Chapter 8 - The Man Behind the CamerasThe smoke was not fire.
It was chemical fog designed to blind the security cameras and force the occupants out of the protected office.
Dante recognized the tactic immediately.
“Wet cloths over your mouths,” he ordered.
Luca distributed hand towels from the private washroom.
Mara pressed one against Lena’s face.
The child trembled but remained quiet.
Dante moved toward a steel cabinet and entered a code. A hidden section of wall opened, revealing an emergency passage.
“Where does that go?” Mara asked.
“Private elevator shaft.”
“Of course you have a secret elevator.”
Victor’s voice continued over the intercom.
“You cannot protect everyone, Dante.”
Dante lifted Lena.
Mara carried the disaster tin and the storage card.
Luca led them into the passage.
The space was narrow and dim. Metal stairs descended between concrete walls.
Behind them, someone began cutting through the office door.
“You said Victor was confined,” Mara whispered.
“He was,” Luca replied. “Two guards are dead.”
Lena flinched.
Mara glared at Luca.
“Unconscious,” he corrected quickly. “Very deeply unconscious.”
Dante almost smiled despite the danger.
They descended four floors before Luca stopped.
Voices echoed below.
Victor’s men had entered the stairwell from another level.
“We go up,” Dante said.
“The roof is exposed,” Luca warned.
“It is also where the helicopter is waiting.”
Mara stared. “You have a helicopter?”
Dante looked at her. “This surprises you?”
“Nothing should anymore.”
They climbed.
The sound of pursuit grew closer.
At floor sixty-two, a bullet struck the metal railing.
Dante pushed Mara and Lena behind a support column.
Luca returned fire.
The noise inside the shaft was deafening.
Lena covered her ears.
Mara pulled the child beneath her coat.
“Think about bread,” she whispered.
Lena’s breathing came too fast.
“Warm water,” Mara said. “Sugar. Yeast.”
“Wait,” Lena whispered.
“That’s right.”
“Flour.”
“Good.”
“Knead.”
The steps calmed her while violence echoed below.
Dante watched them for half a second.
Then his gaze hardened, and he fired toward the men approaching from beneath.
They reached the roof.
Winter wind struck them.
The helicopter waited with its blades turning.
Two security men stood nearby.
One raised his gun.
Luca shot first.
The man fell.
The second guard surrendered immediately.
“Victor compromised the roof team,” Luca said.
Dante placed Lena inside the helicopter.
Mara climbed after her.
A shot cracked from the stairwell.
Dante jerked.
Blood appeared near his shoulder.
Mara screamed his name.
He remained standing and fired back.
Luca dragged him toward the helicopter.
Victor emerged onto the roof.
He wore no jacket despite the cold. The silver wolf ring gleamed on his hand.
“Give me the card!” he shouted.
Dante entered the helicopter.
The door began closing.
Victor fired again.
The bullet struck the metal frame inches from Mara’s head.
The helicopter rose.
Victor became smaller beneath them, his face turned toward the sky.
Dante pressed a cloth against his shoulder.
“It passed through,” he said when Mara tried to examine the wound.
“You were shot.”
“It happens.”
“To normal people?”
“No.”
Lena held Dante’s uninjured hand.
Mara pressed harder against the wound.
He looked at her.
“You stayed calm.”
“I am not calm.”
“You protected Lena.”
“I told her a bread recipe while people fired guns at us.”
“It worked.”
Mara’s hands began shaking now that the danger had passed.
Dante reached up and touched her wrist.
“I am alive.”
“You went back into a fire for me, and now you’ve been shot.”
“Those events are unrelated.”
“They’re related to your terrible lifestyle.”
His thumb moved once across her pulse.
“You are crying.”
“I’m furious.”
“You cry when angry?”
“I cry when I experience any emotion larger than a muffin.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
The helicopter carried them to a secure estate in Westchester.
A private doctor treated Dante’s wound.
The bullet had missed major arteries and bone, though he required stitches.
Mara waited outside the medical room with Lena asleep against her.
Luca arrived carrying two phones and a folder.
“Victor controls the Aurelia’s internal security system,” he said. “He has locked our people out of half the building.”
“How many staff are loyal to him?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where is Salvatore?”
“His aircraft left Italy three hours ago.”
Mara felt cold.
“He’s coming here.”
“Yes.”
Dante emerged with his shoulder bandaged.
“You should be in bed,” Mara said.
“I have work.”
“You have a hole in your body.”
“I have had worse.”
“That sentence doesn’t make you impressive. It makes you exhausting.”
Luca pretended to examine his phone.
Dante ignored him.
“The encrypted file requires a phrase,” he said. “The technology team believes Sofia created the password.”
Lena woke.
She looked toward the storage card on the table.
“Mommy’s song.”
Dante crouched.
“What song?”
Lena hummed three uncertain notes.
Dante closed his eyes.
“Sofia sang it to her every night.”
The phrase came from an old Italian lullaby.
Where the stars sleep, love remembers.
The file opened.
A second video appeared.
This one was recorded inside Sofia and Dante’s bedroom.
Sofia looked more frightened than before.
“Dante, if you see this, Victor has already betrayed you.”
She held up a small silver key shaped like a rose.
“The biometric key is hidden inside Lena’s music box. Do not open the vault without federal protection. The names inside are powerful enough to destroy the family and everyone connected to it.”
Her voice broke.
“There is something else you must know about Mara Bell.”
Mara stopped breathing.
Sofia continued.
“Arthur Bell was my biological father.”
The room tilted.
Mara gripped the table.
Sofia explained that her mother had become pregnant as a teenager and been forced to surrender the baby. Arthur had searched for his daughter for decades. They found each other six months before Sofia’s death.
That made Sofia Mara’s half-sister.
And Lena her niece.
Mara stared at the child sleeping against her.
Every instinct she had felt toward Lena suddenly carried a deeper meaning.
Dante looked equally stunned.
“My father knew,” Mara whispered. “He found his daughter and never told me.”
“He may have been waiting for a safe time,” Dante said.
“There was no safe time.”
The video continued.
“If Salvatore learns Arthur has the evidence, he will destroy the bakery. If he learns Mara exists, he may use her to control Lena’s inheritance.”
Sofia leaned toward the camera.
“Please protect my sister.”
The recording ended.
Mara stood motionless.
Her father had carried a secret daughter in his heart.
Lena was family.
Dante was her brother-in-law.
And the emotions growing between them had just become more complicated than either could understand.
Before anyone spoke, the estate alarms sounded.
A guard entered.
“We have a vehicle at the gate.”
“Who?” Dante asked.
The guard’s face was pale.
“Salvatore Moretti.”
On the security monitor, an older man stepped from a black car.
He raised both empty hands.
May you like
Beside him stood Dr. Keller.
And she was holding a photograph of Mara’s father taken one week before his death.
