Chapter 3 - The Ghost of the Lo Bianco Family
Dominico owned six properties in Massachusetts.
Only three appeared under names connected to him.
The safest was an old waterfront house north of Boston that officially belonged to a private investment company headquartered in Delaware.
By two in the morning, Camila was standing inside its kitchen wearing a black sweater several sizes too large while Leo attempted to unlock the encrypted memory card.
She had not asked whose sweater it was.
Dominico had handed it to her after noticing her torn, rain-soaked waitress blouse.
Now he stood across the room on the phone, speaking quietly with men Camila could not see.
Matteo guarded the door.
Nobody trusted anyone.
That included Dominico’s own people.
Sylvio’s message had changed the rules.
Camila wrapped both hands around a cup of coffee.
She had spent ten years believing Sofia Bellini was the only person who never lied to her.
Now even that certainty was gone.
Dominico ended his call.
“Half my security network answers to men who once worked for my uncle.”
“Comforting,” Camila said.
“You’re welcome to leave.”
She looked toward the guarded windows.
“I’ll consider walking back to South Boston.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
It disappeared quickly.
“Tell me about Sofia.”
Camila hated that question.
“She worked for my mother.”
“As what?”
“Companion. Secretary. Friend. I never knew exactly.”
“How old were you when she arrived?”
“Maybe eight.”
“And you never checked her past?”
“I was eight.”
“After the massacre.”
“She saved my life. Forgive me for not running a background check.”
Dominico accepted the rebuke.
“What happened three years ago?”
Camila stared into her coffee.
“Sofia became sick.”
“With what?”
“She never told me.”
“Doctors?”
“She refused.”
Dominico looked toward Leo.
“Convenient.”
Camila’s eyes flashed.
“She was dying.”
“I’m not questioning that.”
“It sounds like you are.”
“I’m questioning everything.”
That was the difference between them, Camila realized.
She had survived by burying questions.
Dominico survived by refusing to let questions stay unanswered.
“She died in Vermont,” Camila finally said. “A cabin outside a small town. I buried her myself.”
“Then someone is buried there.”
“Yes.”
“But not Sofia Bellini.”
Apparently not.
Leo interrupted.
“I’m in.”
Everyone turned.
The memory card had contained hundreds of files.
Audio recordings.
Scans.
Photographs.
Financial documents.
Dominico pulled a chair beside Leo.
Camila remained standing.
The first folders were dated months before the massacre.
Vincenzo Lo Bianco had cataloged everything.
Names.
Payments.
Meetings.
A paranoid man preparing for betrayal.
One recording contained Vincenzo speaking with Dominico’s father, Carlo Costa.
Carlo’s voice was younger but recognizable.
“We have an agreement,” Carlo said.
“No expansion through Palermo without consultation. No retaliation in Boston without consultation.”
Vincenzo replied, “Your brother will not honor it.”
“My brother answers to me.”
“He resents you.”
“He has always resented me.”
Another voice appeared.
Female.
Quiet.
Familiar.
Camila dropped her coffee cup.
It shattered.
Dominico looked up.
“What?”
Camila stared at the speakers.
The woman’s voice continued.
“You are both underestimating Sylvio.”
Camila whispered, “Sofia.”
Dominico replayed it.
“You’re sure?”
“I heard that voice every day for ten years.”
The recording was dated eleven years ago.
A full year before the massacre.
Carlo spoke again.
“Bellini, you worry too much.”
The woman answered.
“If I worried too much, your brother would already know I was in this room.”
Bellini.
They called her Bellini.
But the real Sofia Bellini had died long before.
Leo searched the files for her name.
Dozens of references appeared.
S.B.
Bellini.
Sofia.
Then something different.
A photograph.
Dominico opened it.
Camila stopped breathing.
The woman she had known as Sofia stood beside Vincenzo.
But she was younger.
Beside her stood Carlo Costa.
And Sylvio.
All four looked barely thirty.
On the back, someone had handwritten a date twenty-nine years earlier.
Dominico stared at his father.
“My father knew her before you were born.”
Camila moved closer.
There was something else.
The woman’s hand rested on Carlo’s arm.
Not formally.
Intimately.
Dominico noticed too.
Neither commented.
Leo opened another file.
A letter.
Handwritten by Vincenzo.
If anything happens to me, Isabella must be taken to Serena.
Camila’s body went cold.
“Serena?”
Dominico read.
Not Sofia.
Serena.
Leo searched.
One file appeared.
SERENA COSTA.
Dominico slowly turned toward the screen.
“My aunt.”
Camila stared at him.
“What?”
“Serena Costa was my father’s younger sister.”
“Was?”
“She disappeared when I was a child.”
“How?”
“Nobody discussed it.”
Leo searched public records.
Nothing.
No death certificate.
No marriage record.
No address.
Serena Costa simply vanished from official history at twenty-seven years old.
Camila sank into a chair.
“Sofia was Serena.”
Dominico remained motionless.
“My aunt saved you.”
“Why?”
Nobody answered.
Then Leo found another recording.
Three days before the massacre.
Vincenzo and Serena.
Her voice sounded frightened.
“Sylvio knows about Isabella.”
Vincenzo answered, “He has known her since she was born.”
“No. I mean he knows the truth.”
Long silence.
“What truth?” Vincenzo asked.
Serena lowered her voice.
“If he proves it, Isabella becomes leverage against both families.”
The recording ended.
Camila stared at Dominico.
“What truth?”
He shook his head.
Another file was corrupted.
Leo worked on it.
Minutes passed.
Outside the windows, the black Atlantic rolled beneath moonlight.
Camila remembered Sofia—Serena—teaching her to cook.
Teaching her English.
Teaching her how to detect if someone had entered a room.
How to memorize license plates.
How to disappear.
Why would a Costa woman risk everything for a Lo Bianco daughter?
Dominico walked toward the window.
“My father visited Vermont once.”
Camila looked up.
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
Her heart stopped.
“How do you know?”
“I arranged his travel.”
“To where?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“When?”
Dominico gave the date.
Camila nearly dropped the cup she had just replaced.
“That was five days before Sofia died.”
Dominico turned.
“My father died nine days after.”
The room became utterly silent.
Someone had connected the two deaths.
Serena disappeared after meeting Carlo.
Carlo died after meeting Serena.
And Camila received her new identity immediately afterward.
Leo finally recovered part of the corrupted file.
Audio filled the room.
Serena’s voice.
“If you are hearing this, Vincenzo is dead.”
Static.
“Isabella must never know until she is safe.”
More static.
Then a sentence.
A sentence that made Dominico grip the table.
“Carlo promised me he would protect his daughter.”
Camila frowned.
“His daughter?”
Dominico looked at her.
The recording continued.
“She carries Lo Bianco blood, but she also carries Costa blood. If Sylvio learns the documents survived, he will kill Isabella because she can unite what he spent his entire life dividing.”
Camila stopped breathing.
“No.”
Dominico’s expression had changed completely.
“No,” she repeated.
Leo searched deeper.
A scanned birth record appeared.
Isabella Maria Lo Bianco.
Mother: Elena Lo Bianco.
Father: Carlo Antonio Costa.
Camila stared at it.
“That’s fake.”
Nobody answered.
“My father was Vincenzo.”
“Vincenzo raised you,” Dominico said carefully.
“He was my father.”
“I’m not saying he wasn’t.”
Camila pushed back from the table.
“You’re saying Carlo Costa—”
Dominico looked equally shaken.
“My father.”
Camila could barely finish.
“Was mine too?”
The implications struck both of them simultaneously.
Dominico and Camila stared at one another.
Half-siblings.
No.
Leo zoomed further into the record.
“Wait.”
Another annotation existed.
LEGAL FATHER: VINCENZO LO BIANCO.
BIOLOGICAL PATERNITY DISPUTED.
Dominico looked at Leo.
“Disputed?”
“There’s another document.”
DNA analysis.
Old.
Incomplete.
The sample attributed to Carlo Costa had not matched Isabella.
Camila gripped the chair.
“So he wasn’t my father.”
Leo continued reading.
“No.”
Relief and confusion collided.
“Then what did Serena mean?”
Leo opened the next page.
Dominico read first.
His face changed.
“What?”
Camila asked.
He did not answer.
“Dominico.”
He slowly turned the screen.
Carlo Costa was not Isabella’s biological father.
But the analysis identified another familial match.
A brother.
Camila read the name.
Sylvio Costa.
Her blood turned cold.
The report indicated a probability.
99.8 percent.
Camila stepped backward.
“No.”
Dominico looked sick.
Sylvio Costa—the man responsible for murdering the Lo Bianco family—was not merely afraid Isabella had survived.
According to the hidden DNA report, he had an entirely different reason to fear her existence.
Camila stared at the screen.
Because the man who ordered her death was very possibly the man who had given her life.
May you like
Sylvio Costa was her biological father.
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