Chapter 3 - THE TRADE AT DAWN
The baby's cry filled the chapel through hidden speakers.
It was not loud.
It was not dramatic.
It was the helpless, searching cry of a newborn who expected someone to answer.
My body answered before my mind did.
Milk tightened painfully in my chest.
My arms pulled Leo closer even as every instinct screamed to reach through the projected image and lift Lily from that dark room.
"That's my daughter," I said.
No one replied.
The video showed only the small bassinet, the blue blanket, and the digital clock advancing one second at a time.
Lily's fist rose from beneath the blanket.
Her fingers opened and closed.
I saw a pale crescent-shaped birthmark along the inside of her wrist.
The doctors had shown it to me after delivery.
I had kissed that mark while holding her cold body against my chest.
"They switched her," I whispered.
The memory returned with brutal clarity.
A nurse had placed a wrapped infant in my arms for less than a minute.
The baby's face had been partly covered by a white cap and blanket.
I had been drugged, bleeding, and nearly unconscious.
I remembered asking why Lily's hand felt cold.
The nurse had told me death changed the body quickly.
Now I understood that I might never have held Lily at all.
I might have mourned someone else's child while mine was carried out through another door.
Lorenzo stepped toward the projected image.
"Bianca," he said.
The speakers crackled.
"You have until sunrise."
The voice was distorted electronically, but the cadence was calm and feminine.
"Bring Leo to the east gate."
"Come get him yourself," Lorenzo replied.
"You know I don't make trades through servants."
The voice laughed softly.
"Tonight, you don't have servants."
A second image appeared beside Lily's bassinet.
It showed the mansion's main security room.
Five guards lay facedown between the monitors.
One moved weakly.
A masked man stepped into view and shot him in the back.
Matteo cursed under his breath.
Lorenzo did not react outwardly.
Only the hand holding his pistol tightened.
"If Lily dies," I said, "there will be no trade."
The speakers went silent.
I stepped closer to the altar.
"You placed me in this house because you wanted someone to blame."
My voice shook, but I forced each word out clearly.
"You expected Lorenzo to find me with Leo and kill me before I could explain."
Celeste's smile disappeared.
That told me I was right.
"But he didn't," I continued.
"Now you need me frightened enough to hand him over."
"Mara," Matteo warned.
I ignored him.
"If you hurt Lily, I have nothing left to lose."
I looked directly at the camera mounted above the chapel doors.
"People with nothing left are harder to control."
The baby's cry stopped.
For three unbearable seconds, the screen showed no movement.
Then a gloved hand entered the frame and placed a pacifier in Lily's mouth.
"East gate," the distorted voice repeated.
"Sunrise."
The projector shut off.
Darkness swallowed the chapel.
Emergency lights came on along the baseboards.
Lorenzo turned to Matteo.
"How many exits?"
"Three."
"The front doors, the tunnel, and the crypt."
"The tunnel is compromised," Lorenzo said.
"Open the crypt."
Matteo went behind the altar and pushed aside a marble kneeler.
A square iron ring was set into the floor.
He pulled it, revealing a staircase descending beneath the chapel.
Cold air rose from below, carrying the smell of stone and damp earth.
Mason tried to stand and nearly collapsed.
I passed Leo to Lorenzo for one terrifying moment and pressed both hands against Mason's wounded side.
Blood seeped between my fingers.
"The bullet may still be inside," I said.
"Can you walk?"
"Not far."
"Then tell us where they would take her."
Mason's good eye focused on me.
"Mercer has places all over the city."
"Clinics, apartments, warehouses."
"Which one has blue curtains?"
His face changed.
"What?"
"The room on the live feed had blue fabric behind the bassinet."
"Not curtains."
He swallowed painfully.
"Sound blankets."
"Where?"
"An old recording studio near the river."
"Vitale owns it."
Matteo pulled out his phone and typed the address into an offline map.
"Twelve miles from here."
"The east gate is the opposite direction," I said.
Lorenzo looked at the blank chapel wall.
"They want us moving away from her."
He handed Leo back to me.
The baby's eyes opened briefly.
They were dark and unfocused, but he was breathing more evenly.
"We split," Lorenzo said.
"No," I replied.
His gaze cut toward me.
"You are not in command here."
"I am her mother."
"And he is my son."
"Which is why they expect you to choose him."
I moved closer, lowering my voice.
"They know you'll never put Leo at risk for a child you've never met."
"They know I will," he said.
"Because they know what they took from me."
For the first time, I wondered exactly how Sofia Rossi had died.
The newspapers said a wet road caused her car to leave a mountain highway eight months earlier.
The staff said Lorenzo had arrived at the crash before the fire department and pulled her from the wreckage with his bare hands.
She had died before dawn.
Leo had been born by emergency surgery and had spent six weeks in intensive care.
The public called his survival a miracle.
Someone inside the Rossi mansion had been trying to undo that miracle ever since.
"We don't split," Matteo said.
"The attack depends on separating us."
Lorenzo looked at him.
"You have a better plan?"
"We give them what they expect to see."
Matteo pointed toward Celeste.
"She takes Leo to the east gate."
Celeste laughed.
"You think they'll believe I escaped with him?"
"They will if you tell them you did."
"I won't."
Lorenzo pressed the pistol against her knee.
"You will."
Celeste's face remained composed, but her breathing quickened.
I saw fear enter her eyes.
Lorenzo did not need to raise his voice.
Everyone in the room understood the promise behind his silence.
"You can't send the real baby," I said.
"We won't," Matteo replied.
He opened a storage cabinet beside the altar and removed a carved wooden figure of the infant Jesus from an old Christmas display.
Wrapped in blankets, it would resemble a sleeping child from a distance.
"They'll check," Mason said.
"Not before we control the gate," Lorenzo answered.
"You and Matteo handle the east gate."
"Mara and I go to the studio."
Matteo stared at him.
"You are bringing her into a Vitale property?"
"They need her alive until the trade."
"That makes her bait."
"I've been bait since someone sent me into this mansion," I said.
I hated the truth of it.
Matteo wrapped the wooden figure in Leo's cream blanket.
Celeste watched with narrowed eyes.
"Mercer will know."
"Then tell us how," Lorenzo said.
She remained silent.
Mason slid lower against the pew.
His skin had become waxy.
I tore a strip from the bottom of my uniform and pressed it into his wound.
"Stay awake."
"You should let me die," he whispered.
"That would be easier for you."
"Not for me."
I tightened the makeshift bandage until he groaned.
"You don't get to escape what you did."
"You survive, you testify, and you spend the rest of your life knowing I raised Lily without you."
His eye filled with tears.
I felt nothing for them.
Matteo opened the crypt entrance wider.
"The lower tunnel exits near the family mausoleum."
"There is a service vehicle hidden behind it."
Lorenzo nodded.
"Call Enzo on the old frequency."
"Assuming Enzo is alive."
"He is alive."
Lorenzo said it with certainty, but I saw the question in his face.
Enzo Falcone had been his security chief since Sofia's death.
If the entire estate had been compromised, either Enzo had failed or he had helped.
We descended into the crypt.
Marble tombs lined both sides of the underground chamber.
Names from generations of Rossi dead were carved in gold.
At the far end stood two newer tombs.
DANTE ROSSI.
SOFIA MARCELLA ROSSI.
Lorenzo slowed beside Sofia's name.
A white rose lay across the base of the tomb.
It was fresh.
A folded piece of paper had been tucked beneath its stem.
He picked it up and opened it.
His face went still.
"What is it?" I asked.
He handed me the note.
The message consisted of one sentence written in black ink.
YOU BURIED THE WRONG WOMAN TOO.
Matteo crossed himself.
"This is psychological warfare."
"Maybe," Lorenzo said.
He turned the paper over.
A series of numbers was written on the back.
Mason stared at them.
"That's a Saint Agnes patient code."
"Whose?" I asked.
"I don't know."
Celeste's eyes moved toward the note and immediately away.
Lorenzo saw it.
He seized her chin.
"Whose code?"
"Go to the studio," she said.
"Maybe you'll find out."
A low vibration sounded beneath our feet.
Dust fell from the crypt ceiling.
Matteo looked toward the staircase.
"Explosives."
A second blast shook the chamber.
The chapel ceiling cracked above us.
They were destroying the passage behind us.
We moved through the final tunnel as stone collapsed overhead.
Mason stumbled twice.
Matteo took his arm, half dragging him through the darkness.
Lorenzo carried Celeste over one shoulder.
I held Leo beneath my uniform to protect him from the dust.
The tunnel ended at a steel hatch.
Lorenzo pushed it open.
We emerged behind the Rossi mausoleum into freezing predawn air.
A black SUV waited beneath the trees exactly where Matteo had promised.
The driver's door stood open.
No driver was inside.
Blood covered the seat.
An old radio hissed from the dashboard.
Matteo lifted the receiver.
"Enzo, respond."
Static.
"Enzo, this is Matteo."
"Use old channel seven."
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then a man's strained voice answered.
"Do not go to the river."
Lorenzo took the receiver.
"Enzo, where are you?"
Gunfire erupted through the speaker.
"They have the girl," Enzo gasped.
"But the studio is empty."
"The feed is coming from inside the mansion."
I looked back at the dark silhouette of the Rossi estate.
One light turned on in the east wing.
Then another.
Then every window in Bianca Rossi's private apartment glowed at once.
A woman stepped onto the balcony wearing a white robe.
Even from across the garden, I recognized her dark hair and elegant posture.
Bianca lifted a bundle wrapped in a blue blanket.
My knees weakened.
She held my daughter above the stone railing.
The radio crackled again.
Bianca's undistorted voice came through the speaker.
May you like
"You were clever, Mara."
"Now let's see whether Lorenzo is willing to watch another mother fall."
