Chapter 2 - The Yellow Room with the Stars
Lorenzo had heard Isabella scream only once before.
It had been six years earlier, when a delivery truck jumped the curb near Washington Square and nearly struck a child. Isabella had pushed the boy out of the way and gone down beneath the truck’s mirror. Her scream had been brief, angry, more outrage than fear.
The sound that came through the wall was different.
It was weak.
Hoarse.
But it was hers.
“Lorenzo!”
He hit the darkened corridor at a run.
Enzo followed with two security officers. Elena hurried behind them, carrying Emma despite the child’s protests. Emergency lights glowed red along the baseboards, turning the servants’ passage into a narrow tunnel.
The baby cried again.
The sound came from behind shelves stacked with folded linen.
Lorenzo tore the first shelf from the wall.
Wood split beneath his hands.
Enzo pulled the second unit aside and exposed a smooth section of plaster.
“No seam,” one guard said.
“There,” Emma called from Elena’s arms.
She pointed to a brass hook shaped like a leaf.
Lorenzo grabbed it and pulled.
Nothing happened.
“Turn it,” Emma said.
He twisted the hook.
A concealed mechanism clicked.
The plaster wall shifted inward.
Cold air touched Lorenzo’s face.
Behind the false wall stood a narrow steel door with an electronic keypad. A small green light flashed at eye level.
Enzo examined it.
“This wasn’t here during the last security renovation.”
“Who approved the renovation?” Lorenzo asked.
“Marco.”
Lorenzo’s expression hardened.
Enzo pulled a compact tool from inside his jacket and removed the keypad cover.
The screen blinked.
“Forty seconds.”
“You have ten.”
“I enjoy your confidence in me.”
From behind the door, Isabella screamed again.
“Please!”
Lorenzo slammed his palm against the steel.
“Isabella!”
Silence followed.
Then a sob.
“Lorenzo?”
His forehead touched the door.
“I’m here.”
Elena turned Emma’s face into her shoulder. The maid’s own tears were falling freely now.
Inside the hidden room, something heavy scraped across the floor.
A man’s voice shouted.
Then came a sharp crack.
Lorenzo stepped back.
“Break it.”
One guard raised a hydraulic spreader.
Enzo held up a hand.
“Wait.”
The keypad light changed from red to green.
He punched the door release.
The lock disengaged.
Lorenzo entered first.
The hidden nursery was larger than anyone expected.
Its walls were painted pale yellow. Small lights embedded in the ceiling created a field of artificial stars. A white crib stood near the far wall, surrounded by medical equipment. Bottles, blankets, and medication trays covered a long counter.
A baby lay in the crib, crying beneath a blue knitted blanket.
Beside her, Isabella Conti struggled against a man in medical scrubs.
She was thinner than Lorenzo remembered.
Much thinner.
Her dark hair had been cut unevenly above her shoulders. A bruise darkened one side of her face. An intravenous line ran from her arm to a portable bag. Yet her eyes—the same clear, defiant eyes from the memorial portrait downstairs—were alive.
The man holding her pressed a syringe against her neck.
“Back away,” he said.
Lorenzo stopped.
Every instinct in him demanded violence.
Every calculation demanded patience.
The man’s hand trembled.
Enzo entered behind Lorenzo with his weapon lowered but ready.
“Doctor Adrian Voss,” Enzo said. “You were declared dead four years ago.”
The man smiled without humor.
“People believe what paperwork tells them.”
Isabella stared at Lorenzo as if afraid he might vanish.
“You came.”
He could not answer.
For eight months, he had imagined her burning. Dying alone. Calling for him where no one could hear.
Now she stood twelve feet away, alive and terrified, while their daughter cried behind her.
Voss tightened his hold.
“One step closer, and she receives enough fentanyl to stop her heart.”
Lorenzo looked at the syringe.
“Then you die before she hits the floor.”
“Perhaps. But she still dies.”
Emma leaned out from Elena’s arms.
“Rabbit,” she whispered.
Her stuffed animal lay inside the crib beside the baby.
Voss glanced toward the voice.
That moment was enough.
Isabella drove her heel down on his foot and threw her head backward into his face.
The syringe slipped.
Enzo fired once.
The bullet struck Voss’s shoulder and spun him into the counter. Lorenzo crossed the room before the man could recover. He caught Voss by the throat, slammed him against the wall, and took the syringe from his hand.
Enzo seized Lorenzo’s wrist before he could drive it back into Voss’s neck.
“We need him talking.”
Lorenzo stared at the doctor.
Voss’s face was gray with pain.
“He knows where Marco went,” Enzo added.
Slowly, Lorenzo released him.
The security officers dragged Voss to the floor and restrained his hands.
Isabella swayed.
Lorenzo reached her before she fell.
For one suspended second, neither seemed to know how to touch the other.
Then Isabella gripped the front of his suit and buried her face against his chest.
He wrapped both arms around her.
The control that had carried him through eight months of grief cracked all at once.
Lorenzo closed his eyes and pressed his face into her hair.
“You’re alive.”
She shook against him.
“I tried to get out.”
“I know.”
“I thought you stopped looking.”
“Never.”
It was not entirely true.
He had stopped searching for survivors after Marco gave him the death certificates. But he had never stopped looking for the person responsible. He had hunted enemies across three countries while the real crime remained hidden inside his own home.
The shame of it nearly brought him to his knees.
The baby cried again.
Isabella pulled away.
“Our daughter.”
They approached the crib together.
The child was eight months old, with dark hair, round cheeks, and furious blue-gray eyes. A hospital band around her ankle bore a false name: Sofia Vale.
Lorenzo reached down, then hesitated.
Isabella noticed.
“She won’t break.”
His hand slid beneath the baby’s head.
The moment he lifted her, she stopped crying.
Her tiny fingers closed around his tie.
Lorenzo stared.
The room blurred.
Isabella touched the child’s cheek.
“Her name is Lucia.”
He looked at her.
“You named her?”
“I had to call her something when no one was listening.”
“Lucia,” he repeated.
The baby blinked up at him.
Emma wriggled out of Elena’s arms and approached the crib.
“That’s my sister.”
Elena caught her before she came too close.
“Emma, please.”
Isabella turned toward the maid.
Recognition passed across her face.
“You.”
Elena lowered her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“You brought the milk.”
“I didn’t know at first.”
“But later?”
Elena’s chin trembled.
“Later, I knew enough.”
Lorenzo shifted Lucia carefully against his chest.
“What does that mean?”
Elena looked at Voss, who sat bleeding beneath guard supervision.
“They told me the room was for a patient who needed privacy. They said she was mentally ill and dangerous. I was ordered to leave meals and linens inside the service chamber without speaking.”
Isabella’s expression hardened.
“You heard me.”
“Yes.”
“And you still left.”
“They had my daughter.”
Elena pulled Emma close.
“Marco showed me photographs of her walking to preschool. He knew the route, the teacher, the playground. He said if I helped you, Emma would disappear.”
Isabella looked at the child, and some of her anger gave way.
“When did Emma find us?”
“Three weeks ago,” Elena said. “She crawled through the linen opening while I was cleaning. She came back with the rabbit missing. I asked what happened, and she told me about the baby.”
Emma smiled faintly at Lucia.
“She liked him.”
Isabella looked at the stuffed rabbit in the crib.
“You came in again,” she said.
Emma nodded.
“I brought cookies.”
Despite everything, Isabella laughed once—a broken, disbelieving sound.
Lorenzo looked at Elena.
“The pendant.”
“I found it in the laundry last night. It was sewn into the hem of one of Isabella’s nightgowns.”
“I put it there,” Isabella said. “I hoped someone would recognize it.”
Elena covered her mouth.
“I wanted to tell you today. I thought with all the guests and guards, Marco couldn’t take Emma. But I lost my nerve.”
“You almost lost more than that,” Lorenzo said.
Isabella touched his arm.
“She came.”
He looked at her.
“She came eventually.”
Enzo approached the medical counter.
“These medications have labels from St. Vincent’s private wing.”
Isabella nodded.
“That’s where they kept me after the ambush.”
“What happened that night?” Lorenzo asked.
Her eyes changed.
“The convoy stopped near the East River tunnel. Marco’s men were wearing police jackets. They shot the driver. They took Lucia before I could move.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened.
“Marco was there?”
“He opened my door himself.”
The room seemed to contract.
“He told me you were dead,” Isabella continued. “He said your enemies had killed you and that he was taking us somewhere safe.”
“Why did you believe him?”
“I didn’t. But Lucia was three days old, and I was bleeding. I had no weapon.”
“What happened to the car?”
“They burned another vehicle with a stolen infant carrier. Marco had Voss sedate me. When I woke up, I was in a clinic under another name.”
“And then here?”
“Two months later. He said no one would search the mansion because everyone believed you controlled every room in it.”
Lorenzo felt the truth of that like a knife.
Marco had understood his pride.
He had used it as architecture.
Enzo searched Voss’s pockets and removed a phone.
“Encrypted.”
Voss smiled weakly.
“You won’t find him.”
Lorenzo turned.
“Where did Marco go?”
The doctor looked at Lucia in Lorenzo’s arms.
“You think finding them means you won?”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“Where?”
Voss’s smile widened.
“He has already begun the second burial.”
Isabella went pale.
“What does that mean?”
Enzo’s phone vibrated.
He answered, listened for three seconds, then looked toward Lorenzo.
“The gates are still locked. Marco never left the estate.”
“Then find him.”
“We have a larger problem.”
Enzo turned the phone so Lorenzo could see the security feed.
Black smoke rolled through the mansion’s archive wing.
“The fire suppression system has been disabled,” Enzo said. “That wing contains the original convoy records, staff logs, and security backups.”
“He’s destroying evidence,” Isabella whispered.
“No,” Voss said from the floor. “He’s destroying the story.”
Lorenzo crouched in front of him, still holding Lucia.
“What story?”
Voss looked pleased with himself.
“The one where Marco Bellini is a traitor.”
Enzo’s eyes narrowed.
“What has he planted?”
Voss said nothing.
Lorenzo handed Lucia to Isabella.
Then he took Voss by the injured shoulder.
The doctor screamed.
“What has he planted?”
“A route log,” Voss gasped. “A signed route log.”
“Signed by whom?”
Voss laughed through clenched teeth.
“By Isabella.”
She stared at him.
“I signed nothing.”
“You signed dozens of forms while drugged.”
Enzo swore under his breath.
Lorenzo released the doctor.
“What does the log say?”
“That Isabella changed the convoy route without authorization,” Voss said. “That she met secretly with one of your rivals. That she arranged her own disappearance after stealing money from the Duca foundation.”
Isabella looked as if he had struck her.
“No one will believe that.”
“Half the city came downstairs prepared to believe whatever grief requires.”
Lorenzo turned toward the door.
“Enzo, secure the nursery. Medical team, only people you trust.”
“Already moving.”
“Take Isabella and Lucia to the safe suite.”
Isabella caught Lorenzo’s hand.
“Do not leave us.”
“I’m not leaving. I’m ending this.”
The mansion alarm began to ring.
Far below, mourners shouted as staff guided them toward the exits.
Enzo checked another message.
“The archive fire has spread to the east study.”
Lorenzo’s private study.
The room where Isabella’s pendant had supposedly been locked.
Emma tugged at Lorenzo’s jacket.
“The silver bird wasn’t the only thing.”
Everyone looked at her.
She pointed toward the stuffed rabbit inside the crib.
“Baby Lucia put the paper inside him.”
Elena frowned.
“What paper?”
Emma took the rabbit, opened a loose seam beneath its bent ear, and pulled out a tightly folded strip.
Isabella stared.
“I hid that weeks ago.”
Lorenzo unfolded it.
The paper held a handwritten list of dates, medication doses, names, and delivery times.
At the bottom, one line had been underlined twice:
Every Thursday, 2:10 a.m.—Route 17 service entrance. M. Bellini signs personally.
Enzo read over Lorenzo’s shoulder.
“A route log.”
“The real one,” Isabella said.
Lorenzo looked toward the smoke beginning to curl through the open corridor.
Marco had buried Isabella once in public.
Then he had buried her again inside Lorenzo’s home.
But he had overlooked a maid’s child, a stuffed rabbit, and a woman who had refused to let the truth die.
Lorenzo folded the paper and placed it inside his vest.
“Get them downstairs through the secure tunnel.”
“What about you?” Isabella asked.
He looked at the silver swallow pendant in his hand.
“I’m going to find the man who planned your funeral.”
May you like
From the corridor came the sound of a gunshot.
Then the lights went out completely.
