Chapter 6 - The Lullaby of the Dragons
Viktor Vargo stepped out of the darkness as though he owned it.
He was older than Luca, silver-haired and elegant in a charcoal coat. There was nothing dramatic about him. No shouting. No visible weapon.
That made him worse.
Behind him, men filled the basement corridor.
Luca moved in front of me immediately.
Nico drew his gun.
Vargo lifted one hand.
“Please,” he said. “No one needs to make this ugly.”
“You broke into a building with armed men,” Luca replied. “It’s already ugly.”
Vargo smiled.
“You always did mistake violence for ugliness. Sometimes ugliness is a mother lying to her child for seventeen years.”
My chest tightened.
“Don’t talk about my mother,” I said.
Vargo’s eyes settled on me.
“You have Elena’s courage. That was always going to be a problem.”
“Where is the ledger?” Luca asked.
Vargo laughed softly.
“That is the right question.”
“You killed her.”
“No.” His smile faded slightly. “Cancer killed her. Poverty killed her. Fear killed her. I merely made sure she stayed afraid.”
The words made something cold rise inside me.
Luca stepped forward.
“You will not leave this room.”
“Oh, Luca,” Vargo said. “You still think this story ends with you winning a fight.”
Then he looked at Matteo.
“And there he is. Your little secret.”
Luca’s face turned murderous.
“You knew.”
“Of course I knew. Isabella was my cousin. She did what she was told.”
The betrayal in Luca’s eyes was almost unbearable.
“She was dying,” Luca said.
“She was useful until she wasn’t.”
Nico raised his gun.
Vargo’s men raised theirs.
I looked down at Matteo.
He had started crying.
Not loudly.
Just a frightened, confused sound.
And suddenly, I remembered the lullaby.
My mother used to sing it when I was small. She never sang it all the way through. She hummed the first few notes and stopped, as if the rest hurt too much.
A strange melody.
Soft, sad, almost like a prayer.
I began humming it under my breath.
Matteo stopped crying.
Luca looked at me.
Vargo’s expression changed.
“No,” he said.
The letters. The photograph. The words from my mother.
The answer is in the lullaby.
I pulled the old cassette tape from the box.
“There’s a tape player upstairs,” I whispered.
“No time,” Nico said.
But there was.
Because Vargo wanted the ledger more than he wanted us dead.
He wanted to know where it was.
We moved upstairs under armed watch.
The abandoned building had once been a music school. In a dusty office, beneath piles of broken instruments, I found an old cassette player.
My fingers trembled as I inserted the tape.
Static crackled.
Then my mother’s voice filled the room.
She was younger in the recording. Softer.
“If you are hearing this, Mara, then I am gone. And the dragons have returned.”
I covered my mouth.
Matteo reached for the sound.
My mother began singing the lullaby.
The notes rose and fell in a pattern I had never understood.
Then she spoke again.
“The melody is a map. The first note is where we met. The second is where we hid. The third is where our children will find the truth.”
Luca went still.
“Where we met,” he whispered. “The Bellagio.”
“The restaurant,” I said.
“The second is where we hid.” His eyes moved toward the brass key. “Locker 314.”
“And the third?” I asked.
Luca stared at Matteo.
Then at me.
“The place where our children will find the truth.”
Vargo’s smile returned.
“I know exactly where that is.”
He turned toward the door.
Luca moved.
The gunshot came so fast I barely heard it.
Nico shoved me down behind a desk. Glass exploded. Men shouted. Matteo screamed.
I curled around him, covering his head.
Then the building’s fire alarm erupted.
Red lights flashed.
Smoke began pouring beneath the doorway.
“Luca!” I screamed.
A hand grabbed my arm.
It was Luca.
Blood stained his sleeve, but he was standing.
“Move!”
We ran through a back hallway while Nico and two of Luca’s men held the attackers off. The building shook with alarms and gunfire.
Outside, snow had started falling.
Luca pushed us into a waiting car.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“To the place Elena wanted you to find.”
“Where?”
His expression was grim.
“My family church.”
I stared at him.
“What is there?”
Luca started the engine.
May you like
“The grave she never had.”
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