Chapter 2 - The Eastern CellarThe lower passageways of the Rossi estate were built three hundred years ago—thick granite walls, arched brick ceilings, and iron doors that had held prisoners during centuries of clan warfare.
Rainwater trickled down the cold stone steps as Marco and I, flanked by six loyal Rossi operators armed with suppressed submachine guns, moved silently down into the eastern vaults.
Two guards wearing unbranded tactical gear—Eleanor’s private mercenaries from Naples—stood outside the heavy oak and iron door at the end of the corridor.
Before they could even raise their weapons or call out into their radios, my operators moved with lethal, surgical precision.
THWIP! THWIP!
Suppressed rounds cut through the damp air. The two mercenaries collapsed onto the wet flagstones without making a sound, their keys clattering against the floor.
I stepped over their bodies, snatched the heavy iron key ring, inserted the primary skeleton key into the lock, and turned it with a violent, heavy CRACK.
The oak door creaked open into a freezing, cavernous vault illuminated only by a single bare bulb hanging from a rusted wire.
Lying on a thin, blood-stained cot in the center of the stone room was Grace.
She wore a faded linen dress, her pale arms bruised from IV lines, her dark hair tangled and matted against her neck. She was shivering uncontrollably from the bone-chilling cold, her hands clutched tightly over her hollowed, post-natal belly.
"Grace..." I gasped out, dropping my weapon onto the stone floor, sprinting across the vault, throwing myself onto my knees beside her cot.
Her hazel eyes—once so bright, vibrant, and filled with laughter—slowly opened. They were dull, sunken, filled with a terrifying, hollow despair that broke my heart into a thousand shattered pieces.
She shrank back against the stone wall, her trembling hands shielding her face as tears cut clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks.
"No... no..." Grace wept, her voice a thin, raspy squeak. "Please... don't play his voice again... please... he's dead... your mother showed me his body..."
"Grace! Look at me!" I cried out, grabbing her cold, trembling hands, pulling them gently away from her face, pressing them against my warm cheeks, my neck, my heart. "Touch me, my love! I'm here! I'm alive! The audio was fake! I never left you!"
Grace froze. Her fingers brushed against my jawline, feeling the warm, beating pulse of my throat, feeling my hot tears falling onto her wrists.
"Matteo...?" she whispered, her voice cracking into sharp, disbelieving fragments. "Matteo... you're... you're breathing...?"
"I'm breathing, Grace," I wept softly, pulling her frail, bruised body into my broad arms, wrapping her tightly against my chest, lifting her off the cold cot. "I'm alive. I swore I would come home before our baby was born... I'm so sorry, Grace... I'm so sorry I let her touch you..."
Grace buried her face into my collar, letting out a raw, devastating sob that echoed through the stone vault—eighteen weeks of terror, isolation, and agonizing grief pouring out of her soul into my chest.
"Our boy, Matteo..." Grace sobbed hysterically against my neck, her small hands clutching my wet coat. "She took our boy... she took him thirty minutes after he was born... she said he was going to a new family in Switzerland..."
I held my wife tight against my heart, my gray eyes turning into two pieces of razor-sharp, lethal ice as I looked up at Marco standing in the doorway.
"Marco," I commanded softly, my voice cold as death.
"Boss?"
"Take Grace to the medical transport van at the north gate. Put four operators around her."
"And you, Matteo?"
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I pulled my second weapon from my belt, my jaw locked into an absolute, unyielding decree.
"I am going to the grand dining room," I said. "To collect my son."
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