Chapter 5 - Midnight at Pier 17We had one advantage.
“So was Rosa,” Luca continued.
“And your doctor. Your driver. Enzo. Me.”
“Why tell me this?”
“Because Isabella’s warning could mean any of us.”
Alessandro reached inside his jacket.
I stepped between them.
“Stop.”
“Elena.”
“If Luca wanted to hide it, he wouldn’t have told you.”
Luca nodded.
“Thank you.”
“I’m not defending you. I’m using common sense.”
Then the mansion alarm sounded.
Sophia.
I ran.
Her bedroom was empty.
The window was open.
“Sophia!”
A guard lay unconscious near the service stairs.
Alessandro’s men spread through the property.
I couldn’t breathe.
Then I heard crying.
The laundry room.
I ripped open the door.
Sophia sat beneath a table.
Beside her was Isabella.
Alessandro appeared behind me.
Nobody moved.
Father and daughter stared at each other for eleven years in a single second.
Isabella stood.
Alessandro whispered her name.
“Isabella.”
She backed away.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“That’s what Enzo said you would say.”
“Enzo stole you from me.”
“You chose that meeting.”
The accusation hit him harder than a bullet could have.
“Yes.”
Isabella’s eyes filled.
“I waited at school.”
“I know.”
“You promised.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t come.”
“No.”
Alessandro swallowed.
“And I would give anything to change that.”
Isabella looked at Sophia.
“She followed me down here.”
I grabbed my daughter.
“You came back?”
Isabella nodded.
“Enzo told me to bring Sophia out through the service gate.”
Alessandro’s voice changed.
“You were going to kidnap her?”
“Yes.”
My blood ran cold.
“But I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
Isabella looked at Sophia.
“She gave me the necklace.”
Sophia smiled.
“She said it was pretty.”
Isabella touched the butterfly pendant.
“I remembered my mother giving it to me.”
Alessandro closed his eyes.
Isabella continued.
“I realized Enzo had lied about things before.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
A gunshot shattered the window.
Alessandro threw Isabella down.
Luca dragged me and Sophia behind the stone wall.
Security returned fire.
Then Alessandro’s phone rang.
Enzo.
“You found her,” he said.
Alessandro answered quietly.
“Yes.”
“And she found out what you are.”
“No. She found out what you are.”
Enzo laughed.
“Tomorrow. Pier 17. Midnight.”
“For what?”
“The truth.”
“And if I don’t come?”
“You will.”
The call ended.
Isabella looked at Alessandro.
“He has Rosa’s brother.”
“And something else,” Luca said.
“What?”
Luca had been examining the phone.
“A file came with the call.”
It contained bank records, photographs, names.
Evidence connecting Enzo to Isabella’s kidnapping and years of extortion.
But one document changed Alessandro’s expression.
“What is it?” I asked.
He handed it to me.
It was a list.
My address.
Sophia’s daycare.
The market.
Our doctor.
Everywhere we went.
At the bottom was an instruction:
IF MORETTI REFUSES, TAKE THE CHILD.
Isabella stared at it.
“He was never going to let Sophia go.”
“No,” Alessandro said.
Then he looked at me.
“Neither am I.”
I stiffened.
He immediately understood how it sounded.
“I mean I’m not letting him take her.”
“Choose your words better.”
For the first time that night, Isabella almost smiled.
Then she looked at her father.
“I can help you stop him.”
Alessandro shook his head.
“No.”
“You lost eleven years deciding things for me.”
His face tightened.
May you like
She stepped closer.
“You don’t get to decide the twelfth.”
