercer explained that Leo's body was failing to absorb nutrients.
He had sounded compassionate.
He had also sounded certain.
"Who else?" Lorenzo asked.
Mason hesitated.
A gunshot cracked somewhere behind him.
Stone chipped from the wall beside his head.
Lorenzo pulled him down as a second shot cut through the darkness.
I dropped behind the low ledge, shielding Leo beneath my body.
Celeste rolled toward the edge of the passage.
Her hand closed around the knife she had dropped earlier.
I kicked it away.
She looked up at me with pure hatred.
"You should have died with her," she whispered.
I slapped her hard enough to sting my palm.
"Where is Lily?"
Celeste smiled through the blood on her teeth.
"Ask your boyfriend."
Lorenzo fired twice toward the corner.
A man grunted.
Footsteps retreated.
"Move," Lorenzo ordered.
He hauled Mason upright and pushed him ahead of us.
Celeste struggled to stand, but Lorenzo caught her arm and dragged her forward.
We descended faster.
The passage narrowed until our shoulders brushed damp stone.
Mason limped badly.
I noticed a dark stain spreading along the back of his shirt.
He had been shot or stabbed before entering the tunnel.
"Who brought you here?" I asked.
"One of Mercer's men."
"Why?"
"They wanted me to confess on camera."
"Confess to what?"
"Killing you."
His voice cracked.
"Then they were going to kill me and leave both bodies where Rossi's guards would find us."
Lorenzo glanced back.
"Why frame my people?"
"Because the police are already watching you."
"The police have watched me since I was seventeen."
"This is different."
Mason stumbled on the final step.
"Someone is building a case that you ordered Mara's attack and stole her child."
The old chapel door stood twenty feet ahead.
A thin line of moonlight shone beneath it.
Lorenzo stopped beside a rusted iron lever mounted to the wall.
He pulled it down.
Metal groaned overhead.
A heavy gate dropped behind us, sealing the staircase.
Shots struck the bars seconds later.
"That will slow them," he said.
"Not stop them."
Celeste began laughing.
"Nothing stops this once it starts."
Lorenzo opened the chapel door.
Cold night air swept over us.
The old Rossi chapel sat at the far end of the estate, separated from the mansion by a walled garden and a row of black cypress trees.
Candles burned around a marble statue of the Virgin Mary.
Someone had lit them recently.
A man stood near the altar with his back to us.
He wore a dark suit and held a phone to his ear.
Lorenzo raised his gun.
"Matteo."
The man turned.
Matteo DeLuca had served the Rossi family for nearly thirty years.
He was Lorenzo's adviser, godfather, and the only person in the mansion who spoke to him without fear.
Tonight his silver hair was disordered, and blood darkened the cuff of his white shirt.
"Thank God," Matteo said.
Then he saw Mason and Celeste.
His relief vanished.
"We have a breach."
"I noticed," Lorenzo replied.
Matteo looked at Leo.
"The west wing security team is missing."
"Missing or dead?"
"Three dead."
"And the others?"
"Their radios went silent."
Lorenzo handed Celeste to Matteo.
"Restrain her."
Matteo pulled a plastic tie from his pocket and bound her wrists behind her back.
His movements were quick, but his eyes kept returning to me.
Not with suspicion.
With recognition.
"You know who I am," I said.
Matteo did not answer.
"She asked you a question," Lorenzo said.
Matteo exhaled slowly.
"I saw her file before the employment agency sent her here."
"Why would you review a maid's medical file?"
"I didn't."
He looked at me again.
"The file was attached to a security report about Mason Cole."
Mason leaned against a pew, one hand pressed to his side.
"What report?"
"Your creditors had been asking about Mara."
"They weren't my creditors," Mason said.
"Not all of them."
Matteo turned to Lorenzo.
"One of the men searching for him worked for Marco Vitale."
The name changed the air in the chapel.
Even I knew Marco Vitale.
He controlled the ports to the south and had spent years trying to take Rossi territory.
Newspapers called him a businessman.
People who lived near the docks called him the undertaker.
"Vitale and Mercer," Lorenzo said.
"That alliance makes no sense."
"Unless this isn't about territory," Matteo replied.
Leo whimpered.
His oxygen monitor was no longer attached, but his lips looked less gray.
I sat in the front pew and guided him back to my breast.
He rooted weakly, then latched.
The first swallow came after a long pause.
Lorenzo watched every movement.
Mason stared at me with an expression I could not read.
Shame was part of it.
Fear was stronger.
"Tell me about Lily," I said.
He looked away.
"Now."
"I never saw her."
"You said they took her."
"I heard them talking."
"Who?"
"Mercer and a woman."
"What woman?"
Mason's breathing became shallow.
Blood continued spreading beneath his hand.
"She was at the hospital."
"Celeste?"
He shook his head.
"Someone else."
"Give me a name."
"I don't know her name."
Lorenzo crouched in front of him.
"Describe her."
Mason glanced at the candles.
"Tall."
"Dark hair."
"She wore a white coat, but she wasn't a doctor."
"She had a ring with a black stone."
Matteo went perfectly still.
Lorenzo noticed.
"You recognize it."
Matteo's jaw tightened.
"Black onyx with a gold serpent."
"Whose ring?"
Matteo looked toward the chapel doors as if expecting someone to enter.
"It belonged to your father."
Lorenzo's face emptied of emotion.
His father, Salvatore Rossi, had died four years earlier.
The ring had disappeared after the funeral.
"Who has it now?" Lorenzo asked.
Matteo did not answer quickly enough.
Lorenzo stood.
"Who has my father's ring?"
"Bianca."
I had seen Bianca Rossi only twice.
She was Lorenzo's sister-in-law, the widow of his older brother, Dante.
She lived in the east wing and rarely joined the household.
The staff described her as fragile after losing her husband and infant son in the same year.
She sent flowers to the maids when their relatives died.
She had also visited Leo every morning.
"Bianca was at Saint Agnes?" Lorenzo asked.
"I don't know," Matteo said.
"But she wears the ring."
Celeste lowered her head and smiled.
Mason suddenly coughed.
Blood appeared on his lips.
I shifted Leo to one arm and moved toward him.
"He's bleeding internally."
"Let him," Lorenzo said.
I looked up at him.
"He knows where Lily might be."
That was the only argument Lorenzo needed.
He pulled out his phone, but the screen showed no signal.
Matteo tried his radio.
Static answered.
Then all the chapel candles went out at once.
The doors slammed shut.
A lock turned from the outside.
Celeste began to laugh again.
A projector hidden above the altar flickered to life.
A video appeared on the white chapel wall.
The image showed a hospital nursery.
Rows of bassinets stood beneath fluorescent lights.
A woman in a surgical mask lifted a newborn girl from the final bassinet.
The camera zoomed close enough to show the name card.
LILLIAN BENNETT.
My knees nearly gave way.
The baby moved.
She was alive.
The woman carried her toward the door.
Before leaving, she turned toward the camera and removed her mask.
Bianca Rossi smiled directly into the lens.
Then the video changed to a live image.
A baby girl lay inside a dark room beneath a blue blanket.
A digital clock beside her displayed the current time.
Someone off camera spoke through the chapel speakers.
"Bring Leo to the east gate before sunrise."
The baby's blanket shifted as she began to cry.
I knew that cry even though I had never heard it before.
Every part of my body knew.
May you like
My daughter was alive.
And the people who had poisoned Leo were offering to trade her for him.
