Chapter 6 - Fifty-Nine Seconds
Dante moved first.
“Marco, windows.”
Marco ran.
“Elena, don’t touch the device.”
She held Lily perfectly still despite shaking hands.
The timer reached fifty seconds.
Dante knelt.
The explosive vest was crude but dangerous.
Four charges.
Pressure switch.
Remote receiver.
A wire ran beneath Lily’s dress.
“Can you remove it?” Elena whispered.
“I don’t know.”
Lily looked down.
“Is it a present?”
“No,” Dante said.
His voice remained calm.
“It’s something silly a bad man put on you.”
“Can I take it off?”
“Not yet.”
Forty seconds.
Marco struck a stained-glass window with a chair.
Reinforced glass.
It held.
“Back door chained.”
Dante studied the wires.
Red.
Black.
Yellow.
Green.
Movie logic said cut a wire.
Reality said touching the wrong one could kill all of them.
Thirty seconds.
Elena started crying silently.
Dante looked at Lily.
“Remember our pinky promise?”
She nodded.
“I need you to be very brave.”
“I am brave.”
“I know.”
Dante found the vest clasp.
A pressure plate rested beneath it.
If lifted incorrectly, detonation.
Marco returned.
“No exit.”
Twenty-one seconds.
Dante made a decision.
“Take Elena.”
“What?”
“Get her behind the altar.”
“I’m not leaving Lily.”
“You’re not leaving her.”
Elena understood what Dante planned.
“No.”
“I can hold the pressure plate and remove the vest.”
“And then?”
Dante did not answer.
Elena grabbed his face.
“No.”
“Sixteen seconds.”
“No.”
“ELENA.”
She froze.
“Take Lily when I tell you.”
Dante slid his hand beneath the plate.
Pressed hard.
Opened the clasp.
Ten seconds.
He lifted the vest away while maintaining pressure.
“Take her.”
Elena grabbed Lily and ran.
Eight.
Seven.
Dante held the device.
Six.
Marco shouted, “Dante!”
Five.
A section of floor beside the altar suddenly opened.
A basement hatch.
Marco ripped it up.
Four.
“Here!”
Dante threw the vest into the stone crypt below.
Marco slammed the hatch.
Two.
One.
The explosion shook the church.
Stone cracked.
Glass shattered.
Smoke filled the sanctuary.
But the crypt contained most of the blast.
Dante hit the floor.
His ears rang.
When he looked up, Lily was crying.
Alive.
Elena held her.
Alive.
Marco crawled from behind a pew.
Alive.
Dante laughed.
He did not mean to.
It came out of him before he could stop it.
Lily pulled away from Elena and ran toward him.
“You broke the bad present.”
Dante opened his arms.
She hit his chest.
He held her tightly.
“Yes.”
“You promised.”
“Yes.”
“You came.”
“Yes.”
Dante looked over Lily’s head at Elena.
Something passed between them.
Not romance.
Not yet.
Something more complicated.
Trust beginning where fear had lived.
Sirens approached.
Not police.
Dante’s own security vehicles.
Greco had disappeared.
Again.
But he had made one mistake.
The bomb’s receiver contained a transmission log.
Marco’s technicians traced the last signal to a warehouse near Red Hook.
By sunset, they found Greco.
Anthony Vieri was with him.
So were records connecting both men to the clinic.
Dante could have killed them.
Everyone expected him to.
Instead he did something nobody expected.
He called federal prosecutors.
Not the compromised agents named in Rafael’s ledger.
A special task force from Washington.
He handed over copies of the evidence.
Doctors were arrested.
Greco and Anthony were charged with kidnapping, conspiracy, attempted murder, unlawful reproductive procedures and a long list of financial crimes.
The three other children named in Rafael’s ledger were located.
All were safe.
Their guardians were informed privately.
Their identities remained protected.
Vittorio agreed to testify.
His involvement had been cowardly, but he had not participated in the procedures.
He had spent years trying unsuccessfully to dismantle what Giovanni Moretti created without exposing the children.
Dante did not forgive him immediately.
Perhaps he never fully would.
But for the first time, truth replaced assumptions.
Elena spent two days recovering.
On the second afternoon, Dante entered her hospital room.
Lily slept beside her.
Elena looked at him.
“You know.”
“Yes.”
“The test?”
“Confirmed.”
She closed her eyes.
“I wanted to tell you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because Rafael made me promise.”
“He made everyone promise things.”
A sad smile appeared.
“Yes.”
Dante sat.
“Did you love him?”
Elena nodded.
“Very much.”
Dante expected jealousy.
Instead he felt gratitude.
Rafael had protected his daughter before Dante knew she existed.
“He would have been good to her.”
“He was.”
Dante frowned.
Elena explained.
“During my pregnancy, when he was alive, he talked about her as though she already existed. He said biology didn’t matter. He was going to raise her with me.”
Dante looked toward Lily.
“So Rafael planned to become her father.”
“Yes.”
A painful smile.
“He said if you ever found out, you’d probably buy her a bulletproof stroller.”
Dante almost smiled.
“Sounds like him.”
Elena laughed softly.
Then became serious.
“I don’t expect anything from you.”
Dante looked at her.
“She is your biological daughter because someone did something terrible to both of us. That doesn’t mean you owe us a life.”
Dante was quiet.
“Do you want me in her life?”
Elena looked surprised.
“I want her safe.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She looked toward Lily.
“She already trusts you.”
Dante’s throat tightened.
“And you?”
Elena hesitated.
“I’m trying.”
Fair.
He deserved nothing more yet.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“I dismantle everything my father created.”
“And the organization?”
Dante looked out the window.
For years, he had justified the Moretti empire by telling himself he was different from Giovanni.
Less cruel.
More controlled.
But the night Lily knocked on his door had exposed the truth.
He still lived inside his father’s architecture.
His father’s money.
His father’s methods.
Changing the man at the top was not enough.
“I’m getting out.”
Elena stared.
“You can’t just leave.”
“No.”
“What will happen?”
“Businesses that are legal stay. Everything else gets dismantled.”
“That could take years.”
“Then it takes years.”
“And enemies?”
“I’ll handle them.”
Elena sighed.
“You still sound like a mafia boss.”
“For now.”
Lily stirred.
Her eyes opened.
She looked at Dante.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Did you find Bunny?”
Dante had forgotten.
The stuffed rabbit remained damaged from the church.
“I did.”
He handed it to her.
One ear had been carefully sewn back on.
Lily inspected it.
“You fixed him.”
“I had help.”
She hugged the rabbit.
Then patted the mattress.
“Sit.”
Dante obeyed.
Elena watched them.
Lily leaned against him.
For ten minutes, nobody talked about conspiracies.
Nobody talked about Rafael.
Nobody talked about murder.
Lily told Dante that peas were disgusting.
That yellow was the best color.
That rabbits were better than dogs because dogs were “too licky.”
And that her mother snored.
“I do not,” Elena protested.
“You do.”
Dante smiled.
It felt unfamiliar.
Then Marco entered.
The smile disappeared.
He held a sealed evidence bag.
“We found something in Greco’s warehouse.”
Dante stood.
Inside the bag was a key.
Old.
Brass.
Attached to it was a label.
R.M.
“Rafael?”
Marco nodded.
“There was an address.”
“Where?”
Marco handed him a piece of paper.
Dante read it.
Elena saw the address.
Her face went white.
“No.”
Dante looked at her.
“You know it?”
Elena nodded slowly.
“That was the apartment Rafael rented for us.”
“Why would Greco have the key?”
“I don’t know.”
Marco spoke.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“The apartment is still being paid for.”
Dante frowned.
“By whom?”
Marco looked at him.
“We traced the account.”
A pause.
“The payments started one month after Rafael died.”
Dante waited.
May you like
Marco swallowed.
“And the account is in Rafael Moretti’s name.”
