Chapter 6 - The Girl in the Snow
Aleandro followed Vittorio into the forest.
Snow had begun falling across the higher ground, softening the trees and hiding the path.
Vittorio carried Emma beneath one arm.
The child kicked and cried, but he did not slow.
Aleandro kept enough distance to prevent him from firing.
Behind them, Luca shouted that the lodge had been evacuated.
Five minutes remained on the explosive.
Vittorio reached an old cable bridge suspended over a narrow ravine.
The structure swayed in the wind.
He dragged Emma onto it.
Aleandro followed.
“Let her go.”
“You will shoot me.”
“No.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to understand that harming her guarantees you do not leave this mountain.”
Vittorio stopped halfway across.
Emma’s ribbon had fallen from her hair.
Dark curls blew across her face.
She looked toward Aleandro.
“Sir.”
“I am here.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
Vittorio tightened his arm around her.
Aleandro’s voice remained calm.
“Emma, remember the table?”
She nodded.
“You saw what everyone else missed.”
“Yes.”
“I need you to see something again.”
Vittorio looked behind him.
For one second, his attention shifted toward Aleandro.
Emma bit his hand.
Vittorio shouted.
The child dropped to the bridge.
Aleandro rushed forward.
Vittorio raised his gun.
A shot cracked through the trees.
The bullet came from behind Aleandro.
It struck Vittorio’s shoulder.
Matteo stood at the edge of the ravine with a rifle.
Vittorio stumbled against the cable.
Emma crawled toward Aleandro.
He pulled her behind him.
Vittorio tried to raise his weapon again.
The lodge exploded.
The blast rolled across the mountain.
The bridge shook violently.
One of the support cables snapped.
Vittorio fell against the railing.
Aleandro caught his wrist.
For a moment, Vittorio hung above the ravine.
He looked up in disbelief.
“You are saving me?”
“I want you alive for the truth.”
Vittorio laughed despite the pain.
“There is no truth. Only the story powerful men survive long enough to tell.”
The remaining cable began tearing.
Aleandro tried to pull him upward.
Vittorio reached with his free hand.
Not for the bridge.
For a knife hidden inside his coat.
Emma screamed.
Matteo shouted a warning.
Vittorio drove the knife toward Aleandro’s arm.
Aleandro released him.
Vittorio fell into the ravine.
His body disappeared beneath the snow and trees.
Aleandro carried Emma back across the damaged bridge.
She wrapped both arms around his neck.
“Did I make him fall?”
“No.”
“I bit him.”
“You saved yourself.”
At the lodge, flames consumed the western wing.
Sophia stood beside an ambulance, a blanket around her shoulders.
When she saw Emma, she began crying.
Elena, the child’s mother, had arrived with the second security team.
She ran forward and took Emma into her arms.
The reunion silenced everyone nearby.
Aleandro turned toward Sophia.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then she came to him.
“I thought you were dead.”
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
“I would have protected Matteo’s mother.”
“I did not know whether your family would let you.”
“That was not your decision.”
“No.”
Her honesty cut deeper than excuses.
“I was afraid,” she whispered.
“So was I.”
“I love you.”
Aleandro looked at her.
The words still mattered.
But they did not erase secrecy.
“Love without trust becomes another kind of prison.”
Sophia nodded, tears running down her face.
“I know.”
Before he could answer, Isabella called Matteo’s name.
She was being placed inside an ambulance.
Matteo stood several feet away, staring at her.
Aleandro walked to him.
“She raised you.”
“She lied every day.”
“She also protected you.”
“From a danger she helped create.”
“Yes.”
Matteo looked toward the burning lodge.
“Do you still want me beside you?”
Aleandro held out his hand.
“You are my brother.”
Matteo stared at it.
Then took it.
At the hospital, doctors confirmed Sophia’s baby was unharmed.
The original genetic report recovered from Vittorio’s folder proved Aleandro was the father.
Gabriel survived surgery and admitted that he had used Sophia’s fear to negotiate protection for himself.
He had not been her lover.
But he had touched her beneath the table deliberately.
He wanted Aleandro to notice.
He believed public chaos would force the truth into the open before Vittorio could kill him.
“You risked her life,” Aleandro said from beside Gabriel’s hospital bed.
Gabriel managed a weak smile.
“We all risk women’s lives when men fight over power.”
“No,” Aleandro replied. “Men like you do.”
Gabriel gave him the location of Elena Russo.
A farmhouse in Vermont.
Alive.
Waiting for the day someone told Matteo the truth.
Before Aleandro left the hospital, Luca brought him one final item recovered from Belladonna House.
A photograph.
It showed Lorenzo Moretti standing beside Elena Russo shortly before Matteo’s birth.
His hand rested on her pregnant stomach.
On the back, Vittorio had written:
The orphan was never an orphan.
Aleandro stared at the words.
Matteo was not adopted from a stranger.
He was Lorenzo Moretti’s biological son.
Their father had betrayed Isabella with Elena.
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Matteo was Aleandro’s half-brother by blood after all.
And Isabella had known from the beginning.
