Chapter 3 - THE TRAITOR INSIDE MY HOUSE
I locked down the estate in less than sixty seconds.
Every gate.
Every vehicle.
Every employee.
Nobody entered.
Nobody left.
My security chief, Marco DeLuca, arrived in my study with three armed men and the expression of someone prepared to tear the walls apart.
Marco had been with me for fourteen years.
He had taken a bullet intended for me in Brooklyn.
If there were five people on earth I trusted, Marco was one of them.
I handed him the photograph.
His face changed.
“This was taken upstairs?”
“Tonight.”
He turned it over.
“Who knew about the nurse?”
“Everyone working here.”
“That gives us twenty-seven people.”
“Then question twenty-seven.”
Emma stood near the fireplace.
Marco noticed her.
“She stays?”
“She stays where I can see her.”
Emma didn’t argue.
Marco’s men began checking the security system.
Nine minutes later, he returned.
“Camera loop.”
“Explain.”
“Someone fed prerecorded footage into the east corridor system for approximately seven minutes.”
“From outside?”
“No.”
That single word made the betrayal personal.
“You need internal access.”
“Yes.”
“Who has it?”
Marco hesitated.
“You. Me. Anthony. Bellini’s medical security account. Two senior technicians.”
Anthony Pellegrini was my cousin.
More like a brother when we were younger.
He managed transportation, private logistics, and half the legitimate companies I hated dealing with.
He had held Sophia at her baptism.
I refused to react.
“Bring Anthony here.”
Marco nodded.
“And Bellini?”
“Don’t touch him yet.”
Emma looked at me.
“Why?”
“Because if Bellini is involved, I want him comfortable enough to make mistakes.”
Her expression told me she didn’t like it.
I didn’t care.
Then a scream came through the ceiling.
Not Sophia.
A woman.
I was running before anyone else reacted.
We reached the second floor and found Sophia’s day nurse, Teresa, backed against the wall.
A man in housekeeping clothes lay unconscious near the service stairs.
“Who is he?” I demanded.
Teresa shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Marco rolled the man over.
Nobody recognized him.
In his pocket we found a cloned staff identification card.
In his shoe, a small plastic vial.
Emma took one look and went pale.
“Don’t open it.”
Marco froze.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But don’t touch it barehanded.”
We sealed the hallway and called a private hazardous-material team I trusted.
Sophia had slept through everything.
I stood beside her bed while Emma checked her vital signs.
My daughter opened her eyes.
She looked at me.
Then at the men outside.
Her fingers trembled.
I sat beside her.
“Nothing is going to happen to you.”
Sophia stared at me with the same dark eyes Juliana had.
I realized how meaningless promises sounded when they came from a father who didn’t understand the danger.
Emma handed Sophia a small whiteboard.
She had started using it on the fourth day.
Sophia slowly wrote three words.
MAN WITH ROSES.
I frowned.
“What man?”
She wrote again.
MOMMY’S FRIEND.
The hair on my arms rose.
“When did you see him?”
Sophia erased the board.
LAST NIGHT.
Emma and I looked at each other.
“Did he come into your room?”
Sophia nodded.
Every violent instinct I had spent years learning to control came awake.
“What did he do?”
Sophia wrote:
HE SAID SLEEP.
Then:
SMELLED LIKE ROSES.
Emma leaned closer.
“Did he touch your medicine?”
Sophia stared at the board.
Then nodded again.
I stood.
“Marco!”
He appeared instantly.
“Get every medication out of this room. Lock it down.”
Emma caught my sleeve.
“We can’t simply stop her medications.”
“Then replace every dose from a hospital pharmacy.”
“That could take hours.”
“Use my helicopter.”
Emma released me.
Apparently she understood that I was not exaggerating.
Thirty minutes later, the unidentified intruder woke under guard downstairs.
Marco wanted to question him.
I went alone.
He was restrained to a chair in a storage room.
His face was ordinary.
That annoyed me.
Men who threatened children should look like monsters.
Instead, they usually looked like someone who might stand behind you at a grocery store.
“Name.”
He smiled.
I placed the photograph of Sophia on the table.
His smile disappeared.
“You came into my daughter’s room.”
“No.”
I leaned forward.
“She saw you.”
“She saw somebody.”
“Who sent you?”
Silence.
I put the vial beside his hand.
His eyes flicked toward it.
Barely.
Enough.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You carried an unknown chemical into a child’s bedroom?”
He laughed nervously.
“You people watch too many movies.”
I studied him.
Then I noticed something.
A faint scent.
Roses.
I grabbed his collar.
“You were in her room.”
His expression changed.
Fear finally arrived.
“Bellini?” I asked.
Nothing.
“Anthony?”
A twitch.
Very small.
But I had spent twenty years negotiating with liars.
“Anthony sent you?”
“No.”
Too fast.
The door opened behind me.
Marco stepped inside.
“Lorenzo.”
I released the man.
“What?”
“Anthony is gone.”
I stared at him.
“Gone where?”
“His apartment is empty. Phone disconnected. His driver says he left three hours ago.”
Emma appeared behind Marco holding a tablet.
“You need to see this.”
On the screen was a laboratory report.
Sophia’s most recent bloodwork.
Except several numbers didn’t match the report I had received.
“What am I looking at?”
“Two versions of the same test.”
Emma enlarged the dates.
“One was sent to you. The other was stored in the hospital’s original system.”
I felt my stomach drop.
“Which one is real?”
“The original.”
“And?”
Her voice became careful.
“Sophia’s disease is serious, but the records you received made her look less responsive to treatment than she actually was.”
For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood.
“Say that again.”
“Someone altered her results.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at the sleeping child upstairs through the security feed.
Someone had not merely threatened Sophia.
Someone had manipulated my understanding of whether my daughter was getting better.
Emma continued.
“And there’s more.”
She opened a scan.
“Juliana had Sophia’s cord blood genetically screened at birth.”
I had never known that.
“There’s a rare marker here. It could affect which therapies Sophia responds to.”
“Does Bellini know?”
“He signed the original report.”
The room became silent.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Anthony’s voice came through.
“Lorenzo, don’t say my name.”
Every person in the room froze.
“Where are you?”
“I had to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because they know I found the archive.”
“What archive?”
“The one Juliana was trying to reach before she died.”
Emma stepped closer.
“Anthony, where are you?” I asked again.
He ignored the question.
“Remember your father’s old estate in Connecticut?”
“Yes.”
“The chapel.”
“What about it?”
“The bells beneath the cedar roots.”
My eyes went to Emma.
Juliana’s lullaby.
“Anthony—”
A loud crash sounded through the phone.
Then breathing.
Then another voice.
Calm.
Male.
Familiar.
“Good evening, Lorenzo.”
Dr. Carlo Bellini.
I felt every muscle in my body lock.
“Carlo.”
“You were always too emotional where family was concerned.”
May you like
A gunshot exploded through the line.
Then the call went dead.
