Chapter 4 - Seven Years Behind Glass
The sound came from the private library.
Matteo reached it first.
Gemma pushed Leonardo behind him.
The library door stood open.
It had been locked for years.
Inside, a computer screen glowed.
One file waited on the desktop.
PLAY ME.
Matteo ordered everyone out.
Gemma stayed.
Leonardo stayed.
Matteo looked at them.
Then pressed play.
Daniel Riley appeared on-screen.
Gemma's father looked younger.
Terrified.
“If you're watching this, I probably failed.”
Gemma covered her mouth.
Daniel continued.
“The Ferraro crash wasn't an accident. I saw the second vehicle. I saw who got out.”
Matteo stepped closer.
“The driver wasn't alone.”
Daniel glanced behind him in the recording.
“One of them paid Officer Brennan. The other took something from the Ferraro car before police arrived.”
Leonardo whispered, “What?”
Daniel held up a small vial.
“Blood.”
Matteo's face changed.
“They switched the sample,” Leonardo said.
Daniel nodded on the recording as if answering him.
“Matteo Ferraro wasn't drugged before the crash.”
Matteo gripped the desk.
“The sedative entered his blood sample afterward.”
Gemma looked at him.
For seven years, Matteo had believed he drove drugged.
A lie had built his prison too.
Daniel continued.
“I hid the original dash camera card. If Gemma ever sees this—baby, I'm sorry.”
Gemma broke.
One small sound escaped her.
Leonardo reached for her hand.
Daniel's final words came quickly.
“Don't trust the man who manages the house.”
The screen went black.
Joseph.
Matteo reached for his phone.
No signal.
The library door slammed.
Locked.
Then smoke began pouring through the ventilation grate.
Matteo pulled his jacket over Leonardo's face.
Gemma searched the wall.
“There!”
An emergency release.
Matteo struck the cover.
Nothing.
Leonardo pointed toward the bookshelf.
“My chair.”
“What?”
“Use the chair.”
Matteo hesitated.
Leonardo shouted, “Do it!”
Together, Matteo and Gemma drove the heavy wheelchair footplate into the panel.
It shattered.
The lock released.
They escaped into the corridor.
Guards were running.
Joseph was gone.
So was the estate's security chief.
By dawn, Matteo's men had sealed the property.
Joseph's room had been emptied.
His phone remained on the bed.
Inside it was one unsent text.
HE FOUND THE CARD.
Matteo read it twice.
“To whom?” Gemma asked.
“No number. Draft only.”
Leonardo looked toward him.
“You still haven't asked me.”
Matteo knew what he meant.
The accident.
The seven years.
Everything.
His voice lowered.
“I don't know how.”
Leonardo's eyes hardened.
“Try.”
Matteo looked at his brother.
“Did I do this to you?”
Leonardo's anger vanished.
“No.”
One word.
Seven years.
Matteo's face broke.
Leonardo continued.
“You were driving. You lost control. But someone hit us first.”
Matteo lowered his head.
“I left you.”
“Yes.”
The answer hurt more.
“You left me every day afterward.”
Matteo could not defend himself.
“You paid everyone,” Leonardo said. “Doctors. Nurses. Guards. Therapists. You rebuilt half the house. You watched me eat breakfast. You watched me sleep. You watched me stare out a window for seven years.”
His voice trembled.
“But you never came through the door.”
Matteo's eyes filled.
Gemma quietly moved away.
This was not hers.
Not yet.
Then Leonardo said, “I needed my brother.”
Matteo sank into the chair opposite him.
For the first time since the accident, they sat in the same room without glass or screens between them.
Neither knew how to repair seven years.
But they started with silence.
Later that afternoon, Gemma found something inside her father's ring.
A rolled strip of paper.
Four words.
ST. VINCENT. LOCKER 214.
Matteo recognized the name.
“Hospital?”
Leonardo nodded.
“The hospital where we were taken.”
They went that night.
Locker 214 had supposedly been unused for years.
Gemma's brass key opened it.
Inside sat an old phone.
One photograph.
And a hospital bracelet.
The bracelet belonged to Matteo.
The photograph showed Joseph speaking with a doctor.
The phone had one saved voicemail.
Gemma pressed play.
Joseph's voice filled the narrow corridor.
“The twins survived. That complicates things.”
Another man answered.
“Which one remembers?”
“Leonardo.”
“And Matteo?”
“He'll blame himself.”
Then the second voice said something that made Matteo go completely still.
“Good. Keep the brothers apart until their father dies.”
Leonardo looked at Matteo.
Their father had died five years earlier.
Matteo took the phone.
“Play it again.”
Gemma did.
This time Matteo recognized the second voice.
May you like
He whispered the name.
And the lights inside the hospital basement went out.
