CHAPTER 6 — The Child They Could Not Leave Alive
CHAPTER 6 — The Child They Could Not Leave Alive
Antonio collapsed to his knees.
"I was outside the safe room for less than a minute."
Marco's men searched every hallway.
Every window.
Every hidden passage.
Nothing.
There were no signs of forced entry.
No broken locks.
No alarms.
It was as if Sophia had vanished into thin air.
Victor entered the safe room himself.
The small wooden chair where Sophia had been sitting was empty.
On the table rested only one object.
His gold watch.
The one he had given her that morning.
Beneath it lay a folded piece of paper.
Victor opened it.
Seven handwritten words.
She remembers something she was never supposed to see.
Marco read over his shoulder.
"This isn't about revenge anymore."
Victor nodded.
"No."
"They're cleaning up witnesses."
Luca interrupted from the hallway.
"Boss... there's more."
He held up a tablet displaying satellite footage from the estate.
At precisely 7:09 that morning—minutes before Victor left the villa—a delivery van had entered through the service gate.
The license plates belonged to a local bakery.
The bakery owner, however, had reported the van stolen the previous night.
Victor replayed the footage.
The driver never looked at the cameras.
He knew exactly where they were positioned.
Then something caught Victor's eye.
The passenger.
Only half his face was visible beneath a baseball cap.
But Victor recognized him instantly.
He whispered the name before he realized he was speaking.
"Matteo..."
Marco stared.
"Impossible."
Matteo Moretti.
Victor's younger brother.
Officially dead for fifteen years.
Killed during an ambush in Sicily.
Victor himself had identified the burned body.
"I buried him," Victor murmured.
Marco's voice was barely audible.
"If that's Matteo..."
"...then whose funeral did we attend?"
Victor rushed into his father's abandoned study.
Dust covered the shelves.
The room had remained untouched since Don Alessandro's death.
He unlocked an old iron safe hidden behind a painting.
Inside were ledgers, deeds, and a single leather-bound journal.
His father's handwriting filled every page.
Near the end, one entry had been written with unusual urgency.
If this journal reaches Victor, then I have already failed.
Never trust death without a face.
If Matteo returns, do not embrace him. Run.
He stopped being my son the day the Thirteenth Crown found him.
Victor's hands trembled.
Another envelope slipped from between the pages.
Across the front, in faded ink, were written four words:
Open after Isabella betrays you.
Marco looked at Victor in disbelief.
"Your father knew?"
Victor slowly broke the seal.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed Don Alessandro standing beside two young boys.
Victor recognized himself immediately.
The second boy wasn't Matteo.
He was a stranger.
On the back of the photograph, his father had written:
"One of these boys is my son. The other is the heir they created."
Victor felt the room spin.
Everything he believed about his family... his brother... even his own childhood... had just been thrown into doubt.
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And somewhere beyond the walls of the estate, Sophia was alive—
Carrying a memory powerful enough to make an ancient organization risk everything to silence a seven-year-old child forever.
