Chapter 5 - THEY TOOK LILY
I do not remember screaming.
I remember Victor driving.
I remember snow smashing against the windshield.
I remember calling the doctor eleven times.
No answer.
Rosa answered on the twelfth call.
Her voice was shaking.
“Hannah.”
“Where is Lily?”
Silence.
“Rosa!”
“They took her.”
Something inside me broke.
Victor grabbed the phone.
“Who?”
“Carlo.”
His face changed.
“Where’s the doctor?”
“Unconscious.”
“Security?”
“Two injured. Carlo had authorization.”
Of course he did.
Family.
Trust.
The perfect weapon.
Victor drove faster.
“Did Carlo say anything?”
Rosa began crying.
“He said tell Victor the old debt is due.”
The line went dead.
I grabbed Victor’s arm.
“Get her back.”
“I will.”
“No promises. Get her back.”
His eyes met mine.
“I will bring Lily home.”
At the estate, Victor walked through the destruction like a man entering a war.
One camera still worked.
It showed Carlo carrying Lily’s car seat toward a black SUV.
My baby was crying.
I reached for the screen.
“Baby.”
Victor looked away.
Marco enlarged the license plate.
“Fake.”
“Find the vehicles.”
“Already running traffic cameras.”
Victor turned toward the captured attacker from the previous night.
Leo Rinaldi was still being held in a secured room.
He looked terrified when Victor entered.
“Where would Carlo take a baby?”
Leo shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Victor placed both hands on the table.
“I am trying very hard to become a different man.”
Leo swallowed.
“Good for you.”
Victor leaned closer.
“But my granddaughter is missing.”
Granddaughter.
The word hit me.
He had accepted it.
Completely.
“If you make me ask twice, my personal growth will experience a setback.”
Leo immediately started talking.
The Rinaldis used three sites.
A warehouse in Newark.
A marina in Queens.
An abandoned Catholic school in the Bronx.
Marco checked incoming information.
“Carlo’s SUV crossed into Queens.”
“Marina.”
We moved.
Twenty-five minutes later, Victor’s men surrounded an old boatyard.
No Lily.
But someone had left a phone inside an empty office.
It rang.
Victor answered.
Carlo’s voice filled the room.
“Nephew.”
“Where is she?”
“You always were impatient.”
“If Lily is hurt—”
“She’s alive.”
I grabbed the phone.
“Put my daughter on.”
Carlo paused.
“Hannah.”
Hearing my name from him made me sick.
“You look like Elena.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should. Your mother caused decades of trouble.”
“Let me hear my baby.”
A rustle.
Then Lily cried.
I broke.
“Lily! Mommy’s here!”
Her cry became louder.
Carlo returned.
“She has a fever.”
“If she dies, nothing in that vault will help you.”
“I don’t want the money.”
“The ledger.”
“Yes.”
Victor took the phone.
“You’ll never get it.”
“Then Lily grows up without her mother.”
Victor’s face became stone.
“What do you want?”
“The key. Hannah. Midnight.”
“No.”
Carlo laughed.
“You don’t decide.”
The call ended.
I turned to Victor.
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“He asked for me.”
“That’s why you’re not going.”
“My daughter is there.”
“And you think handing them both Rossi heirs improves the situation?”
“I don’t care about being an heir.”
“They do.”
I stepped closer.
“If you stop me, I will go without you.”
He stared at me.
For the first time, I saw myself in him.
Same stubbornness.
Same refusal to bend.
Victor saw it too.
“Your mother used to make that face.”
“I’m not my mother.”
“No.”
Something almost like pride entered his eyes.
“You’re worse.”
Marco interrupted.
“We may have a location.”
He placed a tablet down.
One of Carlo’s men had used a toll transponder registered to a Moretti construction company.
It pinged near Red Hook.
Victor frowned.
“Rossi territory.”
“Old Rossi territory,” Marco corrected.
The address corresponded to a decommissioned underground freight terminal beneath a warehouse.
Victor’s expression hardened.
“He’s going after the archive.”
“How would he know it’s there?”
“He may not. But he knows the Rossi family used tunnels beneath Red Hook.”
I touched the locket.
“Maybe the key opens more than a bank vault.”
Victor looked at it.
We arrived in Red Hook at eleven twenty.
The warehouse smelled of salt, rust, and old wood.
Victor brought only Marco and three men inside.
I came too.
Nobody tried to stop me.
We found a steel door beneath the floor.
The locket key fit.
Click.
Behind it was a tunnel.
Carlo had beaten us there.
Fresh boot prints crossed the dust.
We followed them underground.
At the end stood a vault door marked with the same rose-and-sword symbol.
Carlo waited in front of it.
Lily was in his arms.
She looked pale.
Too pale.
“Mommy!”
I moved.
Victor caught me.
Carlo smiled.
“There they are.”
Beside him stood four armed men.
And another man emerged from the shadows.
Older.
Thinner.
A scar running from his ear to his jaw.
Victor stopped breathing.
“Salvatore.”
His brother smiled.
“Hello, Vic.”
Eighteen years dead.
Standing twenty feet away.
Victor looked as though the past had physically punched him.
“You should be in the ground.”
“I’ve heard.”
Salvatore looked at me.
Then Lily.
“Elena made beautiful descendants.”
I felt sick.
“You threatened my mother.”
“I gave Elena opportunities.”
“You forced her to run.”
“She was always dramatic.”
Victor moved forward.
Marco restrained him.
Salvatore smiled wider.
“There he is.”
Carlo shifted Lily.
She whimpered.
I snapped.
“Stop holding her like that.”
Carlo looked almost offended.
“She’s perfectly safe.”
“She’s sick.”
“Open the vault and she gets a doctor.”
“I don’t know how.”
Salvatore pointed toward the locket.
“The key.”
“And blood.”
His eyes moved to me.
“There’s our blood.”
Victor spoke.
“You touch her and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?”
Salvatore laughed.
“You spent twenty-seven years mourning a woman who chose hiding over you.”
My father’s face went still.
“She didn’t choose.”
“No?”
“She protected Hannah.”
Salvatore’s expression changed slightly.
Victor saw it.
“You never found them.”
Silence.
“You lost Elena.”
Salvatore’s jaw tightened.
There.
Weakness.
Victor smiled.
“You spent twenty-seven years hunting a librarian.”
Salvatore pulled his gun.
Everything changed.
Marco’s men raised weapons.
Carlo shouted.
Lily screamed.
I ran.
Nobody expected it.
I threw myself toward Carlo.
He turned.
That was enough.
Victor fired.
One shot.
Carlo dropped.
I caught Lily before she hit the floor.
Gunfire exploded through the tunnel.
Victor dragged us behind a concrete wall.
Marco’s men returned fire.
Lily was crying against my chest.
“Mommy.”
“I’ve got you.”
Victor crouched beside us.
Blood covered his shoulder.
“You’re hit.”
“Not important.”
“It is to me.”
He looked at me.
The words froze between us.
Not important to the crime boss.
Important to his daughter.
Marco shouted.
“Boss!”
Salvatore was escaping through another passage.
Victor looked toward him.
Then at Lily.
Twenty-seven years ago, Victor Moretti had chosen revenge and family obligation over chasing Elena into the unknown.
This time he made a different choice.
“Let him go.”
Marco stared.
“Victor.”
“Let him go.”
He took Lily carefully from my arms while I pressed my coat against his bleeding shoulder.
“My family comes first.”
Behind us, the old Rossi vault remained unopened.
Salvatore disappeared into the tunnels.
But not before calling back one final warning.
“You can’t protect them forever, brother.”
Victor looked down at Lily.
“No.”
His expression hardened.
May you like
“Just longer than you.”
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