Chapter 2 - THE GIRL THEY THOUGHT WAS HIS
Elena forgot about rent.
Forgot about the rain.
Forgot that the man bleeding on a restaurant floor was someone people crossed streets to avoid.
“What do you mean they think Mila belongs to you?”
Alessandro pushed himself upright against the shelves.
“The men outside saw you helping me.”
“That doesn’t explain the message.”
“No.”
His breathing was shallow.
“But someone has been watching me long enough to know exactly where I was attacked.”
Elena looked at Mila.
Her daughter was still clutching the stale bread.
Five years old.
Too young to understand why grown men used children as leverage.
“We’re leaving.”
Alessandro shook his head.
“You go home, they follow.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I would do.”
The honesty chilled her.
Another message arrived.
A photograph.
Elena expected Mila.
Instead, it showed a teenage girl tied to a chair.
Alessandro’s hand tightened around the phone.
“Who is she?”
“My niece.”
The words came out differently.
Not like a boss.
Like an uncle.
“Sofia. Sixteen.”
The first message had been deliberately misleading.
WE HAVE THE GIRL.
They wanted Alessandro to panic.
To assume they had someone else.
“Why send this while you’re lying half-dead in an alley?”
“To make sure I know tonight wasn’t about killing me.”
His gaze hardened.
“It was about making me choose.”
Between himself and Sofia.
Elena understood that kind of cruelty.
Her late husband had died three years earlier after collapsing at a construction site. The company fought the insurance claim for months while Elena learned what it meant to beg strangers for money you were legally owed.
Power rarely needed to scream.
Sometimes it simply made you choose which loss you could afford.
Alessandro dialed a number.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
“Matteo?”
Elena asked.
His expression shifted.
“My security chief.”
“The person who keeps calling?”
“He was supposed to be protecting Sofia.”
That said enough.
Either Matteo was dead.
Or involved.
Alessandro tried standing again.
This time he made it two steps.
Then his knees gave way.
Elena caught him.
His blood soaked through her sleeve.
“We need a hospital.”
“No.”
“You are going to die.”
“Not at a hospital.”
“Wonderful. Very reasonable.”
Mila tugged Elena’s coat.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“I know where we can take him.”
Elena stared at her.
“Where?”
“Mr. Tommy.”
Tommy Reyes lived upstairs from them.
Retired paramedic.
Widower.
Owner of a cat that hated everyone.
Elena almost refused.
Then Alessandro whispered:
“No ambulance. No Moretti-owned hospital. No police until I know who sold me.”
“You’re Conti.”
“What?”
“You said Moretti.”
For the first time, fear appeared in Alessandro’s eyes.
Not because of the mistake itself.
Because Elena noticed.
He looked at her.
“You hear everything, don’t you?”
“I clean hospital offices at night. Invisible people hear a lot.”
Something almost like respect crossed his battered face.
Twenty minutes later, Tommy opened his apartment door and stared at Don Alessandro Conti bleeding onto his hallway carpet.
He closed the door again.
Elena knocked.
“Tommy.”
The door reopened.
“No.”
“He needs help.”
“He needs a priest.”
“Tommy.”
Mila peeked around Elena.
“Please?”
Tommy cursed softly.
“Children are extortionists.”
He let them inside.
While Tommy treated Alessandro, Elena found something inside the inside pocket of his jacket.
A photograph.
Old.
Creased.
A young Alessandro stood beside another man.
Elena’s breath stopped.
She knew the second man.
It was her dead husband.
Michael Carter.
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On the back, in Michael’s handwriting, were six words:
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS, TRUST ALESSANDRO.
