Chapter 4 - The Dead Man’s Project
The laughter stopped.
Vittorio fired at the lock.
Nothing happened.
“Save ammunition,” Dominic said.
Vittorio turned the gun on him.
“You knew he was alive?”
“No.”
“Think carefully.”
“I thought he died.”
“You thought Sofia died too.”
“I knew Sofia lived.”
“That is not helping.”
Elena stepped between them.
“Argue later.”
Both brothers stared at her.
She pointed toward the ceiling speaker.
“Whoever is talking wants you angry.”
Dominic nodded slowly.
“She’s right.”
Vittorio lowered the gun.
“Never say that again.”
Elena ignored him.
Luca checked the door controls.
“Electronic lock. External override.”
“Can you open it?”
“Eventually.”
“How long?”
“Depends whether you prefer honesty or optimism.”
“Honesty.”
“I have no idea.”
The speaker clicked again.
Alessandro’s voice returned.
“You disappoint me, Vittorio.”
Vittorio stood beneath it.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“So many people in this family are.”
Elena hated the amusement in his voice.
He had been listening.
Perhaps watching.
“For six years?” Vittorio demanded.
“Long enough to see what you did with my empire.”
“It was never yours.”
“It was exactly mine.”
Dominic stepped forward.
“Where is Sofia?”
A pause.
Then Alessandro laughed softly.
“Still protecting your sister.”
Dominic’s face tightened.
“You won’t touch her.”
“I already did.”
The speaker went silent.
Vittorio seized Dominic by the jacket.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You saw her four months ago.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Montreal.”
“Why?”
“She contacted me.”
“Why you?”
“Because she didn’t trust you.”
That hurt.
Elena saw it instantly.
Vittorio released him.
Dominic continued.
“She believed someone close to you had restarted Somnus. She wanted me to investigate without telling you.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you find?”
Dominic looked toward the headboard equipment Luca had packed.
“The devices appeared in your bedroom after a renovation subcontractor replaced part of the wall paneling.”
“Name?”
“Bellini Interiors.”
Carlo frowned.
“We cleared them.”
“Your security cleared a shell company.”
Luca looked up.
“Owned by?”
Dominic hesitated.
“Our father.”
Vittorio laughed once.
Bitter.
“Six years dead and still invoicing me.”
Luca finally accessed part of the door circuit.
“We need twenty minutes.”
Elena returned to her mother’s video.
“If we might die in twenty minutes, I’d like to know why.”
She pressed play.
Evelyn reappeared.
“Project Somnus began as treatment,” the recording said. “We used low-frequency patterns to help trauma patients enter deeper sleep.”
Elena remembered her mother’s optimism.
Her belief that sleep could heal people.
“But Alessandro Moretti saw another possibility.”
Diagrams appeared.
Interrogation rooms.
Detention spaces.
Behavioral testing.
“He believed sleep deprivation could make loyal people betray anyone.”
Vittorio looked away.
Evelyn continued.
“Sofia discovered he was testing the system on Moretti employees suspected of disloyalty.”
Dominic whispered, “God.”
“Several men developed psychosis. One died.”
Elena covered her mouth.
“We shut the project down. Alessandro ordered us to surrender all research.”
The recording showed Evelyn and Sofia.
“We refused.”
Then Evelyn looked directly into the camera.
“If Vittorio is with you, tell him this: his father never trusted him.”
Vittorio’s face became unreadable.
“He built Somnus for you.”
Vittorio stared at the screen.
“To control me?”
Evelyn answered from the past.
“To test whether you could be broken.”
Nobody spoke.
Elena suddenly understood why the devices were in his bedroom.
Alessandro was not merely harming his son.
He was conducting an experiment.
Even years later.
Perhaps especially now.
Evelyn continued.
“The ledger identifies every person involved.”
She held up half of the black book.
“Sofia has the other half.”
The recording ended.
Elena looked at her half.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Codes.
“We need Sofia.”
Dominic said, “Yes.”
Vittorio asked, “Can you contact her?”
“No.”
“Then how did you meet four months ago?”
“She contacted me through a dead-drop system.”
“Where?”
“Train station locker.”
“Code?”
“Changes every month.”
Vittorio looked ready to explode again.
Elena said, “If Sofia wanted us to find her, would she leave something here?”
Dominic considered.
“She and Evelyn built redundancies.”
They searched the basement.
Behind shelves.
Inside drawers.
Under desks.
Elena returned to her mother’s office.
An old framed picture sat face down inside a cabinet.
Elena as a teenager.
Evelyn beside her.
On the back:
WHEN YOU CANNOT SLEEP, COUNT THE BLUE DOORS.
Elena whispered the words.
Vittorio heard.
“What does it mean?”
“When I was little, Mom used to tell me to imagine walking down a hallway with blue doors. Count them until I fell asleep.”
“How many?”
“Seven.”
They searched.
The basement had six blue doors.
Carlo found the seventh behind a rolling cabinet.
No handle.
Elena pressed it.
Nothing.
Vittorio touched it.
Nothing.
Dominic tried.
Still nothing.
Then Elena and Vittorio touched it simultaneously.
A lock clicked.
They looked at each other.
“What the hell?” Carlo said.
The door opened.
Inside was a narrow room.
A chair.
A desk.
A refrigerated storage unit.
And a newer computer.
Not eleven years old.
Recent.
Somebody had been here.
Elena found photographs.
Vittorio leaving restaurants.
Vittorio at funerals.
Vittorio asleep in his bedroom.
Her stomach turned.
The pictures continued.
Elena shopping.
Elena taking a bus.
Elena at her apartment.
Someone had followed both of them.
“Why me?” she whispered.
Vittorio stood beside her.
“Because your mother expected you to finish what she started.”
On the desk sat another photograph.
Evelyn and Sofia.
Taken recently.
Both older.
Both alive.
On the back:
TRUST THE ONE WHO CANNOT SLEEP.
Elena looked at Vittorio.
Her mother was telling her to trust him.
Luca called from the main room.
“Door’s open!”
The cellar lock released.
They moved upstairs carefully.
The clinic hall was empty.
No attackers.
No father.
Only silence.
Outside, however, one of their vehicles was burning.
Carlo cursed.
Another driver had vanished.
They took the remaining SUV.
Vittorio ordered everyone back to the mansion.
Elena disagreed.
“That’s the first place he expects us.”
“It is also fortified.”
“By people your father may control.”
“That applies everywhere.”
Dominic spoke from the back seat.
“There’s one place he won’t expect.”
Vittorio turned.
“Where?”
“Our mother’s house.”
Vittorio laughed.
“Absolutely not.”
“She’s still alive, Vitto.”
“I know she’s alive.”
Elena looked between them.
“Your mother?”
Vittorio said nothing.
Dominic explained.
“Lucia Moretti left the family fifteen years ago. Lives under protection.”
“From Alessandro?”
“Yes.”
“Then she may know something.”
Vittorio’s expression closed.
“My mother knows many things. She tells none of them.”
They went anyway.
Lucia lived forty miles outside the city in a modest farmhouse with no visible security.
She opened the door before they knocked.
Seventy-one.
Silver hair.
Straight posture.
Sharp eyes.
She looked at Vittorio.
Then Dominic.
Then Elena.
“You finally found the bed.”
Nobody breathed.
Vittorio’s voice turned cold.
“You knew?”
Lucia stepped aside.
“Come in.”
Inside, she poured tea.
Vittorio refused.
Elena accepted.
Her hands needed something warm.
Lucia looked at Elena for a long time.
“You have Evelyn’s eyes.”
“You knew my mother?”
“She saved my daughter.”
“Sofia?”
Lucia nodded.
Vittorio stood.
“Enough riddles. Father is alive.”
Lucia did not react.
That was answer enough.
Vittorio stared at her.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Six years.”
His face broke in a way Elena had not expected.
Not anger.
Pain.
“You let me bury him.”
Lucia’s voice softened.
“I let him believe you thought he was dead.”
“Why?”
“Because it was the only way to keep you alive.”
Vittorio backed away.
Dominic looked equally shaken.
Lucia opened a drawer.
Inside was a newspaper clipping from Alessandro’s funeral.
She turned it over.
A handwritten address.
“Your father disappeared because federal investigators were closing in. He created a false death, moved money overseas, and continued controlling his loyalists.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
Lucia looked at Elena.
“But Evelyn knows.”
Elena nearly dropped her cup.
“Where is she?”
Lucia hesitated.
Then nodded toward the hallway.
A floorboard creaked.
Someone was standing beyond the doorway.
Elena rose.
“Mom?”
A woman stepped into the room.
Older.
Thin.
Alive.
Elena stopped breathing.
Evelyn Marlowe stared at her daughter.
Then she whispered, “Elena.”
Elena crossed the room.
She did not walk.
She ran.
Her mother caught her.
Eleven years of grief collapsed in one embrace.
Elena cried into Evelyn’s shoulder.
“You were dead.”
“I know.”
“You let me think you were dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You were alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
Elena pulled away.
“Where were you?”
“Hiding.”
“For eleven years?”
“Trying to keep you safe.”
Elena laughed through tears.
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
Evelyn touched her face.
“You were never supposed to become involved.”
“Somebody hired me into his house.”
Evelyn’s expression changed.
“I didn’t.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know.”
Vittorio approached.
“Where is Sofia?”
Evelyn looked at him.
“She was with me until three days ago.”
“Where is she now?”
“Alessandro took her.”
Dominic turned pale.
“How?”
“Someone betrayed our location.”
Vittorio looked at Dominic.
Dominic shook his head.
“No.”
Evelyn continued.
“Before they took her, Sofia hid her half of the ledger.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“Then we have nothing.”
“We have something.”
Evelyn opened her sleeve.
A tiny memory card rested beneath a bandage on her wrist.
“I copied part of Alessandro’s current network.”
Luca took it.
They used an offline laptop.
Folders appeared.
Payments.
Names.
Security personnel.
Judges.
Politicians.
Doctors.
Then one folder labeled MORETTI HOUSE.
Vittorio opened it.
Employee profiles appeared.
Carlo.
Marco.
Cooks.
Drivers.
Maids.
Elena.
Then another file.
DOMINIC MORETTI.
Vittorio opened it.
PAYMENT STATUS: ACTIVE.
Dominic stared at the screen.
“That’s fake.”
Vittorio looked at him.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Another line appeared.
LAST PAYMENT: 48 HOURS AGO.
Vittorio stood.
Dominic stepped back.
“I swear to you—”
A gunshot shattered the farmhouse window.
Lucia screamed.
Everyone dropped.
Carlo returned fire.
A second shot struck the wall.
Then Evelyn’s laptop chimed.
A live video window opened.
Sofia Moretti appeared on-screen.
Her hands were tied.
Blood ran from one temple.
Behind her stood a man whose face remained hidden.
Sofia looked into the camera.
“Vittorio, don’t trust the ledger.”
The man behind her stepped forward.
Sofia’s eyes widened.
“Because the traitor isn’t Dominic.”
The camera turned.
And revealed the person standing beside Alessandro.
May you like
Vittorio whispered the name.
“Elena…”
