Chapter 5 - The Price of a Mother
At midnight, Lorenzo received a photograph of Renata’s mother tied to a chair inside the abandoned Bellandi hotel. Written beneath it were nine words: Bring the card, or the old woman dies first.
Renata saw the message over his shoulder.
Her face emptied of color. “That’s my mother.”
“I know.”
“She has a heart condition.”
“I’ll bring her back.”
“You promised Emilia you would come back too.”
Lorenzo looked toward the medical room where the child slept beneath his coat. The fire had damaged the east wing, forcing the household into the estate’s fortified guesthouse. Pino lay at the foot of Emilia’s bed, refusing food and watching the door.
Renata stood in front of Lorenzo, smoke still tangled in her hair.
“You cannot keep promising everyone survival,” she said. “Not when you intend to walk into a trap alone.”
“I don’t intend to go alone.”
“You’re taking guards?”
“No.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“I’m taking the truth.”
The memory-card files had already been delivered to people beyond Vittorio’s reach. At dawn, if Lorenzo failed to cancel the release, every recording and bank document would become public.
Vittorio believed possession of the card still mattered.
Lorenzo intended to let him continue believing it.
Matteo provided the hotel’s layout. Built in the 1920s and abandoned after a suspicious fire, the property contained service tunnels once used to move liquor during Prohibition. Vittorio would guard the main entrance, but he might not know every tunnel.
Renata did.
“My mother worked there before she came to the mansion,” she said. “She showed me the tunnels when I was young.”
“You’re not coming.”
“She is my mother.”
“And Emilia needs hers.”
“If you go through the wrong tunnel, you’ll be dead before Emilia wakes up.”
Lorenzo wanted to refuse. Then he remembered how easily Matteo had placed the clock in Renata’s locker. People overlooked servants. They mistook quietness for weakness and poverty for ignorance.
Vittorio had made that mistake.
Lorenzo would not.
They left Emilia under Agnes’s protection. The head housekeeper had remained near the child since the fire, haunted by her role in the false accusation.
Before Lorenzo departed, Emilia woke.
“Are you finding Grandma?”
“Yes.”
She held out the stuffed rabbit.
“Take Bunny.”
“He should stay with you.”
“He helped before.”
Lorenzo accepted the damaged toy and placed it inside his coat.
Emilia touched his tie. “Come back, Coffee Man.”
Renata kissed her daughter.
“We both will.”
They drove to the abandoned hotel in a plain vehicle and stopped half a mile away. Rain had begun falling over the city. The building’s broken windows stared across the river like empty eyes.
Renata led Lorenzo through weeds to a drainage opening beneath the rear foundation. Inside, the tunnel smelled of mold and rust.
They reached a split.
“The left passage leads to the kitchen,” Renata whispered. “The right reaches the ballroom.”
A sound echoed ahead.
Someone was coming.
Lorenzo pulled Renata into a narrow storage recess. Two armed men passed, discussing Vittorio’s plan.
“The old woman hasn’t talked,” one said.
“She doesn’t need to. Salvi’s bringing the girl after he gets the card.”
Renata’s hand tightened around Lorenzo’s arm.
Emilia was never meant to remain safe, even if Lorenzo obeyed.
When the guards disappeared, they continued toward the ballroom.
Renata’s mother sat under a chandelier draped in dust. Vittorio stood beside her. Carlo waited near the stage with six armed men.
Lorenzo entered through the main doors.
Every weapon rose.
Renata remained hidden in the service passage.
“You always did enjoy dramatic entrances,” Vittorio said.
“You taught me.”
“And yet you never learned gratitude.”
Lorenzo tossed a memory card onto the floor between them.
“Release the woman.”
Vittorio laughed. “Do you imagine this is an exchange?”
“You asked for the card.”
“I asked for your surrender.”
Lorenzo looked at Renata’s mother. A bruise marked her cheek, but her eyes were alert.
“Mrs. Bellini, are you injured?”
“She knows nothing,” Vittorio said.
The old woman spoke anyway. “Your father knew you would eventually find the clock.”
Vittorio struck her.
Lorenzo’s hand moved toward his weapon. Six rifles shifted toward him.
“Do that again,” Lorenzo said, “and nothing in this room will save you.”
Vittorio picked up the card and handed it to Carlo.
“Verify it.”
Carlo inserted it into a laptop. A folder containing Alessandro’s recordings appeared. Lorenzo had deliberately copied several genuine files to the card.
“It’s real,” Carlo said.
Vittorio exhaled.
“Kill him.”
The lights went out.
Renata had reached the old electrical room.
Gunfire erupted in the darkness. Lorenzo dropped behind a stone column and fired toward the flashes. Mrs. Bellini threw herself sideways, taking the chair with her.
Emergency lights flickered red.
Renata emerged from the service doorway and dragged her mother behind the stage.
Carlo saw her.
He aimed.
Matteo stepped from the shadows and shot Carlo in the shoulder.
The former security chief fell, firing wildly.
Vittorio fled toward the upper gallery while his remaining men exchanged gunfire with Matteo and Lorenzo. Two dropped their weapons when Lorenzo offered them one chance to live.
The others did not accept.
When the ballroom fell silent, Lorenzo ran upstairs after Vittorio.
He found him on the roof.
Rain hammered the cracked stone. The river churned several stories below.
Vittorio held a pistol in one hand and the memory card in the other.
“Your father stood exactly where you are standing,” he said.
Lorenzo stopped.
“What did you say?”
“Not here. On the cliff road. But he looked at me the same way.”
“You were there when he died.”
“I watched Carlo destroy the brakes. Your father still nearly survived.”
Vittorio smiled, and Lorenzo finally saw the monster who had lived behind the familiar face.
“He crawled from the wreckage,” Vittorio continued. “He asked me to help him. Do you know what I told him?”
Lorenzo raised his weapon.
Vittorio laughed. “I told him you would be easier to control.”
A small red light blinked inside the torn eye of the stuffed rabbit protruding from Lorenzo’s coat.
Emilia’s toy had concealed more than a memory card.
May you like
It contained a miniature camera.
And every word Vittorio had just spoken was being transmitted live.
