PART 2: THE STARVING DOG WOULD NOT LET THE MAFIA BOSS NEAR THE GIRL—THEN HER LOCKET REVEALED A SECRET HE THOUGHT HAD DIED TWELVE YEARS AGO
PART 2: THE STARVING DOG WOULD NOT LET THE MAFIA BOSS NEAR THE GIRL—THEN HER LOCKET REVEALED A SECRET HE THOUGHT HAD DIED TWELVE YEARS AGO
Nico Valenti.
He worked for an organization that controlled the docks on the south side of the river. We had not been friends, but for years we had avoided becoming enemies.
That fragile understanding ended the moment I saw his attention move to the girl.
“Mr. DeLuca,” he said.
His tone was polite.
Too polite.
“Nico.”
“We did not expect to find you here.”
“I could say the same.”
His gaze lowered to Bear, then to the small hand gripping my coat.
“We are looking for a child.”
“She has a name.”
The girl pressed closer behind me.
Nico stopped several feet away.
“Her father took something that did not belong to him.”
The silver locket remained in my hand.
Its edges bit into my palm.
“What did he take?”
“Records.”
“What kind?”
“I was not told.”
“Then you came into my part of the city, with twelve men and three cars, to retrieve something you cannot identify?”
Nico looked toward the alley entrance.
“Eight men.”
“That makes me feel much better.”
His mouth shifted faintly, but there was no humor in his eyes.
“We were told the girl might seek you.”
“By whom?”
“I cannot answer that.”
“You can.”
“I should not.”
The distinction mattered.
Nico had not come to start a war. If he had, the conversation would not have lasted this long. He was following instructions he did not entirely trust.
Behind me, the girl’s breathing had become shallow.
Bear growled each time one of Nico’s men adjusted his stance.
I raised the locket enough for Nico to see it.
His face changed.
Only for an instant.
But I noticed.
“You recognize this.”
“No.”
“You looked at it as though it had spoken your name.”
“I have seen many old pieces of jewelry.”
“Not this one.”
Nico’s eyes returned to the child.
“Mr. DeLuca, you do not understand what you are involving yourself in.”
“I understand that an eight-year-old girl was sleeping beside a dumpster in freezing weather while grown men searched for her.”
“We were sent to bring her somewhere safe.”
“She seems unconvinced.”
The girl finally spoke.
“You burned our house.”
Nico’s attention snapped to her.
“No.”
Her fingers tightened on my coat.
“I saw your cars.”
“Black cars are common in this city.”
“One had a silver bird on the back.”
Nico turned his head slightly.
One of the vehicles at the curb carried a chrome falcon ornament above the rear plate.
His expression hardened.
“That car was not at your house.”
“It was.”
“You are mistaken.”
“I’m not.”
Her voice trembled, but she did not lower her eyes.
I felt something shift inside me.
For years, fear had been a tool I used carefully. I understood how it moved through a room, how it silenced a table, how it made men reveal more than they intended.
This child was afraid.
But she was not confused.
“What is your name?” I asked without looking back.
She hesitated.
“Maya.”
“Maya what?”
“Maya Serrano.”
Nico closed his eyes briefly.
The reaction was small, but it confirmed everything.
“You know the name,” I said.
He looked at me again.
“I knew her father.”
“Knew?”
Nico glanced toward Maya.
“He may still be alive.”
“He told me to run,” she said. “Then the roof fell.”
The final word broke in her throat.
Bear turned and pressed his head against her knee.
Nico’s face softened.
Not enough to make me trust him, but enough to tell me he was not untouched by what he saw.
“Let us take her to a hospital,” he said.
“She is not going anywhere with you.”
“The child needs medical attention.”
“For once, we agree.”
I took out my phone.
Nico lifted one hand.
“Do not call the police.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
I called Dr. Miriam Cole, who had treated my family for more than fifteen years and asked very few unnecessary questions.
“I need you at the east garage,” I told her. “Bring supplies for cold exposure and smoke inhalation.”
She knew better than to waste time asking why.
“I’ll be there.”
I ended the call.
Nico watched me.
“You cannot keep her hidden forever.”
“I only need to keep her safe tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow depends on what you tell me now.”
A quiet wind moved through the alley, carrying smoke from a distant chimney.
Nico looked back at his men.
“Wait by the vehicles.”
They did not move.
His voice sharpened.
“Now.”
One by one, they returned to the street.
The doors remained open, but the distance gave us the illusion of privacy.
Nico stepped closer.
Bear bared his teeth.
“Easy,” I said.
The dog did not look at me.
His entire attention remained on Nico.
“He was always stubborn,” Nico murmured.
Maya stared at him.
“You know Bear?”
Nico’s expression betrayed him before he could stop it.
The alley went silent.
“You have been to their house,” I said.
He did not answer.
Maya moved from behind me just enough to see him clearly.
“You gave Bear sausage.”
Nico looked down.
“When?”
“Last summer. Daddy said you were an old friend.”
Nico rubbed one hand across his mouth.
The men at the street waited beside their cars, pretending not to watch.
“You were not sent to find a stranger’s child,” I said. “You were sent to find someone you already knew.”
“I was sent to keep her away from you.”
The honesty surprised me.
“Why?”
“Because her father believed you would ask the wrong questions.”
Maya’s brows drew together.
“Daddy told me to find him.”
Nico looked at her with genuine confusion.
“No. Tomas would never have—”
He stopped.
The name struck me harder than the cold.
Tomas Serrano.
Six years earlier, I had stood beside a grave bearing that name.
I had watched the coffin lowered.
I had handed his widow an envelope of money and promised that her husband’s debts had died with him.
“Elena’s husband,” I said.
Nico gave a slow nod.
Maya looked between us.
“You knew my daddy?”
I looked at the locket.
The photograph inside showed Elena beside me, both of us younger and foolish enough to believe that love could exist untouched by the lives around us.
“He knew me,” I said.
“Was he your friend?”
I could have lied.
Children were often given simple answers because adults believed simplicity protected them.
But Maya had crossed a burning house, spent a night in an alley, and guarded a secret beneath her sweater. She had already paid too much for other people’s lies.
“No,” I said. “Not exactly.”
She accepted that without asking more.
Nico lowered his voice.
“Tomas survived what happened six years ago.”
“How?”
“I do not know.”
“You knew he was alive.”
“Not until two years ago.”
“And you said nothing.”
“He asked me not to.”
I took one step toward him.
Bear growled again.
Nico did not retreat.
“Why would a man I buried trust you enough to reveal he was alive?”
“Because I helped him disappear.”
There it was.
Not the entire truth, but the first solid piece of it.
“Where is Elena?”
Nico’s jaw tightened.
“I do not know.”
Maya spoke so softly I almost did not hear her.
“Mom is gone.”
I turned.
“What do you mean?”
“She left when I was five.”
“Left the house?”
“She got sick.”
Maya looked down at Bear.
“Daddy said she went somewhere warm to get better.”
Nico closed his eyes.
I knew that expression.
Grief mixed with guilt.
“Elena is dead,” I said.
It was not a question.
Nico nodded.
“Three years ago.”
The alley tilted around me.
For twelve years, Elena had existed in my mind as someone who had chosen absence. I had imagined her in another city, perhaps near the sea, living under a different name. Sometimes I hated her. Sometimes I forgave her. Most nights, I simply wondered.
Now I learned that she had died while I was less than ten miles away.
“How?”
“An illness.”
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“She asked that you never know.”
The anger came quickly, but beneath it was a deeper wound.
“She had no right.”
“No,” Nico said. “Perhaps she did not.”
Maya watched me with wide, careful eyes.
“Did you know my mom?”
I crouched again, ignoring Bear’s uncertain growl.
“Yes.”
“Did you like her?”
I looked at the tiny photograph.
“I loved her.”
Maya’s lips parted.
For one heartbeat, the alley held nothing but the truth neither of us knew how to carry.
Then she glanced at the picture again.
“Were you her brother?”
Nico looked away.
Despite everything, a small breath of laughter escaped me.
“No.”
“What were you?”
I chose my words carefully.
“I was someone she once trusted.”
Maya studied my face, comparing it with the younger version inside the locket.
“You looked less angry then.”
“I probably was.”
“You still had the hand drawings.”
I looked at the black ink across my fingers.
“They’re tattoos.”
“I know.”
Her tone suggested she thought I needed the explanation more than she did.
A vehicle horn sounded at the alley entrance.
Dr. Cole had arrived.
The next twenty minutes moved quickly.
Miriam examined Maya in the back of my car while Bear sat pressed against the bumper, refusing to let her out of his sight. Maya was cold, dehydrated, and exhausted, but she did not appear seriously injured.
Bear’s condition worried Miriam more.
“He needs a veterinarian,” she said. “That back leg may have been injured weeks ago.”
“He got hit by a truck,” Maya said. “Daddy made him a bed by the heater.”
“When?”
“Before the bad men came.”
Miriam looked at me.
“I know someone with an emergency clinic.”
“Call them.”
Nico remained near the alley entrance, speaking quietly into his phone.
I walked toward him.
“Who did you report to?”
“No one.”
“You answered the moment I approached.”
“I told my men to return to their offices.”
“Your men?”
He glanced at the departing cars.
“They do not all work for the same person.”
That explained the tension I had sensed among them.
“Who sent the car with the falcon?”
“I am trying to determine that.”
“Maya recognized it.”
“I believe her.”
“Now you believe her.”
Nico looked tired.
“I believed her before. I simply hoped she was wrong.”
A sedan stopped at the curb.
My driver, Marco, stepped out.
He had been with me for nine years and knew from my face not to begin with questions.
“Take Dr. Cole and the girl to the house,” I said. “Use the service entrance.”
Maya heard me from inside the car.
“Bear comes.”
“He comes.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be there soon.”
She looked at Nico.
“He doesn’t come.”
Nico flinched.
“No,” I said. “He doesn’t.”
Only after Marco drove away did I turn back to him.
“You will tell me everything.”
“I cannot.”
I grabbed the front of his coat, not violently, but firmly enough to bring us close.
“You came into my city looking for a freezing child. You knew her father. You knew Elena. You knew the grave I visited was empty.”
Nico’s breath fogged between us.
“And I know why Tomas told Maya to find you.”
My hand loosened.
“Why?”
“Not here.”
“Where?”
“There is a church on Cypress Street. The basement entrance faces the garden.”
“I know it.”
“Midnight.”
“You expect me to walk into a dark church because you suddenly discovered honesty?”
“No.”
Nico reached into his coat.
I stiffened.
He withdrew a small red notebook and placed it in my hand.
Its leather cover was burned along one edge.
“I found this in the road outside Tomas’s house.”
“What is it?”
“Your name appears inside twenty-seven times.”
I opened to the first marked page.
The writing belonged to Elena.
I recognized the slight backward slant from letters she had once left on my desk.
December 14.
V. still believes Gabriel ordered the harbor fire. Tomas says we cannot correct him yet. If he learns what truly happened, he will turn against the only person still keeping him alive.
My name was Gabriel.
I looked up.
“Who is V?”
Nico shook his head.
“Midnight.”
Then he walked away.
I should have stopped him.
Instead, I remained beneath the streetlamp with Elena’s notebook in my hand and snow gathering on my shoulders.
For twenty years, hesitation had been the weakness I never permitted anyone to see.
That night, I discovered another kind.
The hesitation of a man afraid to open a dead woman’s book because her words might prove that the life he remembered had never existed.
My house stood behind stone walls on the northern edge of the city.
It was too large for one person. Elena had once said the rooms felt like a museum designed to display expensive loneliness.
I had dismissed the comment.
Twelve years later, I understood it.
When I entered through the service hall, I heard Maya arguing with someone in the kitchen.
“Bear does not eat green beans.”
“He has not tried my green beans,” Mrs. Alvarez replied.
My housekeeper stood beside the long wooden table holding a bowl beneath Bear’s nose. The dog sat on a folded blanket, one back leg wrapped in fresh bandages.
Maya occupied the chair beside him, now wearing flannel pajamas and thick wool socks. Someone had washed the soot from her face. Without it, she looked even more like Elena.
The same dark brows.
The same thoughtful stillness.
Bear spotted me first.
He pushed himself upright and placed his body between Maya and the doorway.
Mrs. Alvarez clicked her tongue.
“Sir, your guest believes I am trying to poison her dog.”
“Bear doesn’t like vegetables,” Maya said.
“Bear is starving,” Mrs. Alvarez replied. “Starving creatures cannot afford opinions.”
Bear sniffed the bowl.
Then he took a careful bite.
Maya stared at him in betrayal.
“He likes your green beans.”
“Everyone likes my green beans eventually.”
Mrs. Alvarez glanced at me.
“We have soup.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You are always hungry when you say you are not.”
Maya looked between us.
“Is she your mom?”
Mrs. Alvarez laughed.
“I have been asking myself that for seventeen years.”
“She runs the house,” I said.
“And everything else, when necessary.”
Maya shifted in her chair.
“Do I have to stay here?”
“Only tonight.”
“Where will I go tomorrow?”
“We will decide tomorrow.”
“Adults say that when they don’t know.”
Mrs. Alvarez placed a bowl of soup in front of me.
“The child is observant.”
I sat across from Maya.
“Your father gave you the locket.”
She nodded.
“What else did he tell you?”
Her spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.
“He said not to talk unless I found you.”
“You found me.”
She looked toward Mrs. Alvarez.
I understood.
“Mrs. Alvarez is safe.”
Maya studied her.
“She made Bear eat vegetables.”
“I have done worse,” Mrs. Alvarez said.
Maya almost smiled.
Then she set down her spoon.
“Daddy woke me up after midnight. He smelled like smoke even before the fire.”
“Was he hurt?”
“There was blood on his sleeve.”
I kept my face still.
“He gave me the locket and told me to take Bear through the back garden. He said there was a blue gate, then a bus stop, then a bakery with a red sign.”
“How did you reach the city?”
“Daddy put money in my boot.”
She lifted her foot.
The worn boot had been replaced with a pair of house slippers.
“The driver said I didn’t have enough, but a lady paid.”
“Did anyone follow you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did your father give you a name?”
She nodded.
“Gabriel DeLuca.”
“And the name of the man he warned you about?”
Maya’s eyes lowered.
“He said I shouldn’t say it.”
“You can tell me.”
“No.”
“I need to know who is searching for you.”
She glanced at the doorway.
“He said the bad man has people everywhere.”
“Your father trusted me.”
“He said to find you. He did not say to trust you.”
Mrs. Alvarez stopped wiping the counter.
Maya met my gaze with Elena’s stubbornness.
I could have pressed her.
I could have reminded her that she was in my house, eating my food, guarded by my people.
Instead, I heard myself say, “That is fair.”
Her shoulders loosened slightly.
“Can I see the notebook?” she asked.
I had placed it beside my soup.
“How do you know what it is?”
“My mom wrote in a red book.”
I slid it across the table.
Maya touched the burned corner.
“This is hers.”
“You remember it?”
“She kept it in the sewing box.”
She turned several pages, then stopped near the middle.
Someone had removed two sheets.
The torn edges were clean, unlike the fire damage.
Maya ran her finger along them.
“Daddy took these.”
“When?”
“The day Mom went away.”
Mrs. Alvarez and I exchanged a glance.
“Did she give them to him?” I asked.
“No. They argued.”
“What about?”
“I was little.”
“Try to remember.”
Maya closed her eyes.
“Mom said, ‘Gabriel cannot carry this alone.’ Daddy said, ‘Gabriel is the reason we have to hide.’”
The words landed heavily.
“What else?”
“She said he was wrong.”
“About me?”
Maya nodded.
“Daddy said if you ever saw me, everything would start again.”
“What would start?”
“I don’t know.”
She pushed the notebook back.
“Are you my father?”
The question was so quiet that Mrs. Alvarez turned away, pretending to busy herself at the sink.
I looked at the child across from me.
Elena’s daughter.
The locket had said her father lived.
The face, the timing, the secrecy—all of it pointed toward an answer I was not prepared to give.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Maya’s eyes filled, but she blinked the tears away.
“Daddy is my father.”
“Yes.”
“You said you buried him.”
“I buried a coffin with his name.”
“Was he inside?”
“I believed he was.”
She wrapped both arms around herself.
“Then maybe believing is not the same as knowing.”
No one in the room spoke.
At eight years old, she had reached the same conclusion it had taken me most of my life to understand.
Mrs. Alvarez carried the empty bowls to the sink.
“You need sleep,” she told Maya.
“I’m not tired.”
Bear yawned beside her.
“He disagrees.”
Maya looked at me.
“Will you leave?”
“I have somewhere to go.”
Her face tightened.
“Daddy left too.”
The sentence held no accusation.
That made it worse.
I looked at the clock.
Eleven fifteen.
I had spent decades expecting others to wait while I decided what mattered. Now a child who barely knew me had asked for one simple thing: do not disappear.
“I will stay until you fall asleep.”
Mrs. Alvarez led us to the room beside the library, one of the few bedrooms that did not feel formal. A small lamp glowed beside the bed. Bear circled the rug twice before settling near the door.
Maya climbed beneath the blankets.
I sat in the chair beside her.
“Tell me something about Mom,” she said.
“What kind of thing?”
“Something good.”
There were too many memories.
Elena dancing barefoot in my office after everyone had gone home. Elena feeding pigeons in the square even though she claimed to dislike birds. Elena refusing to let me buy her an expensive coat because she preferred the green one she had found at a secondhand shop.
“She used to sing when she was nervous,” I said.
Maya’s eyes brightened.
“She sang while cooking.”
“She could not cook.”
“She made toast.”
“She burned toast.”
Maya smiled.
“She still sang.”
“Yes.”
Her smile faded slowly.
“Why did she leave you?”
I looked toward the dark window.
“I thought she was afraid of my life.”
“Was she?”
“Probably.”
“Were you bad?”
Children rarely asked complicated questions with complicated words.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Are you still?”
“Sometimes.”
“Daddy said people can change direction without changing roads.”
“That sounds like Tomas.”
“You remember him?”
“Yes.”
The truth was that I remembered him too well.
Tomas had once worked in my security division. He was precise, quiet, and impossible to intimidate. Six years ago, he had been accused of passing information to my rivals. Before I could question him, his car had been found beneath the east bridge.
The body inside was burned beyond recognition.
Identification had come from a ring and dental records.
Records that could have been changed.
“Did Daddy do something bad?” Maya asked.
“I don’t know.”
“He said he made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“He trusted someone because they saved his life.”
Her eyelids were growing heavy.
“Who?”
She turned her face into the pillow.
“The man with the silver bird.”
Within minutes, she was asleep.
Bear kept his eyes on me.
“You do not trust easily,” I whispered.
His ears shifted.
“That makes two of us.”
I rose and opened the door.
Before leaving, I looked back at Maya.
One hand rested beneath her cheek. In sleep, the careful suspicion left her face. She looked younger. Smaller.
Not a messenger.
Not evidence.
A child.
Whatever Elena and Tomas had hidden, Maya would not pay for it.
That decision felt different from the promises I usually made.
There was no advantage in it.
No calculation.
Only certainty.
At midnight, I entered the basement of Saint Matthew’s Church alone.
The church above was dark, but candles burned along the basement walls. Folding chairs had been stacked near a small stage. The room smelled of dust, old wood, and melted wax.
Nico waited beside a long table.
“You came.”
“You knew I would.”
“I hoped.”
“You have five minutes before my patience becomes less spiritual.”
He looked toward the ceiling.
“Father Anthony would object to that sentence.”
“Father Anthony objects to most of my sentences.”
Nico removed his coat and placed it over a chair.
Without it, he appeared older. More tired.
“How much did Maya tell you?”
“That Tomas believed the man with the silver bird was responsible.”
Nico nodded.
“The falcon belongs to Victor Sayegh.”
I knew the name.
Victor had served as my financial adviser for almost twenty-three years.
He had stood beside me at funerals, negotiations, and family weddings. He had managed legitimate companies worth more money than most people could imagine.
He also wore a silver falcon pin on the inside of his coat.
“The cars were Victor’s?”
“One was registered to a shell company he controls.”
“Why would he attack Tomas?”
“To recover Elena’s records.”
“The notebook?”
“Not only the notebook.”
Nico took a folded map from his pocket.
It showed the southern waterfront, including three warehouses marked in red.
“Elena discovered that money was being diverted from your companies.”
“How much?”
“Enough to ruin alliances if the records became public.”
“Victor handled those accounts.”
“Yes.”
My first instinct was denial.
Not because I believed Victor incapable of betrayal, but because believing it required me to reconsider two decades of decisions.
“Why did Elena know?”
“She worked for him.”
The room seemed colder.
“Elena was a translator.”
“That was how she met you. It was not the only work she did.”
Nico unfolded another page.
An employment record.
Victor’s company.
Elena’s name.
“She was auditing private transfers,” Nico continued. “She discovered that Victor was using the money to maintain influence with several groups, including mine.”
“Why?”
“To prevent you from becoming too powerful.”
“Victor helped build everything I control.”
“And quietly weakened it whenever your position threatened his own.”
I walked toward the candlelit wall.
“You expect me to believe Elena vanished because she discovered an accountant was stealing?”
“No.”
Nico’s voice softened.
“She vanished because she learned Victor had arranged your brother’s death.”
I turned.
My younger brother, Matteo, had died nineteen years ago in a warehouse fire.
The same fire mentioned in Elena’s notebook.
“You said Gabriel still believes he ordered the harbor fire.”
My own name.
Victor had allowed me to believe the fire was retaliation for a decision I made.
The guilt had shaped every year afterward.
“What proof?”
“That is what Tomas took from the house.”
“The missing pages.”
“Partly.”
“Where is Tomas?”
“I don’t know.”
“You helped him disappear once.”
“I did.”
“Help him again.”
Nico shook his head.
“He no longer trusts me.”
“Why?”
“Because two years ago, I told Victor that Tomas was alive.”
My hand closed around the edge of the table.
“Why?”
Nico did not look away.
“Victor had my son.”
The anger paused before it could fully form.
“Is your son alive?”
“Yes.”
“Then you made a choice.”
“A shameful one.”
“A father’s one.”
His eyes reddened.
“I thought Victor only wanted the records. I did not know he intended to find Elena’s child.”
“Maya.”
“Yes.”
“Why does she matter?”
Nico looked at me for a long moment.
“Because of her birth.”
The locket seemed to grow heavier inside my coat.
“Is she mine?”
“I do not know.”
“You have said that too many times tonight.”
“I am not avoiding the truth. Elena never told me.”
“But Tomas knew.”
“Yes.”
“And Victor?”
“Victor believed she was your daughter.”
The candles flickered along the wall.
“Why would that matter to him?”
“Because Elena made arrangements before she died.”
“What arrangements?”
“She placed ownership documents into a trust.”
“For Maya?”
Nico nodded.
“A controlling share in DeLuca Maritime.”
I stared at him.
“That is impossible.”
“Those shares belonged to Matteo.”
My brother.
Before his death, Matteo had owned thirty-two percent of the company that became the foundation of my legitimate empire.
His shares had vanished into a private holding structure after the fire. Victor claimed they had been sold to cover debts.
“Elena found them,” I said.
“She found proof that they were never sold. Victor moved them.”
“And transferred them to her?”
“No. To a trust established in the name of Matteo’s surviving child.”
The room went perfectly still.
“Matteo had no child.”
Nico’s silence answered before his words did.
“That is what you were told.”
My thoughts returned to the message inside the locket.
Her father lives.
Perhaps the message did not refer to me.
Perhaps it did not refer to Tomas either.
“Who was the child?”
Nico handed me a photograph.
A young woman stood outside a hospital holding a newborn. Elena was beside her, one arm around her shoulders.
On the back was a date from nineteen years earlier.
The night of the harbor fire.
The woman in the photograph was not familiar.
But the blanket around the baby was.
It was mustard yellow.
The same unusual shade as Maya’s torn sweater.
“Elena kept the blanket,” Nico said. “Years later, she made clothing from it for Maya.”
“Why?”
“Because the child in this photograph was Maya’s father.”
I looked up sharply.
“Tomas?”
Nico nodded.
“Tomas Serrano was Matteo DeLuca’s son.”
My brother’s child.
Maya was not my daughter.
She was my grandniece.
The discovery should have brought relief.
Instead, it opened a deeper wound.
Matteo had died without knowing his son.
I had buried Tomas without knowing he was my nephew.
And Elena had carried the truth alone.
“Did Tomas know?”
“Not until Elena became ill.”
“Why didn’t he come to me?”
“Because he believed you ordered the fire that killed Matteo.”
The lie had worked perfectly.
It had kept family members apart for nearly two decades.
“Victor,” I said.
“Yes.”
A door opened upstairs.
Footsteps crossed the church floor.
Nico looked toward the staircase.
“We should leave.”
The basement door opened.
Father Anthony appeared, wearing a dark sweater and holding a small envelope.
He was seventy, silver-haired, and unimpressed by nearly everyone.
“Gabriel,” he said. “A woman came here ten minutes ago asking for you.”
“What woman?”
“She would not give her name.”
He handed me the envelope.
Inside was a recent photograph of Maya asleep in the room at my house.
My blood turned cold.
Someone had taken it from inside the bedroom.
Beneath the image was a handwritten message.
The child is safe for now.
Bring Elena’s notebook to the old railway station at dawn.
Come without Nico.
I looked at him.
Nico had gone pale.
“Who knew Maya was at my house?”
“Only you, your doctor, your driver, and your housekeeper.”
“And the person who took this photograph.”
Father Anthony crossed himself.
“There is something else.”
He turned the envelope over.
A second message had been written on the back.
Not in the same handwriting.
This one was hurried and uneven.
Gabriel, do not bring the notebook.
Victor is not the one holding her.
I recognized the writing.
Tomas Serrano.
Maya’s father was alive.
And he was somewhere close enough to know that someone had entered my home.
I called Marco.
He answered immediately.
“Is Maya safe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are looking at her?”
A pause.
“No. Mrs. Alvarez is with her.”
“Put her on.”
I heard footsteps, then a door open.
Mrs. Alvarez answered.
“Mr. DeLuca?”
“Where is Maya?”
“Asleep.”
“Go into the room.”
“I am standing beside the bed.”
“And Bear?”
There was a longer pause.
“He is not here.”
Every instinct in me sharpened.
“Check the window.”
I heard curtains pulled aside.
“It is open.”
The cold seemed to enter the church basement.
“Maya?”
Mrs. Alvarez’s voice broke.
“The bed is empty.”
I gripped the phone.
On the table, Elena’s notebook had fallen open to a page I had not read.
At the top, she had written one sentence.
If anything happens to Maya, do not look for Victor.
Look for the man Gabriel trusts enough to leave inside his house.
I slowly raised my eyes.
There were only three people who had unrestricted access to my home.
Mrs. Alvarez.
Marco.
And my oldest friend, Adrian Russo—the man who had been waiting upstairs when I found Maya’s room empty.