Chapter 15 - Rosa’s Last Secret
Dante read the message three times.
YOUR DAUGHTER DID NOT DIE IN THE CAR.
Rosa had always called Sofia her daughter.
But Sofia was not her biological child.
She was Dante’s younger cousin, orphaned at five and raised by Rosa alongside Dante and Luca.
The car bombing had supposedly killed her eleven years earlier.
Only fragments of the vehicle were recovered.
No complete body.
Dante had accepted the identification because Rosa’s necklace was found inside.
Maya traced Rosa’s last phone signal to an abandoned Serrano warehouse in Brooklyn.
Dante wanted to go alone.
Arabella stood in front of the door.
“No.”
“This is family business.”
“You told me I wasn’t allowed to use that excuse.”
“I was wrong.”
“You’re often wrong.”
He almost smiled.
Then the pain returned.
“If Sofia is alive, she may hate me.”
“She may.”
“If she started the Harbor fire—”
“Then we stop her.”
Dante looked at Arabella.
“We?”
“We.”
The warehouse had once stored imported marble.
Now its empty halls echoed with dripping water.
Rosa sat in a chair beneath a hanging light.
She was not restrained.
A woman stood behind her.
Thirty-three years old. Dark hair. A burn scar along one side of her face.
Dante stopped.
“Sofia.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but her gun remained steady.
“You took your time.”
Dante could not move.
“I watched the car explode.”
“You watched a car explode.”
“I found your necklace.”
“Lazarus gave it to the driver.”
Rosa looked toward Dante.
“They kept Sofia at Facility Nine before moving her.”
“Why didn’t she appear in the files?” Arabella asked.
Sofia answered.
“Because I agreed to work for them.”
Dante’s expression broke.
“They told me Rosa and Luca would die if I refused.”
“You sabotaged the Harbor Center?” Arabella asked.
“I disabled the sprinklers. I did not know they planned to burn residents alive.”
“Who ordered it?”
Sofia looked toward the shadows.
“Your mother.”
Arabella’s body went cold.
“Katherine?”
A figure emerged from behind the marble slabs.
Katherine held a weapon.
Arabella stared at her.
“No.”
Katherine’s eyes were red.
“I tried to stop Lazarus once. It cost me nineteen years.”
“You helped start it again?”
“I helped control what remained.”
“You set the fire.”
“I needed the surviving investors exposed. They only revealed themselves when threatened.”
“People almost died.”
“I calculated the evacuation time.”
Arabella shook her head.
“You sound like Vivienne.”
Katherine flinched.
“That is not fair.”
“It’s true.”
Katherine believed Lazarus technology was too dangerous to leave unmanaged. Rather than destroy it, she had created a smaller covert network to hunt former investors.
Sofia became one of her operatives.
Rosa discovered the truth and threatened to tell Dante.
Katherine brought her here to negotiate.
“Give me the implant data,” Katherine told Arabella, “and I can dismantle every hidden Lazarus cell.”
“The implant was removed.”
“But the copied scanner exists.”
Maya had secured it in a hidden vault.
Katherine wanted the master key.
Arabella stepped closer.
“You chose me once.”
“I am choosing you now.”
“No. You’re choosing control.”
Katherine’s hand shook.
“You don’t understand what these people will do.”
“I understand exactly.”
“You slept in the streets because I failed to finish this war.”
“And now you’re willing to create more people like me.”
Katherine raised the gun.
Dante moved between them.
“Put it down.”
“This is not your fight.”
“You pointed a weapon at the woman I love.”
The words stopped everyone.
Arabella looked at him.
Dante did not take them back.
Katherine’s face softened with grief.
“I love her too.”
“Then stop making her prove it by surrendering.”
Sofia turned her gun toward Katherine.
“It’s over.”
Katherine looked betrayed.
“I saved you.”
“You used me.”
Sirens sounded outside.
Maya had alerted an independent federal team after tracing the warehouse.
Katherine realized she had lost.
She lowered the weapon.
Then a shot came from the upper walkway.
Gregory Sloane, who had escaped custody during a hospital transfer, fired toward Arabella.
Katherine pushed her daughter aside.
The bullet struck Katherine in the abdomen.
Dante killed the lights.
Sofia fired toward the walkway.
Sloane ran.
Arabella pressed both hands against Katherine’s wound.
“Stay with me.”
Katherine coughed.
“I wanted to fix it.”
“You can. Stay alive.”
Dante chased Sloane through the warehouse.
They fought above the marble-cutting floor.
Sloane blamed Dante for destroying the balance of power in New York.
“Men like us don’t become honest,” he said. “We only become weak.”
Dante struck him.
“I’m not trying to become honest.”
Another blow.
“I’m trying to become better.”
Sloane fell against the railing.
He reached for a hidden knife.
Dante stepped aside.
Sloane lost his balance and crashed onto a pile of sand below.
He survived, badly injured.
Katherine underwent emergency surgery.
She lived.
In recovery, Arabella sat beside her.
“I don’t know whether I can forgive you,” she said.
Katherine nodded weakly.
“You shouldn’t yet.”
“But I won’t abandon you.”
Tears moved across Katherine’s face.
“That is more than I deserve.”
Sofia surrendered voluntarily and agreed to testify.
Dante sat with her for hours.
Their reunion was not joyful.
Too much had happened.
But when Rosa entered, Sofia fell into her arms.
Dante watched them from the doorway.
Arabella stood beside him.
“You said something in the warehouse,” she said.
“I said many things.”
“One in particular.”
Dante looked at her.
“I love you.”
“You sound angry about it.”
“It is extremely inconvenient.”
Arabella smiled.
“I love you too.”
The words frightened her.
She said them anyway.
For the first time, Dante kissed her without a crisis surrounding them.
No bullets.
No alarms.
No one chasing them.
Only the quiet warehouse office, dawn appearing through dirty windows, and Rosa crying happily in the next room.
Yet peace remained unfinished.
Dante still faced prosecution for his criminal empire.
Arabella faced a board vote seeking to remove her.
And Richard Vale had requested one final meeting.
He claimed he knew the location of hundreds of children marked for future Lazarus recruitment.
May you like
But he would reveal it only to Arabella.
Alone.
