Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Security Footage|
The mansion transformed within seconds.
Steel doors slammed shut. Guards hurried through the corridors, speaking into earpieces. Somewhere downstairs, a dog barked furiously, and the alarm continued to pulse through the house.
I stood beside my equipment case, trying to understand how a sealed specimen had disappeared from a locked room surrounded by armed men.
Salvatore didn't look confused.
He looked betrayed.
“Who had access to the medical room?” he demanded.
His head of security, a broad man named Rocco, answered immediately.
“Your brother. Me. Two guards assigned to the corridor. And the doctor.”
“Search everyone.”
Rocco hesitated. “Including Carmine?”
Salvatore's expression was enough.
“Especially Carmine.”
I objected when a guard reached for my bag.
“My instruments are sterile and expensive. You're not throwing them across a floor because your security system has holes in it.”
The guard froze.
Rocco looked as if he'd never heard anyone speak to him that way.
Salvatore simply said, “Listen to her.”
The search found nothing on me. But when they reviewed the corridor cameras, they discovered that the footage had been interrupted for exactly three minutes.
“Convenient,” I muttered.
Rocco glanced at me.
“What does that mean?”
“It means someone knew which camera to disable and how long they needed. That's not a random thief.”
Salvatore stood behind him, arms crossed.
“Can you restore the footage?”
“Our technician is trying.”
“Then find someone better.”
The next twenty minutes passed in tense silence. I should have left. I had already earned enough to cover my overdue rent, and every instinct I possessed told me to get away from the Lombardi family.
But the stolen fragment was evidence from a medical procedure I had performed. If it had been taken to hide something, my records could become part of a dangerous dispute. I needed to protect my professional reputation—and I couldn't ignore the possibility that someone had deliberately harmed a patient.
When the technician finally restored a partial recording, everyone crowded around the screen.
At 2:14 p.m., a guard entered the medical room.
At 2:15, he left.
At 2:16, a second figure appeared at the far end of the corridor.
The image was grainy, but the person wore a dark coat and moved with a slight limp.
Rocco enlarged the frame.
“That's impossible.”
Salvatore leaned forward.
“Who is it?”
Rocco swallowed.
“Isabella.”
“Isabella is dead,” Carmine said from the doorway.
Everyone turned.
His face had regained its usual composure, but his eyes were fixed on the screen.
“Who is Isabella?” I asked.
Salvatore didn't answer immediately.
“She was my fiancée,” he finally said. “She died six years ago.”
Carmine scoffed.
“This is ridiculous. The footage is corrupted.”
“Then why did you say her name before anyone else did?” I asked.
His eyes snapped toward me.
“You ask too many questions.”
“And you keep providing interesting answers.”
Salvatore gestured for Rocco to continue.
The figure on-screen entered the medical room. Three minutes later, the door opened again. The person emerged holding something small, then disappeared around the corner.
The face remained hidden.
But the figure wore a silver ring with a black stone.
Salvatore went utterly still.
I watched the color drain from his face.
“Do you recognize it?” I asked.
He touched the ring on his own right hand.
It bore the same black stone.
“Isabella had one just like it,” he whispered.
Carmine stepped between Salvatore and the monitor.
“It's a coincidence.”
“Enough,” Salvatore said.
His voice was so quiet that the guards seemed to stop breathing.
He ordered the recording copied, the original preserved, and the entire estate searched again. Then he turned to me.
“You're staying here tonight.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I wasn't asking.”
“Then you need to learn how to ask better.”
Rocco looked down at the floor.
Salvatore approached me, his expression unexpectedly serious.
“Someone stole evidence from your hands. If you leave now, they may follow you to your clinic. I can protect you here.”
I hated that he might be right.
Before I could answer, a guard ran into the study.
“Boss, we found something in the east wing.”
“What?”
The guard held up a small photograph.
It showed Salvatore standing at the harbor eight years earlier, blood running down his face.
Beside him was a woman wearing the black-stone ring.
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On the back, someone had written five words:
SHE NEVER DIED, SALVATORE.
