Chapter 4 - THE PRISON BENEATH THE MORETTI ESTATE
Dante did not speak for almost a minute.
“My father died twelve years ago.”
Rachel looked at him coldly.
“That doesn’t erase what he did.”
“Where was Elena held?”
“Upstate.”
“Where?”
“An old Moretti property near Kingston.”
Dante turned to Marco.
Marco’s face had gone pale.
“I know the place.”
That frightened me.
Within an hour, we were driving north.
Rachel sat beside me.
Orion lay across our feet.
Dante remained across from us in the armored SUV, looking like a man slowly realizing his childhood had been built on missing rooms.
“Tell me everything,” I said.
Rachel took a breath.
Elena had escaped the apartment fire with both daughters.
But Dante’s father, Vittorio Moretti, found them.
He believed Elena had stolen evidence that could send him to prison.
She refused to give it back.
“So he took us?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“What happened to me?”
Rachel looked away.
“You were sick.”
“What?”
“Smoke inhalation. Fever. You needed a hospital.”
Elena knew Vittorio would never risk taking a kidnapped baby to a public ER.
So she begged one of his employees to save me.
A woman named Laura Marshall.
My mother.
Not biologically.
But in every way that had ever mattered.
Laura took me.
Changed my surname.
Disappeared.
Tears burned my eyes.
“She saved me.”
Rachel nodded.
“She loved you.”
“How do you know?”
“I found her years later.”
I stared.
“You knew my mother?”
“Only once.”
“When?”
“Two months before she died.”
My chest tightened.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She was afraid.”
Of what?
Rachel answered without being asked.
“Vittorio was dead. But the people who helped him weren’t.”
The SUV stopped.
An old estate stood behind rusted gates.
Dante looked at the building.
“I spent summers here.”
Rachel stared at him.
“She was beneath you.”
The basement was hidden behind a wine-storage wall.
Dante found the locking mechanism.
A corridor led underground.
Cells.
Not medieval cages.
Worse.
Clean rooms.
Medical beds.
No windows.
One wall contained scratches.
Dates.
Years.
Rachel touched them.
“Mom.”
Dante looked physically ill.
In the final room, we found a box.
Inside were Elena’s notebooks.
Photographs.
Audio recordings.
Letters to her daughters.
And a photograph of young Dante.
Written beneath it:
HE WAS ONLY A BOY. DO NOT BLAME HIM FOR HIS FATHER.
Dante read it.
Then sat down.
I had never seen a powerful man look smaller.
Rachel remained rigid.
“She was kinder than I am.”
Dante nodded.
“She had reason not to be.”
We opened the final notebook.
Elena named the men who helped Vittorio imprison her.
Most were dead.
One was still alive.
Marco Bellini Sr.
Marco’s father.
I looked toward our security chief.
His face emptied.
“My father?”
Dante stood.
Marco slowly backed away.
“I didn’t know.”
Rachel pulled a gun from her coat.
Everything exploded at once.
Dante moved in front of me.
Marco reached for his weapon.
Rachel aimed at him.
“Your father tortured my mother.”
Marco’s voice broke.
“I was twelve.”
Rachel’s hand shook.
Then Orion began growling.
Not at Marco.
At the open corridor behind us.
Dante turned.
A man stood there holding a rifle.
And when Marco saw him, he whispered:
May you like
“Dad?”
Marco Bellini Sr. was supposed to have been dead for nine years.
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