Chapter 2 - THE BROTHER IN THE GRAVE
For several seconds, no one on the driveway moved.
Not the guards.
Not the false driver.
Not Isabella.
Even the engine of the black sedan seemed to grow quieter.
Alessio stood beside the open door of the lead vehicle, studying the villa as if he had returned to a place that existed only in his nightmares.
Two years earlier, Vittorio had walked behind his brother’s coffin through a rainstorm.
He had placed one hand against the polished wood and promised Alessio that every man responsible for his death would eventually pay.
Now the dead man was standing twenty yards away.
“Vittorio,” Alessio called.
The voice was older.
Rougher.
But unmistakable.
Isabella’s face lost its color.
That was the first detail Vittorio trusted.
If Alessio had been part of her plan, she would not have looked terrified to see him.
The false driver reached inside his jacket.
Vittorio raised his phone.
“Do not.”
The man froze.
Vittorio stepped out from behind the cypress trees, shielding Sophia with his body.
Isabella turned sharply.
For one instant, her eyes widened.
Then the shock disappeared behind the graceful mask she had worn throughout their marriage.
“Vittorio,” she said. “Thank God. We have been looking everywhere.”
Vittorio held up Renzo’s cracked phone.
“I found something more interesting.”
Her gaze dropped toward it.
The false driver’s hand moved again.
Alessio shouted.
“Get down!”
A metallic click cut through the driveway.
Vittorio grabbed Sophia and threw both of them behind the stone wall.
The sedan exploded.
The sound tore through the estate.
Glass burst from the villa’s front windows. Gravel and twisted metal struck the cypress trees. The pressure slammed against Vittorio’s back as he covered Sophia with his body.
For several seconds, he could hear nothing except a sharp ringing.
Then Sophia moved beneath him.
“Sir?”
“I’m here.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
It was not entirely true, but it was true enough.
Vittorio lifted his head.
Flames climbed from the ruined sedan.
The false driver had been knocked onto the gravel but was already crawling toward the gate. Isabella stood near a marble column, one hand pressed against her ear.
Alessio remained beside the black vehicles.
He had taken cover before the explosion.
He had known it was coming.
Vittorio rose slowly.
His guards spread across the driveway, weapons drawn, uncertain whether to aim at the false driver, Isabella or the brother who had returned from the grave.
“Take Luca,” Isabella shouted, pointing toward the false driver. “He tried to kill my husband.”
Luca stared at her in disbelief.
“You told me to press it!”
The words hung in the smoke.
Isabella’s mask cracked.
Only briefly.
But everyone saw it.
Luca staggered to his feet and ran toward the gate.
Two guards intercepted him and forced him to the ground.
Vittorio walked through the drifting smoke.
He stopped in front of Isabella.
She had changed by almost nothing.
Her dress remained elegant. Her hair remained pinned. A small streak of soot crossed one cheek.
But she was no longer the woman he had married.
Perhaps she never had been.
“Where is Enzo?” he asked.
“Vittorio, listen to me.”
“Where is my driver?”
“I did not know the car would explode.”
Luca laughed bitterly from the ground.
“She chose the seat herself.”
Isabella looked toward him.
The hatred in her eyes told Vittorio more than any confession could have.
Alessio approached.
Vittorio’s men raised their weapons.
“Lower them,” Alessio said.
“No one gives orders here except me,” Vittorio replied.
His brother looked at him.
“Then order them to lower the guns before the woman standing behind you gets everyone killed.”
Vittorio turned.
Isabella had taken three steps toward the villa.
Marco stood inside the shattered doorway.
A pistol was visible in his hand.
Vittorio’s oldest lieutenant, Carlo, raised his weapon.
Marco pulled Isabella inside and slammed the heavy door.
The locks engaged.
“Boss,” Carlo said, “we can enter through the west hall.”
“No.”
Vittorio turned toward Alessio.
“How are you alive?”
Alessio’s jaw tightened.
“That is the first question you ask?”
“I buried you.”
“You buried a body wearing my ring.”
The rain from that funeral seemed to return in Vittorio’s memory.
The coffin had remained closed.
The remains recovered from the burned vehicle had been too badly damaged for identification. Isabella had stood beside Vittorio throughout the service, holding his arm and telling him not to look.
She had identified the ring.
She had identified the coat.
She had identified his brother.
Vittorio stared at the woman’s silhouette behind the broken glass of the villa door.
Alessio continued.
“I survived the attack. Barely. Someone removed me from the wreckage before the police arrived. I woke inside a private clinic under another name.”
“Who took you there?”
“At first, I believed it was someone loyal to me.”
Alessio’s eyes moved toward the house.
“It was Isabella.”
Sophia stepped from behind Vittorio.
“She saved you?”
“No,” Alessio said. “She kept me.”
He crouched so that he was closer to Sophia’s height.
“For eighteen months, men watched the doors. They gave me letters. Photographs. Bank records. Everything was supposed to prove Vittorio had ordered the attack against me.”
Vittorio felt something hollow open inside his chest.
“You believed her?”
“I wanted to.”
The answer contained more pain than accusation.
“You became head of the family after our father died. I challenged decisions. We argued. Then my car went off the road, and I woke to evidence that my own brother had paid for it.”
“I never ordered your death.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Because the woman who kept me hidden made a mistake. She used the same accountant for the clinic and for one of your offshore companies.”
Alessio looked toward the villa.
“Three months ago, I followed the money back to Isabella.”
Sophia moved closer to Vittorio.
“Did she take my papa too?”
Alessio looked at the photograph on the phone.
“No. But I know where they brought him.”
Vittorio stepped toward him.
“Where?”
“An abandoned lemon packing house outside Caserta.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I was there last night.”
The guards reacted.
Carlo lifted his weapon again.
Sophia stared down at Alessio’s boots.
White dust covered the edges of the black leather.
Not gravel.
Not ash.
Powdered limestone.
“There’s white dust in the old packing house,” she whispered. “Papa took me there once to buy wooden boxes.”
Alessio looked at her.
“You really do watch everything.”
“My papa taught me.”
Alessio’s expression changed at the word papa.
“I followed Marco’s car there. Renzo was alive when I left. I tried to reach him, but there were too many men.”
“Why come here instead of calling me?”
“Because I received a message telling me to arrive at seven-fifteen if I wanted to see the man who buried me.”
Vittorio looked at the burning wreckage.
Isabella had intended both brothers to arrive at the same place.
She would kill Vittorio in the car.
Then Alessio, the dead brother with every reason to hate him, would be blamed.
Or perhaps Alessio would be killed too, erasing the final witness to her deception.
The front door opened.
Marco appeared with his weapon pointed toward them.
“Everyone back away,” he shouted.
He reached behind the door and pulled a woman into view.
It was Lucia, Matteo’s nanny.
Her hands trembled above her head.
“Where is my son?” Vittorio asked.
Lucia began to cry.
“I’m sorry.”
Vittorio’s voice hardened.
“Where is Matteo?”
Lucia looked toward Isabella.
The answer was written across her face.
Vittorio walked toward the steps.
Marco pressed the weapon against Lucia’s side.
“One more step and—”
A child’s bedroom window opened on the second floor.
A small blue blanket dropped from it and floated onto the driveway.
Vittorio recognized it immediately.
Matteo had slept with that blanket since he was a baby.
Isabella appeared beside Marco.
Her voice was calm again.
“You have something I need, Vittorio.”
“What?”
“The access code to the private ledger.”
Vittorio stopped.
“And you have something I need,” Isabella continued. “Our son.”
“He is not a bargaining piece.”
“He became one the moment you decided to hide behind the trees.”
Sophia tightened her hand around Vittorio’s sleeve.
Isabella smiled without warmth.
“You have thirty minutes to bring me the code.”
Then she looked at Alessio.
“And you should have stayed dead.”
The door slammed shut again.
Carlo ran toward the security room.
Seconds later, his voice came through Vittorio’s phone.
“Boss, the nursery is empty. The underground garage door opened six minutes before we arrived.”
Vittorio looked toward the eastern road beyond the estate.
Isabella had never intended to remain inside the villa.
The confrontation at the door had been a distraction.
Her real escape had already begun.
Carlo’s voice dropped.
“We found the nanny’s phone in the nursery. There is a video.”
Vittorio opened the file Carlo sent him.
Matteo sat in the back of a dark vehicle, clutching his blue blanket.
A man’s hand rested on the child’s shoulder.
Then a familiar voice spoke from behind the camera.
It belonged to Domenico Salvi.
Vittorio’s consigliere.
May you like
The man who had stood beside his father for twenty-five years.
“Bring the ledger,” Domenico said. “Or you will bury your son beside your brother.”
