Chapter 3 - The Brother at the Door
Dominic looked from Elena’s phone to Vittorio.
“What happened?”
Nobody answered.
Vittorio stepped between his brother and Elena.
“Take off your ring.”
Dominic blinked.
“What?”
“Your ring.”
Dominic laughed.
“Good morning to you too.”
Vittorio didn’t smile.
“Take it off.”
Dominic slowly removed the gold crest ring and placed it on the table.
Luca examined it.
Identical.
That proved nothing.
Or everything.
Dominic, thirty-seven, wore an expensive gray suit and the relaxed expression of a man accustomed to walking into dangerous rooms and being welcomed.
Now the room did not welcome him.
Carlo searched him.
Dominic permitted it.
He even lifted his arms.
“Would someone explain why I’m being treated like a stranger?”
Vittorio held up the frozen image.
Dominic looked.
His amusement vanished.
“Where did you get that?”
“Elena’s mother.”
“Evelyn Marlowe is dead.”
“Apparently everyone is alive today.”
Dominic stared at Elena.
Then at Vittorio.
“Sofia?”
Vittorio showed him the photograph.
Dominic sat.
For several seconds he appeared genuinely stunned.
Elena watched carefully.
She had cleaned hotel rooms for enough wealthy people to know that powerful families often had a strange relationship with truth.
They lied politely.
They smiled while doing it.
They called secrets protection.
Dominic seemed shocked.
That did not mean he was innocent.
“Where were you at seven this morning?” Elena asked.
Dominic looked at her.
“Excuse me?”
“Where?”
“Who are you?”
“The woman somebody arranged to put in your brother’s house.”
Vittorio said, “Answer her.”
Dominic stared at him.
“At my apartment.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“What exactly are you accusing me of?”
“Nothing yet.”
Dominic laughed without humor.
“That’s reassuring.”
Luca pulled Vittorio aside.
“We need the equipment taken somewhere isolated.”
“Why?”
“The headboard units were transmitting through the mansion network. If I move them offline, I might trace stored routing data.”
“Do it.”
“Not here.”
Vittorio nodded.
“Wine cellar.”
Dominic stood.
“I’m coming.”
“No,” Vittorio said.
Dominic’s expression hardened.
“I’m family.”
“That’s exactly why you’re not coming.”
The words landed hard.
Elena watched something pass between the brothers.
Old resentment.
Old love.
Old wounds.
Dominic picked up his ring.
“You haven’t slept in four months, Vitto. Don’t let paranoia finish what insomnia started.”
Vittorio’s jaw tightened.
“Get out.”
Dominic stopped at the doorway.
Then he looked at Elena.
“My brother trusts strangers too quickly when he’s desperate.”
Vittorio stepped forward.
Dominic left.
The cellar had once stored hundreds of bottles.
Now half of it served as an emergency command room.
No wireless connections.
Thick stone walls.
Independent power.
Luca connected the retrieved headboard devices to an isolated computer.
Elena sat beside Vittorio.
He rubbed his eyes.
“You should sleep.”
He gave her a look.
“Right. Terrible suggestion.”
“I meant somewhere else.”
“I haven’t slept more than ninety minutes at once since May.”
“Nightmares?”
“No.”
“Pain?”
“Headaches.”
“Racing heart?”
“Yes.”
“Anxiety?”
He glanced at her.
“I run a criminal organization.”
“So that’s a yes.”
For the first time, he laughed.
A genuine short laugh.
It changed his face.
Made him younger.
Then he became serious again.
“You’re not what I expected.”
“From a housekeeper?”
“From anyone who walked into this house.”
“What did you expect?”
“Fear.”
“I have plenty.”
“You hide it well.”
“So do you.”
Their eyes met.
Something quiet passed between them.
Then Luca interrupted.
“I found the routing history.”
They moved to the monitor.
The system had connected nightly between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.
Every night.
For 119 nights.
“Four months,” Elena whispered.
“Yes.”
Luca opened another window.
“The signal intensity changed over time.”
A graph appeared.
It started low.
Then increased.
But something was strange.
“What happened here?” Elena asked.
At week seven, the frequency pattern changed completely.
Luca zoomed in.
“I don’t know.”
Vittorio leaned closer.
“Is that when the headaches became worse?” Elena asked.
He thought.
“Yes.”
Luca ran the pattern through an analysis program.
“It’s not random.”
Numbers appeared.
Then letters.
“What is it?” Carlo asked.
Luca stared.
“It’s encoded data.”
“Inside the sound?”
“Yes.”
Elena remembered her mother’s research.
Sleep.
Acoustic stimulation.
Subconscious processing.
“What if someone wasn’t trying to keep him awake?” she said.
Everyone looked at her.
“What if they were trying to make him hear something?”
Vittorio frowned.
“Below consciousness?”
“Maybe.”
Luca extracted the pattern.
The software processed.
Static filled the speakers.
Then a voice.
Faint.
Female.
“Vittorio…”
He went rigid.
Sofia.
Again.
The recording continued.
“If you can hear this, they failed.”
Carlo crossed himself.
Vittorio stepped closer to the speaker.
“Sofia?”
It was only a recording.
“I couldn’t contact you directly. Father’s network survived him.”
Vittorio’s face tightened.
Their father, Alessandro Moretti, had died six years earlier.
Cancer.
At least according to every official record.
“The network has people inside your home, your businesses, the police, and the clinic. Evelyn and I tried to expose it.”
Elena gripped the table.
Her mother.
The recording crackled.
“We discovered Project Somnus was never medical research. Father funded it to influence interrogations, destroy sleep, increase fear, and weaken resistance.”
Carlo whispered a curse.
Vittorio looked sick.
Sofia continued.
“Evelyn stopped the trials. Father ordered the clinic erased.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Her mother had not died in an accident.
“Why are you sending this now?” Vittorio whispered.
As if the recording could answer.
It did.
“Because someone restarted Somnus.”
Luca stared at the devices.
“Here,” he said.
“Yes,” Elena whispered.
Sofia continued.
“And because the person using it against you is someone you love.”
Silence.
Vittorio’s gaze moved toward the cellar door.
Dominic.
Luca paused the recording.
“Don’t jump.”
“I’m not jumping.”
“You’re staring at the door like you intend to shoot your brother through it.”
“I said I’m not jumping.”
Elena put a hand on Vittorio’s arm.
He looked down at it.
She removed it.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Luca resumed playback.
Sofia’s voice weakened.
“There is a ledger. Evelyn has one half. I have the other.”
Elena leaned forward.
“Where?”
“If either of us is taken, the two halves must be reunited.”
A sequence of numbers followed.
Coordinates.
Luca entered them.
A map appeared.
Abandoned Marlow Sleep Research Center.
Elena felt her chest tighten.
Her mother’s clinic.
Vittorio stood.
“We’re going.”
Carlo objected immediately.
“It could be a trap.”
“Obviously.”
“That was not permission.”
Vittorio looked at him.
Carlo sighed.
“I hate this family.”
They left through a service exit forty minutes later.
Vittorio wore dark clothes instead of the robe.
Elena changed out of her maid uniform into jeans and a borrowed coat.
Three vehicles took separate routes.
Nobody used phones.
The clinic stood at the edge of an industrial district.
Boarded windows.
Peeling sign.
Elena had not returned since she was twenty-five.
Memories came immediately.
Her mother laughing in the hallway.
Elena bringing dinner when Evelyn worked late.
The smell of disinfectant and coffee.
A locked room Elena was told never to enter.
They entered through the rear.
Dust covered everything.
The reception desk remained.
Old chairs.
Broken glass.
Vittorio found a photograph on the wall.
A research team.
Evelyn stood center.
Sofia beside her.
And behind them—
Dominic.
Much younger.
Elena stared.
“He said Evelyn was dead.”
Vittorio took the photograph.
“My brother worked here?”
On the back was a date.
Eleven years earlier.
Two weeks before Sofia disappeared.
Carlo’s face darkened.
“Boss…”
Vittorio said nothing.
They followed the coordinates to the basement.
A steel door waited behind old shelving.
Elena remembered it.
The room she had never been allowed to enter.
There was no visible lock.
She touched the frame.
Something clicked.
The door opened.
Vittorio looked at her.
“Biometric?”
“My mother must have programmed it for me.”
Inside were shelves filled with files.
Old computers.
Audio equipment.
And a small metal safe.
Elena approached.
Her birthday opened it.
Inside lay half of a black ledger.
And a VHS cassette.
A handwritten label:
FOR ELENA.
They found an old player in the room.
Luca connected it.
The screen filled with static.
Then Evelyn appeared.
Eleven years younger.
“Elena,” she said, looking into the camera, “if you’re watching this, then I failed to keep you out of the Moretti house.”
Elena’s throat closed.
Evelyn continued.
“You must understand something before you trust Vittorio.”
Vittorio shifted beside her.
“He is not responsible for Project Somnus.”
Elena exhaled.
“But his family is.”
A noise sounded upstairs.
Carlo raised his weapon.
Footsteps.
Several.
Luca killed the screen.
Vittorio motioned everyone back.
The basement door remained open.
A shadow appeared beyond it.
Then Dominic’s voice came from the stairwell.
“Vitto?”
Vittorio raised his gun.
Dominic descended slowly.
Hands visible.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Vittorio said.
Dominic looked at the weapon.
“Neither should you.”
“Why are you in that photograph?”
Dominic stopped.
His eyes flicked toward the picture in Vittorio’s hand.
He looked defeated.
“Because I worked with Sofia.”
“You lied.”
“Yes.”
“Did you plant those devices?”
“No.”
“Did you know Sofia survived?”
Dominic closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Vittorio’s gun rose.
Elena whispered, “Vittorio.”
Dominic looked at his brother.
“I helped her disappear.”
The room went silent.
“You let me bury a stranger.”
“I saved Sofia’s life.”
“You let me mourn her for eleven years.”
“I had no choice.”
“You always had a choice.”
“No, Vitto. Father gave me one order. Find Sofia and bring her back. I found her.”
Dominic swallowed.
“And I lied to him.”
Vittorio lowered the gun slightly.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Four months ago.”
Every face changed.
The exact moment Vittorio stopped sleeping.
“Why?” Elena asked.
Dominic looked at her.
“Because Sofia told me Project Somnus had been restarted.”
“By whom?”
Dominic hesitated.
Then the clinic lights came on.
Every bulb.
Every hallway.
After eleven dead years.
A speaker crackled overhead.
A man’s voice filled the basement.
Old.
Calm.
Impossible.
“My sons.”
Vittorio went white.
Dominic whispered, “No.”
Elena looked between them.
“You know that voice?”
Vittorio stared at the ceiling.
“My father.”
The steel basement door slammed shut.
May you like
Locks clicked.
And Alessandro Moretti, dead for six years, began laughing through the speakers.
