Chapter 2 - The Room Behind the Glass
Elena read the message twice.
MATTEO VALENTE KNOWS WHY.
The letters seemed to blur in her hand.
She looked up at him.
Matteo had gone completely still.
That terrified her more than denial would have.
“You knew.”
“Elena—”
“You knew.”
“Not here.”
She stepped away.
“Don’t touch me.”
Footsteps echoed closer.
Matteo grabbed her wrist anyway and pulled her toward a hidden panel beside the hallway molding.
He pressed his thumb against a concealed scanner.
A section of wall opened.
Elena stared.
“Inside.”
“No.”
“If you want answers, stay alive long enough to hear them.”
Another muted gunshot sounded downstairs.
Elena entered.
Matteo followed.
The panel sealed behind them.
Emergency lights illuminated a narrow concrete stairwell descending beneath the mansion.
Elena had lived inside the estate for six weeks.
She had never known this existed.
They descended two flights.
At the bottom, Matteo unlocked another door.
Elena expected a bunker.
Instead, she stepped into a surveillance room.
Dozens of screens covered an entire wall.
Hallways.
Gates.
Kitchen.
Garage.
Ballroom.
Office.
Every corner of the mansion.
She turned slowly.
“You watch everyone?”
“Security does.”
“That’s not better.”
Matteo crossed to the central console.
He entered several commands.
Camera feeds enlarged.
Men moved through corridors above them.
Dario appeared on one screen directing guards.
Another showed broken glass in the ballroom.
A bullet hole scarred the marble column where Elena had been standing moments earlier.
She stared at it.
Someone had aimed close enough to kill her.
Matteo noticed.
“You understand now?”
“No,” she said. “I understand somebody shot at your house.”
“They shot at you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The first round hit exactly where you were standing.”
Elena looked at him.
“You think the thief wants me dead?”
“I think whoever planted that watch expected you to be arrested, fired, or removed.”
“And when that didn’t happen?”
“They escalated.”
“Why?”
Matteo leaned his hands against the console.
“That is what I intend to find out.”
Elena’s phone remained in her hand.
She looked at the message again.
“My father.”
Matteo said nothing.
She approached him.
“Tell me.”
His shoulders tightened.
“Antonio Moretti worked for my father.”
Elena’s mouth went dry.
“My father drove trucks.”
“Yes.”
“That’s all.”
“No.”
The word fell between them.
Matteo looked at the screens instead of her.
“He transported cash for several families.”
Elena’s face burned.
“No.”
“He was trusted.”
“You’re lying.”
“I have no reason to lie about this.”
“You accused me of stealing an hour ago.”
“And now someone is shooting at you.”
“That doesn’t make you honest.”
Matteo turned.
She saw something different in him now.
Not the mafia boss.
The man beneath the reputation.
He looked tired.
“He wanted out,” Matteo said.
Elena stopped.
“Who?”
“Your father.”
Her throat tightened.
“He had a daughter. He wanted a normal life.”
“Don’t use me to make this story sound noble.”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“Then finish.”
Matteo hesitated.
“My father agreed to let Antonio leave.”
“Your father?”
“Salvatore Valente.”
Elena knew the name.
Everyone in Chicago did.
Salvatore had controlled half the city’s old criminal network before a stroke killed him seven years earlier.
“Antonio was carrying one final ledger,” Matteo continued. “Names. Payments. Political connections. Accounts.”
Elena stared at the black ledger on the desk.
“That ledger?”
“No. Another.”
“What happened?”
“He disappeared.”
“He died.”
“His car went into the river.”
“My mother identified his body.”
“A body was recovered.”
Elena felt dizzy.
“You’re saying it wasn’t him?”
“I’m saying there were questions.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
“Because people who asked questions started dying.”
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the surveillance room.
Matteo did not move.
Elena’s hand shook.
“You knew my family thought he died in an accident.”
“Yes.”
“And you let us believe it.”
“I was twenty-eight. My father controlled everything.”
“You were an adult.”
“Yes.”
“You had money.”
“Yes.”
“You had power.”
“Not enough.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Men like you always say that when explaining why someone else paid the price.”
Matteo absorbed the words without defending himself.
That made her angrier.
She walked away.
On the surveillance monitors, the house appeared almost ordinary.
A maid crossing a hall.
A security guard checking doors.
Rosa standing in the kitchen gripping a rosary.
Then Elena saw something.
She leaned closer.
“Go back.”
Matteo looked up.
“What?”
“Camera twelve.”
He rewound the feed.
The hallway outside Elena’s staff room appeared.
Timestamp: 3:12 p.m.
Yesterday.
A figure approached.
Dario.
He looked both directions.
Entered Elena’s room.
Exited ninety seconds later.
Elena pointed.
“There.”
Matteo’s face hardened.
“Security searches rooms.”
“Not yesterday. You accused me today.”
Matteo rewound again.
Dario carried nothing entering.
When he left, one hand was inside his jacket.
“That proves nothing,” Matteo said.
“Of course you’d say that.”
“It proves he entered your room. We need more.”
“We?”
Matteo looked at her.
“Yes.”
“I’m not helping you.”
“You already are.”
“No. I’m going home.”
“You can’t.”
She turned sharply.
“Try stopping me.”
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
“I survived before I knew you.”
“Whoever sent that message knows your father’s name. They know your number. They know you’re inside my house.”
Elena fell silent.
Matteo lowered his voice.
“If you leave, you become easier to reach.”
“Maybe you’re the person I need protection from.”
“That is possible.”
His answer surprised her.
He continued.
“So don’t trust me. Watch me.”
Elena stared at him.
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because someone is using my house to frame you.”
“That’s not enough.”
Matteo looked at the ballroom camera.
For a moment, something moved across his face.
An old memory.
“Because Antonio once saved my life.”
Elena stopped breathing.
“What?”
“I was sixteen.”
Matteo sat slowly.
“Someone tried to kidnap me outside school. Your father was driving nearby. He saw what happened. He rammed their car with his truck.”
Elena could suddenly picture her father.
Broad hands.
Laughing eyes.
The cheap watch he wore.
The way he always said, You don’t leave people behind, Ellie.
“He never told me.”
“He wasn’t supposed to.”
Matteo opened a drawer beneath the console.
Inside lay an old photograph.
He handed it to her.
Antonio Moretti stood beside a teenage Matteo.
Elena’s father was smiling.
Matteo was not.
On the back, handwritten in faded ink:
FOR THE KID WHO OWES ME ONE.
Elena swallowed hard.
“Why do you have this?”
“Because I never forgot.”
“You could have helped us.”
“I tried.”
“How?”
“Anonymous payments.”
Elena looked up.
Her mother’s surgery.
Three years earlier, the hospital had suddenly informed them a charitable fund had covered half the balance.
Elena had cried in the parking lot from relief.
“You?”
Matteo nodded.
Anger and gratitude collided so violently inside her she could not speak.
“You don’t get to do that,” she finally whispered.
“What?”
“Help us in secret and pretend it makes everything right.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“Because your father asked me to look after you if anything happened.”
Elena stared.
“What?”
“He made me promise.”
“When?”
“The night before he disappeared.”
Silence.
Elena looked at her father’s photograph again.
“You spoke to him the night before he died?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Matteo’s face closed.
“Elena—”
“What did he say?”
“He said he had discovered something inside the Valente organization.”
“What?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“He told me if he named the person, I would do something reckless.”
“So he trusted you enough to protect me but not enough to tell you the truth?”
Matteo gave a humorless smile.
“That sounds exactly like Antonio.”
Elena looked back at the screens.
One showed the ballroom.
The fireplace still burned.
The chandelier remained dark.
Her polishing cloth lay on the floor.
Some absurd part of her wanted to go back and finish cleaning.
Normal things suddenly seemed precious.
Matteo stood.
“You should rest.”
“You think I can sleep?”
“There’s a secure bedroom next to this room.”
“I’m not sleeping in your bunker.”
“Then sit here and hate me.”
She almost smiled.
Almost.
Matteo left for several minutes.
When he returned, he brought coffee, a blanket, and a plate of food.
Elena ignored the food.
She took the coffee.
Hours passed.
By two in the morning, the mansion was quiet again.
The shooters had escaped.
No one knew who they were.
Dario claimed camera footage outside the property had been disabled remotely.
Matteo did not tell him about the message Elena received.
By three, Matteo went upstairs to meet his men.
Elena remained alone in the surveillance room.
She watched camera feeds without really seeing them.
Then she noticed a monitor labeled ARCHIVE.
She touched the keyboard.
A list of recordings appeared.
Most were dated.
Some went back years.
One folder had no date.
Only a number.
Her pulse quickened.
The number from the ledger.
Elena clicked it.
Password protected.
She tried her father’s birthday.
Denied.
Her birthday.
Denied.
Then she remembered the photograph.
FOR THE KID WHO OWES ME ONE.
She typed ANTONIO.
Denied.
MORETTI.
Denied.
She stared.
Then typed ELLIE.
Accepted.
The screen went black.
A video loaded.
Timestamp: nine years earlier.
Her father appeared on-screen.
Alive.
Elena covered her mouth.
Antonio Moretti sat in the same surveillance room.
He looked exhausted.
Bruised.
Afraid.
But alive.
He leaned toward the camera.
“If Elena ever sees this, then I failed.”
She began crying silently.
“Sweetheart,” Antonio said, “I’m sorry.”
Elena reached toward the screen.
Her father continued.
“The money isn’t stolen. It’s being moved. Someone inside the Valente house has been selling names.”
He looked toward the door.
“I hid proof where only someone who knew Elena would understand.”
Elena whispered, “Where?”
Antonio’s expression became urgent.
“If Matteo is alive, trust him only after he tells you what happened at Saint Gabriel’s.”
Elena froze.
Saint Gabriel’s.
Her childhood church.
Then Antonio said the last words she expected.
“And whatever you do, never trust—”
The recording stopped.
Elena stared.
“No.”
She hit play again.
The same abrupt ending.
She clicked the file.
Corrupted.
Behind her, the surveillance-room door unlocked.
Elena spun around.
Someone stepped inside.
It wasn’t Matteo.
Dario Bellini closed the door behind him and smiled.
May you like
“You really do look like your father.”
Then he locked the door...
