Chapter 7 - THREE MINUTES TO LIVE
“Ventilation shaft!”
Emma pointed toward a maintenance panel near the ceiling.
Marco dragged a metal cart beneath it.
Anthony kept working at the computer.
“Two minutes forty!”
I lifted Sophia onto the cart.
Emma climbed beside her and removed the panel.
The shaft was narrow.
Too narrow for me.
But perhaps large enough for Sophia.
“No,” Sophia whispered when she saw the darkness.
“You can do it,” Emma told her.
Sophia shook her head.
I held her face gently.
“Sophia.”
She looked at me.
“When you were a baby, your mother used to sing whenever thunderstorms scared you.”
Her lip trembled.
“I remember.”
The words nearly broke me.
“You remember Mommy?”
She nodded.
“Song.”
Behind us, the timer continued.
02:14.
I swallowed the pain in my throat.
“That song means you are never alone.”
Sophia looked toward the shaft.
Emma climbed inside first.
“I’ll be right in front of you.”
Sophia still held my hand.
“Daddy come?”
“I’ll find another way.”
“Promise?”
Promises.
I had made too many.
This time I meant it.
“I promise.”
She let go.
Emma guided her into the shaft.
“Go!”
They disappeared.
Marco found an emergency access corridor behind the electrical cabinets.
Locked electronically.
Anthony shouted from the computer.
“I can delay the gas, but I need Bellini’s authorization.”
We all looked at him.
Bellini smiled.
“You have nothing I want.”
I crossed the room.
“Wrong.”
I took out my phone.
His smile faded when he saw the live connection.
Federal prosecutor Rachel Sloan was watching.
So were several agents.
I had activated the connection before entering St. Agnes.
Bellini had confessed to killing Juliana on camera.
For the first time, genuine fear appeared in his face.
“You recorded me.”
“Yes.”
Anthony laughed despite everything.
Bellini lunged toward the computer.
Marco stopped him.
The timer reached ninety seconds.
“Carlo!” Anthony shouted. “The code!”
Bellini said nothing.
I crouched in front of him.
“You’re going to prison whether we die here or not.”
Silence.
“But if children die inside this facility because you refused to stop the purge, every prosecutor, judge, jury, newspaper, and parent in America will know exactly what you did.”
His jaw tightened.
“Code.”
Nothing.
Then Sophia’s voice came faintly through the ventilation shaft.
She was singing.
Juliana’s lullaby.
Bellini heard it.
Something shifted in his expression.
Maybe guilt.
Maybe memory.
Maybe simple defeat.
He closed his eyes.
“07149.”
The numbers from Juliana’s photograph.
Anthony entered them.
The countdown stopped at thirty-eight seconds.
Nobody moved.
Then ventilation fans powered down.
I exhaled.
“Why those numbers?” I asked.
Bellini looked toward me.
“July fourteenth, 2009.”
My wedding date.
Juliana had known his emergency code.
That was why she wrote it behind the photograph.
Even at the end, she had left us a way out.
Federal agents reached St. Agnes seventeen minutes later.
Bellini was arrested.
So were two administrators and a laboratory director found elsewhere on the property.
The records were seized intact.
Sophia and Emma emerged from the ventilation system dirty, coughing, but alive.
Sophia ran toward me.
Actually ran.
Only three steps.
Then I caught her.
She wrapped both arms around my neck.
“I knew you come.”
Four words.
Four ordinary words.
To me, they were everything.
I held her until she complained that I was squeezing too hard.
At the hospital, doctors examined her.
No major exposure.
No new injury.
The fever had improved.
Then came the conversation I feared.
Treatment.
The independent oncology team confirmed Sophia qualified for a modern immunotherapy protocol.
But qualification did not guarantee success.
“We proceed carefully,” Dr. Rebecca Hall told me. “There may be difficult side effects.”
“When can she start?”
“Once the infection is fully controlled.”
Emma sat beside Sophia.
I looked at her.
“You’re staying.”
It came out as an order.
Emma raised an eyebrow.
“That sounds familiar.”
I almost smiled.
Then she looked down.
“I can’t.”
The words landed strangely.
“What?”
“My forged credentials are being investigated.”
“I’ll fix it.”
“You cannot fix everything with a phone call.”
“I can fix many things with one.”
She gave me a tired smile.
“There’s something else.”
I waited.
“Bellini knows who I am now. The federal case will need witnesses.”
“So?”
“So I was the last nurse who heard Juliana speak. I’m evidence.”
“You’ll have protection.”
“Lorenzo—”
“Mine.”
“That is exactly the problem.”
I frowned.
Emma glanced through the glass at Sophia.
“Your world is already dangerous enough.”
“You entered it voluntarily.”
“For Juliana.”
“And now?”
Emma’s eyes met mine.
The answer frightened me more than Bellini had.
“Now it’s not only about Juliana.”
Neither of us looked away.
Then Sophia called from the room.
“Emma!”
Emma immediately went to her.
I remained in the hallway.
Marco walked up beside me.
“You look terrified.”
“I’m considering firing you.”
“You’ve threatened that for ten years.”
My eyes stayed on Emma and Sophia.
“What happens when somebody becomes important?”
Marco was silent for a moment.
“Usually?”
“Yes.”
“They become a weakness.”
That was the answer men like us were taught.
Then Marco added:
“Or they become the reason you finally stop living like you have nothing to lose.”
I looked through the glass again.
Emma was helping Sophia color butterflies.
Sophia was talking.
Not much.
But enough.
For the first time since Juliana died, the future did not look completely empty.
Then my phone vibrated.
Rachel Sloan.
“We found something in Bellini’s files,” the prosecutor said.
“What?”
“A payment authorization issued two years ago.”
“To Bellini?”
“No.”
She hesitated.
“It was issued by your father’s company.”
My father had been dead for seven years.
“That’s impossible.”
“The digital signature was created three days before Juliana’s crash.”
I felt cold again.
“Whose authorization?”
Rachel answered.
“Marco DeLuca.”
May you like
I slowly turned.
Marco was standing three feet away.
