Chapter 2 - THE TRAITOR BEHIND THE FAMILY NAME
The hidden speaker crackled once, then Victor Romano laughed.
It was not the warm laugh Isabella had heard at Christmas dinners or summer parties. It was quiet, controlled, and almost sorrowful.
“Lorenzo,” Victor continued, “if you are hearing this, the child saw more than she should have.”
Lorenzo stood motionless in the darkness.
Mateo switched on a tactical flashlight and aimed it toward the discarded crown.
Grace held both girls close.
Isabella trembled against her side.
“You called him Uncle Victor,” she whispered.
Lorenzo heard the betrayal inside his daughter’s voice.
He could endure a bullet more easily.
The recording continued.
“You always believed enemies would attack from outside your walls. That was your greatest weakness. You built a fortress and filled it with people who learned your routines.”
Mateo examined the crown without touching it.
The red light blinked faster.
“This one is only a transmitter,” he said. “No pressure trigger.”
Victor’s voice lowered.
“By now, you are wondering why. Why your daughter? Why today? The answer is simple. You took something from me, so I chose the one thing you could not replace.”
Lorenzo knew exactly what Victor meant.
Twelve years earlier, Lorenzo had taken control of the Brooklyn docks after Victor’s brother, Antonio, sold shipment routes to a rival organization. Antonio disappeared before trial. Publicly, Victor accepted Lorenzo’s decision.
Privately, he had apparently spent twelve years planning revenge.
“You punished my blood,” Victor said. “Now I punish yours.”
The speaker went silent.
A second explosion sounded from the west lawn.
The secure room’s backup lights returned.
Mateo checked the security monitor mounted inside the wall.
The west gate had been destroyed by Victor’s armored vehicle, but the vehicle itself was empty. It had been sent forward remotely.
A diversion.
“Where is he?” Lorenzo asked.
Mateo switched camera feeds.
“The estate is locked down. No sign of Victor.”
“He never came back.”
“No.”
“He wanted us watching the gate.”
Lorenzo turned toward Grace.
“Where did you see Victor last?”
“At the ballroom entrance. He gave Mrs. Caruso a package.”
“What package?”
“I don’t know.”
Mateo contacted the estate manager.
Within minutes, guards located Mrs. Caruso unconscious inside a pantry. She had been drugged. The package beside her contained children’s party masks.
One mask was missing.
Victor had changed his appearance and remained inside the estate during the evacuation.
Three hundred guests had left through four exits.
Any one of them could have unknowingly walked beside him.
Lorenzo knelt before Isabella.
“You are going to stay here with Miss Grace.”
“I want you.”
“I know.”
“Don’t go.”
He touched her cheek.
“I need to make sure no one can come back.”
Emma leaned forward.
“The man with the hat had shiny shoes.”
Mateo stopped.
“What kind of shoes?”
“Black. But one had a red line.”
Lorenzo knew only one person at the party who wore custom black shoes with red stitching.
Gabriel Romano.
Victor’s twenty-eight-year-old son.
Gabriel had remained near the children throughout the celebration, helping Isabella arrange presents and pretending to perform card tricks.
Lorenzo’s radio sounded.
“Boss, we found Gabriel.”
“Where?”
“In the greenhouse. He’s injured.”
Lorenzo and Mateo moved through underground passages connecting the secure level to the northern wing.
Two guards accompanied them.
Inside the greenhouse, orchids lay crushed beneath broken glass. Gabriel Romano sat against a stone planter with blood on his collar and a cut above one eyebrow.
His black shoe showed a narrow red seam.
Lorenzo stopped ten feet away.
Gabriel lifted both hands.
“I didn’t do this.”
“Emma saw you.”
“She saw my shoes because I was in the hallway.”
“Why?”
“My father told me a staff member was stealing from the guest rooms. He asked me to check the service corridor.”
“Wearing a hat?”
Gabriel pulled a black cap from his jacket.
“I came through the garden entrance.”
Mateo searched him and removed a phone, a key ring, and a folded photograph.
The photograph showed Victor standing beside Antonio Romano twelve years earlier.
On the back, someone had written:
A BROTHER FOR A DAUGHTER.
Lorenzo’s face hardened.
“You carried this into my home?”
“I found it in my coat after the evacuation.”
“Convenient.”
Gabriel struggled to stand.
“My father attacked me in the greenhouse. I confronted him after I saw the wire behind the gift box. He said I had become weak because I respected you.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“If Isabella dies because of your family—”
“She won’t.”
Gabriel’s certainty made Mateo raise his weapon.
“How do you know?” Lorenzo asked.
Gabriel looked toward the broken glass roof.
“Because the gift was not the real plan.”
Silence filled the greenhouse.
Gabriel swallowed.
“My father needed the ballroom evacuated. He needed you to move Isabella into the secure room.”
Lorenzo’s blood ran cold.
“How does he know where the secure room is?”
“He helped your father design it.”
That was true.
Victor had been part of the Duca family long before Lorenzo inherited control. He knew the estate’s original architecture, old tunnels, and emergency systems.
Gabriel pointed toward the greenhouse floor.
“Beneath this building is a maintenance passage leading to the secure level.”
Mateo spoke into his radio.
No one answered from the room where Grace and the girls waited.
Static filled the channel.
Lorenzo turned and ran.
The passage entrance was concealed beneath a row of stone planters. Guards tore it open and descended into a narrow tunnel smelling of soil and rust.
Halfway through, they found a dead security camera and one of Grace’s white hair ribbons on the floor.
Lorenzo pushed forward.
At the final junction, the steel door to the secure level stood open.
The room was empty.
Grace, Isabella, and Emma were gone.
Only the birthday crown remained on the couch.
A note had been placed beneath it.
Lorenzo lifted the paper.
Your fortress works perfectly.
It kept everyone out while I took them through the floor.
Mateo searched the room.
“There is another passage behind the storage wall.”
Lorenzo struck the wall with both hands.
A hidden panel opened.
Beyond it, a stairway descended beneath the estate.
Gabriel arrived behind them, breathing hard.
“My father used these tunnels when we were children.”
“Where do they lead?” Lorenzo demanded.
“The river.”
Mateo called every available unit to the eastern shoreline.
Lorenzo descended first.
The tunnel ended at a stone dock beneath the property. A narrow canal opened toward the East River.
A motorboat was already disappearing through the darkness.
A woman stood near the rear.
Grace.
She held Emma in one arm while Isabella pressed against her side.
Victor stood behind them with a weapon in his hand.
Grace looked back toward the tunnel.
For one second, her eyes met Lorenzo’s across the water.
Then she did something he did not expect.
She raised one hand and dropped a silver necklace into the river.
Lorenzo recognized it.
Isabella’s emergency tracker.
Victor believed he had taken it from the child.
Grace had activated it first.
Mateo checked his receiver.
A signal appeared.
Lorenzo watched the boat disappear beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
“He thinks he kidnapped a housekeeper,” Lorenzo said.
Gabriel looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
May you like
Lorenzo’s expression became colder than the river.
“It means he has no idea who Grace Hayes really is.”
