Chapter 6 - THE SON HE NEVER KNEWThe servants’ passage turned into chaos.
We ran upward while shouting erupted behind us.
A bullet struck the wall.
Another punched through ancient plaster inches from Marco’s head.
Dante shoved me ahead of him.
“Keep moving.”
“I am moving!”
We reached a narrow staircase leading toward the fifth floor.
Marco slammed the fire door behind us and jammed it with a steel bar.
“Three minutes, maybe less.”
Dante pulled out his phone.
“Team Two, basement corridor. Salvatore is mobile and hostile.”
There was a pause.
The response clearly surprised someone.
Dante’s father had apparently still been regarded as an invalid.
“Julian and Vanessa are with him,” Dante continued. “Take them alive if possible.”
Then he said, “Elena is being moved to the lake house.”
Marco cursed.
“Which one?”
Dante stopped.
The Russo family owned three.
I stared.
“Of course you do.”
He almost looked offended.
“Not the time.”
“Definitely the time.”
Marco actually smiled.
Then his phone rang.
“Sir.”
He listened.
His face darkened.
“They’re gone.”
“Who?”
“All three. Secondary tunnel from the service kitchen to the garage.”
Dante swore.
“How long?”
“Maybe five minutes ahead.”
“Track them.”
“Vehicles switched.”
Of course they had.
Dante closed his eyes for half a second.
Then looked at me.
“Go to the clinic.”
“No.”
“Emma.”
“No.”
“My father knows who you are.”
“He planted a tracker on me. I think we crossed that bridge.”
“He’ll use you.”
“Then stop treating me like a package and start treating me like somebody who can help.”
His eyes narrowed.
“How?”
I held up Elena’s notebook.
“I read faster than your men.”
Marco looked at Dante.
“She does have the notebook.”
Dante stared at both of us.
“This is mutiny.”
“You’re going to survive it.”
We moved to a secure conference room.
For the next hour, we searched Elena’s notes for any reference to a lake house.
Nothing.
Then I noticed repeated drawings in the margins.
A little sailboat.
Always beside references to her pregnancy.
“Dante.”
He looked over.
“What lake did Elena like?”
“All of them.”
“Helpful.”
“She grew up near water.”
“Where?”
“Wisconsin.”
“Town?”
“Lake Geneva.”
Marco looked up.
“The Russos own property there?”
Dante’s face changed.
“My mother did.”
He stood.
“Not under our name. Under hers.”
“Does Salvatore know?”
“He bought it for her.”
Marco was already calling.
Twenty-five minutes later, satellite property records confirmed a secluded estate on the western shore.
Owned through a dormant trust.
Security cameras showed three SUVs entering within the last hour.
We had them.
Or thought we did.
Dante assembled vehicles.
I followed.
He blocked the door.
“No.”
“Again?”
“You are not coming into a hostage situation.”
“Fine.”
That surprised him.
I handed him Elena’s notebook.
“Bring her back.”
His expression softened slightly.
“I intend to.”
“And the boy.”
He stared at me.
“Your son.”
His face changed every time someone said it.
As though he couldn’t let himself believe.
“Bring him back too.”
Dante left.
I returned to Samson.
The dog was stronger that afternoon.
Still unable to walk, but alert.
I sat beside his kennel.
“You caused quite a mess.”
His tail moved.
“You’re proud of yourself, aren’t you?”
He licked my hand.
Two hours passed.
No updates.
Then three.
At dusk, Marco called.
“We found Elena.”
I stood so quickly my chair fell.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
I covered my mouth.
“And the boy?”
Silence.
“What?”
“There was no child at the house.”
My heart dropped.
“Where’s Dante?”
“With Elena.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s weak. Malnourished. But conscious.”
“What happened?”
“Salvatore escaped before we arrived. Vanessa too.”
“Julian?”
Another pause.
“Julian stayed.”
“Why?”
“He helped Elena get out.”
I stared at the wall.
“What?”
“We were wrong about part of it.”
Julian had been involved six years earlier.
But according to Elena, he’d spent the last three years trying to undo what he’d helped create.
Guilt had turned him against Salvatore.
The gold-ringed hand in Elena’s video had been Julian’s.
But he had been reaching for the camera to hide it before Salvatore’s men found it.
He had also secretly allowed Samson to escape.
That didn’t make him innocent.
But it meant the truth was more complicated.
“Where’s the child?” I asked.
“Salvatore moved him years ago.”
“To where?”
“Elena doesn’t know.”
Dante returned to the clinic after midnight.
He wasn’t alone.
A woman stepped through the door.
Elena.
She looked thinner than in the video.
Her dark hair had been cut unevenly to her shoulders.
A scar crossed one temple.
But when Samson smelled her, the old dog made a sound I will never forget.
A cry.
Pure joy.
Elena collapsed beside him.
“Samson.”
The dog tried to stand despite his broken hip.
She buried her face against his neck.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Dante stood several feet away.
Watching his wife embrace the animal he had mourned with her.
Neither knew how to cross the six missing years between them.
Finally Elena looked up.
Dante whispered, “You’re alive.”
She began crying.
“So are you.”
He crossed the room.
They held each other.
Not romantically.
Not yet.
More like two survivors proving the other was real.
I stepped toward the door.
Elena noticed.
“Wait.”
I stopped.
She looked at my stained waitress uniform.
“You’re Emma.”
“How do you know?”
“Samson.”
I frowned.
Elena smiled weakly.
“When I sent him away, I attached a note beneath his collar.”
“We never found one.”
“Someone must have removed it.”
“What did it say?”
“Find Emma Carter.”
My blood turned cold.
Dante stared at me.
“Why?”
“I don’t know her.”
Elena studied my face.
Then whispered, “But I knew your father.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“My father died when I was thirteen.”
“I know.”
“You knew Michael Carter?”
Elena nodded.
“He helped me after the fire.”
I grabbed the chair.
“What?”
“Your father wasn’t just a veterinary technician.”
“Yes, he was.”
“No.”
She looked at Dante.
“He was one of the people investigating Salvatore’s freight network.”
My mouth went dry.
“That makes no sense.”
“He found me two days after the fire. Samson was with me. He helped hide us.”
“My father died in a car accident.”
Elena’s expression filled with sorrow.
“I’m sorry.”
The room went silent.
“No.”
I backed away.
“No. Don’t do that. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Emma—”
“His brakes failed.”
Elena nodded once.
My knees weakened.
“He was killed?”
“I believe so.”
For fourteen years, I had thought my father died because of a mechanical failure on a wet road.
Now a supposedly dead woman was telling me he had been murdered for helping her.
Dante stepped toward me.
I raised a hand.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
Elena reached into her coat.
“There’s something your father gave me.”
She pulled out a folded photograph.
I took it.
My father stood beside a little boy.
Five or six years old.
Blond hair.
Brown eyes.
A date was printed on the bottom.
Three months ago.
I looked at Elena.
“What is this?”
Her voice shook.
“That’s my son.”
Dante moved closer.
His face crumpled.
“Our son?”
Elena nodded.
“His name is Gabriel.”
Dante touched the photograph as if afraid it would disappear.
“But my father…”
“He never killed him.”
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
Against Dante.
Elena looked at me.
“Your father arranged for Gabriel to be hidden before he died. Salvatore eventually found him, but he never realized Michael left one final safeguard.”
“What safeguard?”
Elena pointed toward the back of the photograph.
I turned it over.
My father’s handwriting.
One sentence.
IF THEY EVER FIND GABRIEL, TAKE HIM TO EMMA.
I could barely breathe.
“I was thirteen.”
“He was planning for the future.”
The photograph slipped in my shaking hands.
Dante stared at me.
“My son was supposed to find you.”
I looked at him.
“Apparently.”
Then Samson began barking.
Not weakly.
Furiously.
Everyone turned.
A nurse rushed toward the window.
“Dr. Mercer?”
Outside, headlights flooded the parking lot.
A black sedan stopped at the emergency entrance.
The rear door opened.
A small boy climbed out.
Alone.
He carried a backpack.
Blond hair.
Brown eyes.
The child from the photograph.
Gabriel.
Dante whispered his name.
The boy looked through the glass.
Then raised a cardboard sign.
May you like
Three words were written across it.
THEY HAVE EMMA’S MOM.
Related Stories
