Chapter 4 - THE GIRL WHO CARRIED SOFIA’S LAST SECRET
Isabella did not run into my arms.
She did not cry.
She simply studied me as if comparing my face to a memory.
“What did Sofia tell you about me?” I asked.
“She said you looked scary when you were worried.”
Gabriel almost smiled.
I did not.
“Where is your mother?”
Isabella’s small hands closed around the silver pendant at her neck.
“I haven’t seen her in two years.”
The answer broke something inside me.
She had known Sofia.
Spoken to her.
Been held by her.
While I had visited a grave that contained no body.
I crouched in front of the child.
“Who has been taking care of you?”
“Uncle Gabriel. Sometimes Mr. Dante.”
“You know Dante?”
She nodded.
“He brings books.”
The man I had believed dead for twenty-five years had been reading bedtime stories to Sofia’s daughter.
I looked at Gabriel.
“Why bring her here now?”
“Because Vittorio found the orphanage three days ago.”
A floorboard creaked behind us.
I turned, gun raised.
Elena stepped through the church doors.
“You followed me,” I said.
“No. Isabella called me.”
The girl rushed forward and wrapped her arms around Elena’s waist.
That was when I realized Elena had never been merely Sofia’s maid.
She was family.
Not by blood.
By loyalty.
“Elena was Isabella’s guardian before she came to your estate,” Gabriel explained. “Sofia asked her to watch both children if anything happened.”
I stared at Elena.
“You came into my house because Matteo was dying.”
“I came because Sofia’s instructions said I could reveal Isabella only when Matteo reached the final stage.”
“Why wait?”
“Because Matteo’s illness was the signal that Vittorio had activated the last part of his plan.”
Gabriel removed a folded map from inside his coat.
It marked an abandoned medical complex beneath a closed monastery near Lake Geneva.
“Dante is taking Matteo here,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Because that is where Sofia was last held.”
I looked at the map.
“Then we go now.”
“No army,” Gabriel warned. “Vittorio has children inside.”
I turned slowly.
“How many?”
“We don’t know.”
Isabella whispered, “Thirty-two.”
Every adult looked at her.
She reached beneath her sweater and pulled out a tiny memory card.
“Mommy gave me this before she disappeared.”
Elena’s eyes widened.
“She told you never to remove that pendant.”
“I didn’t. But the card is inside.”
Gabriel inserted the card into an old laptop hidden behind the altar.
Files appeared.
Medical records.
Photographs.
Video clips.
Names of children from hospitals across Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
At the bottom was a folder labeled **PROJECT LAZARUS**.
One video showed Vittorio Serra.
He was older, thin, silver-haired, with a face surgically altered—but I recognized his posture.
The voice was my father’s.
“Heart suspension is temporary death,” he explained to unseen investors. “A subject can appear clinically dead for up to six hours before reversal.”
Temporary death.
Dante’s words returned.
The poison was designed to make Matteo’s heart appear dead long enough for them to take him.
The next file showed Sofia strapped to a hospital bed.
Alive.
My entire body went cold.
The date was only three months earlier.
She looked weak, but unmistakably alive.
Vittorio stood beside her.
“You should have married Dante,” he told her. “He was easier to control.”
Sofia raised her head.
“Neither of your sons belongs to you anymore.”
Vittorio smiled.
“Luca still does. He just doesn’t know it.”
The recording ended.
I closed the laptop.
No one spoke.
Isabella reached for my hand.
Her fingers were warm and small.
“Will you find Mommy?”
I looked down at her.
A daughter Sofia had loved in secret.
A son fighting for his life.
A wife stolen while I destroyed innocent enemies for her supposed death.
“Yes,” I said. “I will bring them both home.”
Gabriel gathered weapons and medical supplies.
Elena refused to remain behind.
Isabella was placed under the protection of Pierce and two guards at a safe house.
Before I left, she pulled me close and whispered, **“Mommy said you become dangerous when someone hurts your family.”**
I kissed her forehead.
“She was right.”
We reached the monastery after midnight.
Snow covered the forest.
The building appeared abandoned, but thermal cameras revealed dozens of bodies underground.
Gabriel led us through an old drainage tunnel.
Inside, we found rows of medical rooms.
Children sleeping beneath white blankets.
Some had scars on their chests.
Others were attached to machines.
My men secured the first corridor without firing.
Then alarms sounded.
Steel doors slammed shut.
A voice came through hidden speakers.
“Welcome home, Luca.”
Vittorio.
My father.
The man who had taught me never to kneel.
The man who had built my life upon lies.
“Your son is waiting,” he continued. “So is your wife.”
A wall of glass illuminated ahead.
Behind it lay Matteo, unconscious on an operating table.
Beside him stood Dante.
And in the corner, chained to a chair, was Sofia.
Alive.
Her hair was shorter.
Her face was thinner.
But when she saw me, her eyes filled with tears.
May you like
**For two years, I had spoken to her grave. Now she was twenty feet away, silently forming the word I had dreamed of hearing again.**
Luca.
