Chapter 3 - THE PRIEST WHO KNEW EVERY CONFESSION
Father Bellini stood in the grand hall wearing a black cassock beneath a gray wool coat.
He looked exactly as he always had.
Silver hair.
Kind eyes.
A wooden rosary wrapped around one hand.
Around him, Duca guards waited uneasily, unsure whether to follow Marco’s orders or the priest’s.
That was Father Bellini’s greatest weapon.
He had spent forty years learning how to make people confuse calmness with goodness.
Sophia watched from behind the service corridor door while Marco’s men moved through the mansion. Lorenzo had been carried to the private medical room under Dr. Ricci’s care. Emma was safe in the laundry wing with Elena, the cook, Biscotti, and two guards Marco trusted.
But Sophia could not stop thinking about the priest.
Father Bellini had known everyone’s secrets.
The men who brought money to church.
The women who came to confession.
The sons who inherited violent businesses and tried to become less violent than their fathers.
If he had betrayed Lorenzo, then he had not merely stolen information.
He had weaponized trust.
Marco approached Sophia in the corridor.
“Stay here,” he said.
“No.”
“Sophia—”
“He knows the house better than your men do.”
Marco stared at her.
“And you do?”
“I clean it.”
That answer made him pause.
For seven years, Sophia had passed through every room no one important noticed. She knew where old staff staircases opened behind decorative walls. She knew which doors swelled in damp weather and which windows failed to latch.
She knew the mansion as a worker knew it.
Not as an owner.
Better.
“There is a servants’ passage behind the chapel,” she said. “It leads to the east gallery. If Father Bellini is using the old security panel, he will be there.”
Marco’s eyes narrowed.
“How do you know?”
“Because that is where the intercom wires were installed when the house was renovated.”
He called two men.
“Take her instructions.”
Sophia shook her head.
“I am coming.”
Marco looked ready to refuse.
Then Lorenzo’s voice came from behind them.
“She comes.”
He stood in the doorway of the medical room, pale and supported by Dr. Ricci.
“Sophia knows what none of us know,” Lorenzo said. “Listen to her.”
Marco nodded once.
They moved through the narrow servants’ passage with flashlights off.
The walls smelled of dust, wax, and old stone. Sophia held Marco’s radio in one hand and the other against the wall to guide herself.
At the end of the corridor, they heard voices.
Father Bellini was speaking to someone.
Vincent.
“You failed,” the priest said.
“I thought he was dead.”
“You were paid to make certain.”
“He was bleeding out.”
“And yet a maid and a child interrupted a plan that took three years to construct.”
Sophia felt Marco tense beside her.
Three years.
This had been planned for three years.
Vincent spoke again.
“What happens now?”
Father Bellini’s answer was almost gentle.
“Now we complete it. Lorenzo dies. Marco is blamed. The Duca accounts pass through the charity foundation. And every man who ever trusted the Duca name discovers that faith is expensive.”
Sophia looked through the narrow crack in the wall.
The priest stood beside a hidden security console.
On the desk in front of him were folders, bank cards, a handgun, and a framed photograph of Lorenzo as a boy beside Father Bellini.
The priest picked up the photograph.
“He never understood,” he said quietly. “His father took everything from my family. Respect. Influence. The church land. I spent decades blessing the Duca name while waiting for the right moment to bury it.”
Vincent looked uncertain.
“And the girl?”
Sophia’s body went still.
“Emma?”
Father Bellini smiled faintly.
“The child saw Lorenzo alive. Children are unpredictable.”
Marco raised his gun.
Sophia grabbed his wrist.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“If we move now, Vincent may escape through the gallery tunnel. We need them to say more.”
Father Bellini opened a drawer and removed a small brass box.
Inside was a row of buttons.
Dozens of them.
Different colors.
Different styles.
Sophia stared.
Each button had been taken from a victim.
A cufflink.
A collar piece.
A missing clasp.
The priest collected them as trophies.
Then she saw one button that made her heart stop.
A pink plastic rabbit ear.
The missing piece from Emma’s broken scissors.
Father Bellini had been in the cellar before Vincent.
He had picked it up.
He had kept it.
Suddenly, the sound of a child’s voice came through Marco’s radio.
“Mama?”
Sophia grabbed the radio.
“Emma?”
But it was not Emma.
It was a recording.
Father Bellini smiled toward the security console.
“You see?” he said to Vincent. “Even innocence can be used if one understands fear.”
Marco whispered, “He has the laundry wing cameras.”
Sophia’s face went cold.
Then Father Bellini pressed a button.
On the monitor, Emma appeared sitting beside Elena.
A red light blinked in the corner of the image.
May you like
The priest had locked them inside.
And smoke was beginning to pour beneath the door.
