CHAPTER 6: The Man Who Heard Every Lie
CHAPTER 6: The Man Who Heard Every Lie
The next morning, Room 120 became the most heavily guarded room in New York.
Two FBI agents stood outside.
Four Moretti bodyguards guarded the elevators.
No visitor entered without approval from both sides.
Inside, Dante remained unable to speak.
But his mind was finally returning.
Luca placed a laminated alphabet board beside the bed.
"We're going to do this slowly."
"I'll point."
"You blink when I reach the correct letter."
It took nearly fifteen minutes.
The first word appeared.
L-U-C-A.
The doctor smiled.
"Yes."
"I'm here."
Another series of blinks.
Painfully slow.
T-H-A-N-K...Y-O-U.
Luca looked away for a moment.
Doctors were trained to stay objective.
Sometimes objectivity was impossible.
Later...
Lucia came in carrying another drawing.
This one showed a large oak tree protecting a little bird during a storm.
"I made this for you."
Dante looked toward her.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
Lucia laughed.
"Mom!"
"I think he's saying hello."
Elena stood in the doorway, tears filling her eyes.
"You gave him hope."
Lucia frowned.
"No."
"He already had hope."
"He just forgot where it was."
Even Mateo, standing silently in the corner, had no answer to that.
That afternoon...
The alphabet board revealed something unexpected.
Luca pointed patiently through each row.
Dante blinked.
Letter by letter.
S-A-F-E.
Then—
L-U-C-I-A.
Luca frowned.
"You want Lucia?"
Blink.
Then another word.
D-A-N-G-E-R.
Everyone in the room went still.
Mateo stepped forward.
"What danger?"
More letters.
N-O-T...V-I-V-I-A-N.
Luca read aloud.
"Not Vivian?"
Dante blinked once.
No.
More letters followed.
Slowly.
Painfully.
H-E-R...F-A-T-H-E-R.
Mateo's expression hardened.
"Her father?"
Dante blinked.
Again.
Again.
Again.
A name formed that none of them expected.
A-L-D-O...M-A-R-C-H-E-S-I.
Mateo felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath him.
"No..."
Luca looked at him.
"You know him?"
Mateo answered quietly.
"Aldo Marchesi has been dead..."
He stopped himself.
Or rather—
Everyone believed he had died twelve years earlier in a warehouse fire.
If Dante was right...
The man behind the conspiracy wasn't merely Vivian.
She had been following orders.
The real architect had been hiding in the shadows for over a decade.
And if Aldo Marchesi was alive...
Then Dante Moretti's attempted murder was only the opening move of a much larger war.
As Mateo looked out the hospital window toward the Manhattan skyline, he realized one terrifying truth.
May you like
Saving Dante's life had not ended the nightmare.
It had just awakened the enemy.
