Chapter 6 - The Rabbit with One Ear
Sophia pressed both hands against the command screen.
“Emma, put it away.”
The child looked toward someone outside the camera.
Valentina moved in front of her.
“What did she say?” Matteo demanded.
“Nothing,” Valentina answered.
He grabbed her hair and pulled her backward.
Luca surged forward despite his restraints.
A guard struck him to the deck.
Sophia turned away for one second, then forced herself to look again.
“She cannot be alone there.”
“She isn’t,” I said.
The words sounded weak.
Valentina had betrayed us.
She was also standing between Emma and Matteo.
Both truths mattered.
Helen examined the false key device in my hand.
“Can Matteo tell the difference?”
“Not until he connects it.”
“Then we proceed with the exchange.”
“The real key remains on the barge.”
“Which means the archive may not have uploaded.”
Enzo shook his head.
“The workshop device accepted both halves.”
I looked at the pendulum.
“Emma switched them after the flowerpot?”
Sophia thought.
“She may have put something else inside. A toy key from her blocks.”
The grooves on the device appeared correct, but perhaps Luca designed the system to accept a decoy sequence long enough to trigger a signal.
We could not assume the files were safe.
Again, the choice returned.
Evidence or lives.
My father’s recording left no doubt.
Choose the life.
I contacted Matteo through the speaker.
“Stop the barge.”
“Bring the key alone.”
“I am coming.”
Helen caught my arm.
“We need a tactical route.”
“He will kill them if we delay.”
“He may kill them after receiving it.”
“Then give me another option.”
Grace—Sophia, not Grace—stood behind us.
“There is one.”
Everyone looked at her.
“My husband taught Emma a song for emergencies.”
“What kind of song?” Helen asked.
“Directions.”
Luca had worked in security. He taught Emma simple verses that encoded where she was, whether doors were locked, and how many people stood nearby.
Sophia leaned toward the microphone.
“Emma, is Señor Bunny sleepy?”
The child understood.
She began singing.
“Bunny sees the water blue,
Two men near and one in view.
Big red door and ladder high,
Little boat is passing by.”
Two armed men beside her.
One visible farther away.
A red door.
A high ladder.
A small boat nearby.
Helen’s tactical liaison compared the details with old barge plans.
“There’s a maintenance access on the starboard side behind a red watertight door.”
“And the small boat?” I asked.
“Could be the harbor pilot vessel following them.”
Helen contacted port police through a secure channel.
A pilot boat had reported mechanical trouble twenty minutes earlier.
Its crew stopped responding.
Matteo had captured it or replaced the crew.
Sophia continued.
“Is Bunny cold?”
Emma sang another verse.
“Bunny hears the engine slow,
Underneath where shadows go.
Pretty lady has a chain,
Uncle Luca hurts again.”
Valentina was chained.
Luca injured.
The engine was slowing near the lower machinery passage.
The barge had reached the fuel terminal.
Helen formed a plan.
A tactical team would approach underwater from the seawall.
Port police would block the harbor exits.
I would deliver the false key on the pilot boat, keeping Matteo focused above deck.
Sophia demanded a radio link.
She would remain in the command vessel close enough to speak to Emma if necessary.
I agreed.
No one called her emotional.
No one told her the operation was too dangerous for a mother to understand.
At twelve twenty, I stepped onto the pilot boat with the false pendulum inside a metal case.
Marco drove.
Helen’s agent hid beneath the forward compartment.
The barge waited beside the abandoned fuel terminal beneath harsh industrial lights.
Matteo stood on the upper deck.
Emma remained near Valentina.
Luca had been moved out of view.
“Come aboard,” Matteo called.
“Send Emma first.”
“No.”
“The key stays with me until she is safe.”
“You are negotiating like a businessman.”
“I am negotiating like a man who has learned what you value.”
Matteo smiled.
“And what is that?”
“Control.”
His smile disappeared.
The pilot boat came alongside.
I climbed the ladder.
Marco remained below.
Two guards searched me.
They took my gun.
Matteo extended one hand.
“The key.”
“Emma goes to the boat.”
He looked toward the child.
“Walk.”
Emma ran toward me.
A guard blocked her before she reached the ladder.
Matteo laughed.
“I said walk. I did not say leave.”
I placed the metal case on the deck.
“You open it after she is below.”
Matteo crouched and released the latches.
The pendulum lay inside.
His eyes brightened.
For twenty-two years, he had built his future around possessing that device.
He lifted it.
Valentina watched him.
Then she looked toward me.
Her right hand moved slightly.
Three fingers.
Two.
One.
She drove her shoulder into the guard holding Emma.
The child ran.
I caught her and moved toward the ladder.
Gunfire erupted near the stern as tactical agents entered through the red maintenance door.
Matteo grabbed the metal case and retreated toward the terminal bridge.
I lowered Emma toward Marco.
“Take her.”
She clung to my neck.
“The pretty lady’s brother.”
“I’ll get him.”
“Promise?”
I stopped.
Promises had hidden too many uncertainties.
“I will try with everything I have.”
Emma accepted the truth.
Marco carried her into the pilot boat.
Sophia’s voice came through the radio.
“Emma!”
“Mama!”
The sound gave the operation a center.
I turned back.
Valentina had freed one wrist from the chain.
She used the loose metal to strike a guard.
Luca crawled from behind a cargo container, blood running from his forehead.
I reached him.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
He looked toward Valentina.
“My sister.”
“She’s behind you.”
Matteo reached the terminal bridge and connected the false key to a portable reader.
The device flashed red.
He looked at me.
“This is not the key.”
Emma’s voice came from the pilot boat below.
“I have it!”
Sophia shouted, “Emma, no!”
The child stood inside Marco’s arms holding the real brass key above her head.
Matteo raised his gun toward the boat.
I moved without thinking.
The bullet struck my shoulder and spun me against the railing.
Valentina screamed.
Mateo’s tactical officers returned fire, forcing Matteo into the terminal passage.
The pain came hot and immediate.
I stayed upright.
Below, Marco pulled Emma behind the pilot boat’s steel wall.
She was safe.
Matteo disappeared inside the fuel terminal carrying the false device and a remote detonator.
Helen’s voice came through the radio.
“Explosives are active. Everyone off the barge.”
Luca reached the ladder.
Valentina tried to follow, but the remaining chain caught around a deck fitting.
I moved toward her.
“Leave me,” she said.
“No.”
“Matteo wired the bridge. You have seconds.”
I pulled at the chain.
It would not release.
Luca climbed back onto the deck.
Together, we lifted the fitting enough for Valentina to slide the chain free.
The first explosion struck the terminal roof.
Fire rolled across the upper structure.
The barge shifted violently.
A cargo container broke loose and slid toward us.
I pushed Valentina and Luca toward the ladder.
The container hit the railing where we had stood.
We climbed down as burning debris fell into the water.
The pilot boat moved away.
Behind us, Matteo appeared on the terminal roof.
Flames rose around him.
He held the detonator in one hand and a radio in the other.
“You chose them,” he shouted.
I pressed one hand against my bleeding shoulder.
“Yes.”
He laughed.
“Then watch what your mercy costs.”
Matteo pressed the final switch.
Nothing happened.
Emma lifted the real key beside Sophia.
“Bunny’s bone says no.”
The key included a wireless override Luca had designed years earlier.
When Emma removed it from the rabbit, she had unknowingly carried the only device capable of disabling the terminal’s demolition sequence.
The four-year-old had saved everyone on the water.
Matteo stared at the silent detonator.
Port police surrounded the terminal.
He had nowhere left to run.
Then a second figure stepped from the smoke behind him.
Enzo.
He raised a gun toward Matteo.
May you like
For twenty-two years, he had waited for the man who poisoned my father.
Now he had the chance to kill him.
