Chapter 5 - The Missing Key
Vittorio searched Alessio first.
The key was not in his pockets.
Matteo searched the tunnel.
No one had passed him.
Sophia walked toward the wall.
She studied the stones beneath the emergency light.
Then she pointed to a narrow drainage opening.
“He dropped it.”
Alessio looked at her.
“You saw that in the dark?”
“I heard metal hit stone.”
Matteo reached into the drain.
His fingers closed around the brass key.
Vittorio stared at his brother.
“You tried to hide it.”
“I tried to keep Marco from getting it.”
“Marco was gone.”
“I did not know that.”
Vittorio had spent his life reading men who lied with smiles, anger, and silence.
Alessio’s face held all three.
Renzo remained attached to the explosive chair.
Matteo’s bomb specialist entered from the greenhouse tunnel.
He examined the device.
“It is linked to a second trigger.”
“Where?”
“Unknown.”
“If someone activates it, we have seconds.”
Vittorio knelt in front of Renzo.
“Where were you taken?”
“The servants’ wing.”
“Marco and two men questioned me about the ledger.”
“Why did you have the key?”
Renzo looked toward Sophia.
“Your father gave it to mine.”
“My father trusted a gardener with the family vault?”
“I was not always a gardener.”
Renzo had once worked for Vittorio’s father as an intelligence courier.
After Vittorio took control, Renzo asked for a quiet position inside the estate.
He wanted to raise Sophia away from the criminal world.
Vittorio’s father gave him the key before his death.
“He said one son would protect the family.”
“The other would protect the empire.”
“Which son was which?” Vittorio asked.
“He did not say.”
The bomb specialist cut the first wire.
The pressure sensor remained active.
Sophia crouched beside Renzo.
“You promised we would see the sea today.”
Renzo smiled through the pain.
“We still might.”
A phone rang inside Marco’s abandoned jacket.
Vittorio answered.
Isabella’s voice came through.
“Open the vault.”
“Then Renzo lives.”
“Where are you?”
“Close enough to hear the explosion.”
Vittorio looked toward Alessio.
His brother watched the phone too carefully.
Isabella continued.
“And Vittorio, do not trust the man who came back from the dead.”
May you like
“He was never your brother’s prisoner.”
“He was my father’s partner.”
