Chapter 4 - The Lie Beneath the Mountain
Elena had left one thing beside the radio that Matteo had not mentioned.
A broken piece of her necklace chain pointed toward the eastern tunnel.
Not dropped.
Placed.
I picked up the silver key and closed my hand around it.
“She wanted us to follow,” I said.
Antonio studied the ground. “Or Matteo wants us to think that.”
“You still don’t understand her.”
“And you do?”
“No. But I’m beginning to.”
Elena had survived three years alone because she prepared exits before entering rooms. If Matteo had truly taken her by surprise, he would have removed the key.
She had allowed herself to be taken.
The question was why.
We followed the tunnel east. My fever worsened with every step. Sometimes the walls seemed to tilt around me. Antonio urged me to stop, but stopping meant leaving Elena alone with the brother who had shot me.
The passage opened into an abandoned maintenance bay. Tire tracks crossed the dirt toward a service road.
On a crate, Elena had scratched three letters into the dust:
G.S.A.
“Gabriel Santos?” Antonio asked.
“Alive,” I said.
The fresh footprints. The hidden passage. Elena’s willingness to go with Matteo.
She had seen or heard something before she disappeared.
A pickup truck waited near the service entrance. The keys were beneath the visor.
“Elena arranged this,” I said.
Antonio drove us toward Pine Hollow while I drifted in and out of consciousness. The last thing I remembered was giving him directions to Dr. Alvarez’s clinic.
I awoke on a metal examination table.
An intravenous line ran into my arm. My wound had been cleaned and closed. A gray-bearded man stood beside me.
“You are the most difficult patient Elena has ever sent me,” he said.
“Where is she?”
“Nice to meet you too.”
“Doctor.”
“Your fever is already dropping. The bullet avoided your lung and major arteries, which I assume was more kindness than the shooter intended.”
Antonio appeared in the doorway with his wounded arm bandaged.
“Matteo’s SUV was seen heading toward Saint Agnes,” he said.
Saint Agnes was an abandoned mountain retreat twenty miles north. My father had purchased it through a shell company decades earlier for private meetings.
Matteo knew I would know the place.
“He’s setting a stage,” I said.
Dr. Alvarez folded his arms. “You are not leaving.”
“Then I’ll bleed on your floor.”
“You already did.”
Antonio tossed me a clean shirt.
An hour later, I was in the passenger seat of the pickup, pale, medicated, and furious.
Snow fell heavily as we climbed toward Saint Agnes.
During the drive, Antonio told me the truth he had withheld.
Gabriel had not disappeared alone. A federal investigator named Mara Vale vanished on the same night. Authorities believed both had been killed, but Antonio had intercepted a message six months later suggesting Gabriel was alive.
“Why didn’t you tell Elena?” I asked.
“Because the message warned me not to contact her. Gabriel believed Matteo was monitoring everyone connected to the investigation.”
“You let her grieve.”
“I thought grief was safer than hope.”
“That was not your decision to make.”
Antonio gripped the steering wheel.
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
Saint Agnes appeared through the storm, a dark stone building with broken windows and a bell tower rising above the trees.
We parked below the ridge and approached on foot.
A side door stood open.
Inside, lanterns illuminated the old chapel. Matteo sat in the front pew wearing the black coat from Elena’s window.
Elena stood near the altar beside a thin, bearded man.
Gabriel.
For three years, Elena had believed her husband dead. Now she faced him with an expression that held joy, rage, relief, and devastation at once.
Matteo turned as I entered.
“You look terrible,” he said.
“You always needed me injured before you felt tall.”
He smiled, but his eyes changed when Antonio stepped through the door.
“Father.”
Antonio removed his hat.
Matteo’s composure cracked for one brief second.
“So the ghost finally comes home,” he said.
“Elena,” I called.
She looked at me. “Don’t give him the keys.”
Matteo drew a pistol and placed it against Gabriel’s side.
“My brother has one key,” he said. “Elena has the other.”
“She dropped hers.”
“No. She dropped a decoy.”
I looked at Elena.
Of course she had.
Gabriel had built the system. He would never entrust the true key to a necklace easily stolen from his wife.
Matteo nodded toward a metal case on the altar.
“The ledger is beneath this building. We open it together, transfer the accounts, and everyone walks away.”
“No one believes that,” Elena said.
Gabriel looked at her. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For staying away.”
“You let me bury an empty coffin.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“So was Antonio,” she replied. “Men keep using that word when they take away my choices.”
Gabriel lowered his eyes.
Matteo appeared irritated by emotions he could not convert into leverage.
“The key,” he demanded.
Elena slowly reached into the hem of her cardigan and removed a narrow strip of metal.
Matteo smiled.
I understood her plan then.
She had not surrendered to save herself. She had followed the fresh tracks because she suspected Gabriel was alive. She allowed Matteo to bring her here so she could confirm it.
Now she needed time.
“Why me?” I asked Matteo.
He looked at me. “What?”
“You had access to my key after you shot me. Why bring me here?”
“Father designed the vault to require your biometric confirmation.”
Antonio glanced at me, guilt crossing his face.
My blood opened the final lock.
Matteo had never intended me to die in the snow—not immediately. He expected his men to retrieve my body before the cold finished the job. Elena had found me first.
“You aimed to miss my heart,” I said.
“I aimed precisely.”
The betrayal became colder.
My brother had calculated the location of the wound, the rate of blood loss, the temperature, and how long I could remain alive.
“You should be proud,” he said. “You taught me patience.”
“I taught you loyalty.”
“No. You demanded obedience and called it love.”
For once, Matteo was not entirely wrong.
Antonio stepped forward. “This ends now.”
Matteo’s gun turned toward him.
“You chose Vincent when we were children. You chose him when you faked your death. And now you come back expecting to give orders?”
“I chose the son I thought could carry the family.”
“You never asked what the other son could become.”
“You became this.”
“You made me this.”
The gun trembled in Matteo’s hand.
Elena took one slow step toward Gabriel.
Matteo noticed.
“Stop.”
She stopped.
A bell rang in the tower above us.
One deep note.
Then another.
Matteo looked up.
Gabriel drove his elbow into Matteo’s wrist.
The gun fired.
Antonio fell.
Elena lunged toward Gabriel as I crossed the chapel. Matteo recovered quickly and struck Gabriel across the face.
I hit my brother with my good shoulder.
We crashed against the altar.
Pain nearly blinded me, but I held on. Matteo punched my wound, and I collapsed to one knee. He raised the gun.
Elena swung the metal case into his arm.
The weapon skidded across the floor.
Gabriel kicked it beneath a pew.
Antonio, bleeding from his side, drew a small revolver from his coat.
He aimed at Matteo.
“Father,” Matteo whispered.
Antonio’s hand shook.
He could have ended everything with one shot.
Instead, he lowered the weapon.
“No more sons buried for my mistakes.”
Sirens rose outside.
Federal vehicles surrounded the retreat.
Mara Vale entered the chapel with a tactical team.
Gabriel had been working with her from hiding. The bell was their signal.
Matteo smiled strangely as agents placed him in handcuffs.
“You think this ends because you arrested me?”
He looked at Elena.
“Ask Gabriel who gave me the route to her cabin.”
Elena turned toward her husband.
Gabriel’s face went still.
May you like
Matteo laughed as the agents led him away.
“I didn’t find Elena,” he called over his shoulder. “Gabriel delivered her.”
