Chapter 6 - Someone Inside Dante’s House Was Lying
“Stay behind me.”
Elena hated the command.
This time she obeyed.
Gabriel Moretti walked into Warehouse 218 smiling.
He was in his early sixties, silver-haired, elegant and warm-looking enough to belong on the board of a hospital foundation.
Three men followed.
Dante’s security shifted subtly.
No one reached for a weapon.
No one needed to.
Every person in the room understood what could happen.
Gabriel spread his hands.
“Nephew.”
Dante did not smile.
“How did you find us?”
“Your vehicles aren’t invisible.”
“They were supposed to be.”
Gabriel glanced toward Dante’s head of security.
“That sounds like a personnel problem.”
Dante’s gaze sharpened.
Elena noticed.
Someone had leaked their movements.
Gabriel looked at her.
“You must be Elena.”
She said nothing.
His eyes moved over her face.
“Marco spoke of you.”
The sentence chilled her.
“You knew my husband?”
“Very well.”
Dante stepped slightly between them.
Gabriel noticed.
His smile changed.
Protective?
Possessive?
Suspicious?
“Dante tells me very little these days.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“So I see.”
Gabriel looked around.
“What brings you to this charming ruin?”
Dante answered easily.
“Marco.”
A flicker.
Tiny.
But Elena saw it.
“So the rumors are true,” Gabriel said. “Bellandi’s widow appeared.”
“She was hungry.”
Something crossed Gabriel’s face.
Surprise.
Dante continued.
“She came into Lunetta asking for a table.”
“What a coincidence.”
“No,” Elena said.
Both men looked at her.
“Coincidence would have been us choosing the restaurant. Mia smelled pasta.”
Gabriel smiled.
“A child’s appetite changing the course of powerful men. There’s something poetic in that.”
Elena disliked him immediately.
Not because he was rude.
Because he was too smooth.
He looked at the opened wall.
“Did you find anything?”
Dante answered, “No.”
Elena’s heart jumped.
The handwritten note was folded inside her coat pocket.
Gabriel studied Dante.
Then looked at Elena.
“Your husband caused significant trouble.”
“My husband is dead.”
“Yes.”
The word carried no sorrow.
“He is.”
Elena’s spine stiffened.
Dante changed the subject.
“Why are you here?”
“I heard someone was checking records on Warehouse 218.”
“How?”
Gabriel smiled.
“I still have friends.”
“That worries me.”
“Everything worries you.”
“No. Only useful things.”
For several seconds uncle and nephew stared at each other.
Then Gabriel stepped back.
“Come to dinner tonight.”
Dante gave no answer.
Gabriel looked at Elena again.
“You too.”
“No,” Dante said.
Elena turned sharply.
Gabriel’s eyebrow rose.
“I was inviting the lady.”
“And I’m declining.”
“I can answer for myself,” Elena said.
Dante looked at her.
Gabriel seemed entertained.
Elena faced him.
“Thank you. No.”
Gabriel laughed.
“Marco definitely married well.”
He left moments later.
Only when the engines faded did Elena breathe normally.
“You lied to him.”
“Yes.”
“You think he followed us because of the box.”
“I think he followed because someone told him we came here.”
“Someone in your house?”
“Or my security.”
Elena looked toward the men surrounding them.
Suddenly every face seemed different.
Dante picked up the empty metal box.
“We leave.”
Back at the estate, Dante changed protocols.
Phones collected.
Schedules restricted.
Security teams rotated.
Elena watched the entire house transform quietly around them.
At lunch, Mia noticed guards near the doors.
“Why are there more men?”
Elena said, “Just extra security.”
Mia looked toward Dante.
“Are the bad people coming?”
“No,” Dante said.
“How do you know?”
“Because they’re afraid to.”
Elena glanced at him.
Mia seemed satisfied.
Children sometimes accepted confidence as fact.
Adults knew better.
That afternoon, Elena showed Dante Marco’s note again.
“Who witnessed Mia’s birth?”
“Normally nurses, doctors, family.”
“My mother had died. Marco’s parents were in Italy. Aunt Rosa arrived afterward.”
“Doctor?”
“Dr. Samuel Levine.”
“Nurses?”
“I don’t remember.”
Dante’s team retrieved hospital records.
Mia had been born at St. Catherine’s Medical Center.
Three nurses were listed.
Two still worked there.
The third had vanished from public records shortly after Mia’s birth.
Her name was Camille Rios.
Dante searched deeper.
Camille had not been a nurse.
Her license number belonged to someone else.
Elena felt cold.
“Why would a fake nurse be in the room when I gave birth?”
Dante did not know.
Then they found another detail.
Camille Rios had later worked under a different name.
For Victor Sarto.
Elena stared at the screen.
“So Sarto had someone in the hospital seven years ago?”
“Or someone who later worked for him.”
“Why?”
Dante scrolled.
There was more.
Camille’s photograph appeared.
Elena gasped.
“I know her.”
“You remember her?”
“No.”
She stared.
“This woman came to Marco’s funeral.”
Dante’s eyes sharpened.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“She spoke to you?”
“She hugged me.”
Elena’s voice became distant.
“She told me Marco had helped her once.”
Dante stood.
“Did she touch Mia?”
Elena thought.
“Yes.”
The answer came like ice.
“She knelt down. She fixed Mia’s coat.”
Dante immediately called security.
“Find Camille Rios. Every alias. Every address. Now.”
Elena paced.
“What does this mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I would rather say I don’t know than invent an answer.”
She knew he was right.
She still hated it.
Hours passed.
At dinner, Mia pushed vegetables around her plate and told Dante broccoli smelled suspicious.
Dante agreed.
Elena watched him with her daughter.
Too comfortable already.
That frightened her for reasons unrelated to enemies.
She had spent four years making herself smaller around hope.
Hope was expensive.
Hope made promises grief could break.
After Mia slept, Elena found Dante alone on the terrace.
City lights shimmered across the river.
“You’re good with her.”
He did not turn.
“Children seem less complicated than adults.”
“They’re not.”
“Then she is unusually patient.”
Elena smiled.
“She likes you.”
“That may indicate poor judgment.”
“She has her father’s taste in friends.”
Silence followed.
Then Dante asked, “Do you miss him every day?”
The question was almost too intimate.
“No.”
He turned.
Elena appreciated that he did not pretend surprise.
“Some days I don’t think about him until dinner. Some days I’m angry. Some days I can barely remember his voice.”
She swallowed.
“Then something stupid happens. A song. Burned toast. Mia laughing a certain way.”
Dante looked toward the river.
“And he’s there.”
“Yes.”
“I understand.”
She studied him.
“You loved him too.”
Not romantic.
Not familial.
But love nonetheless.
Dante nodded once.
“He saved my life.”
“When?”
“Seven years ago.”
“The year Mia was born.”
“Yes.”
Elena’s heart shifted.
“What happened?”
Before Dante could answer, his phone rang.
The search team.
Camille Rios had been found.
Dead?
Elena feared the word.
But no.
Alive.
Living under another name in Pennsylvania.
Dante put the call on speaker.
His investigator continued.
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“Rios had a child.”
Dante frowned.
“So?”
“The child’s father is listed as Victor Sarto.”
Elena stared.
“What does that have to do with Mia?”
The investigator hesitated.
“Maybe nothing. But hospital camera archives from the night Mia Bellandi was born still exist because they were part of an insurance case.”
Dante’s voice hardened.
“And?”
“We found footage.”
“What does it show?”
“Victor Sarto entered the maternity floor at 2:14 a.m.”
Elena grabbed the edge of the desk.
Mia had been born at 2:08.
Six minutes earlier.
Dante’s eyes turned dark.
“Why was Sarto there?”
“We don’t know.”
Then came the final detail.
“He left twenty minutes later carrying an envelope handed to him by Marco Bellandi.”
Elena felt sick.
“My husband met Sarto the night my daughter was born?”
Dante did not answer.
Because now another possibility had emerged.
One more disturbing than a ledger.
Marco had been working against Sarto seven years ago.
Long before Dante believed the war had started.
May you like
And whatever secret had eventually killed Marco began on the night Mia entered the world.
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