Chapter 6: The Empty Hallway
I screamed my daughter’s name until my throat tore.
“Emma!”
The east hallway was empty.
Her drawing lay on the floor beside the wall.
Alessandro’s security team sealed the mansion for the second time, but someone had already opened a service exit during the blackout.
The rain had washed away the footprints outside.
I turned on Marco.
“You were responsible for security.”
He did not defend himself.
“Yes.”
“Find her.”
“I will.”
“If anything happens to her—”
Alessandro caught my shoulders.
“Sofia, look at me.”
I could barely breathe.
“We will find her.”
“You do not know that.”
“No,” he said. “But whoever took her wants something. That means they need her alive.”
It was a terrible form of comfort, but I held onto it.
Security footage from the minutes before the blackout showed a housekeeper carrying Emma through the laundry corridor.
The woman’s face was hidden beneath a scarf.
Rosa watched the recording twice.
“That is not one of my staff.”
Emma had left one clue behind.
Her drawing showed a long black car, a crooked church, and a lion with a broken tail.
Marco recognized the church.
St. Michael’s.
The same church in the photograph of Daniel and Antonio Moretti.
We drove there as dawn broke.
The church had been abandoned for more than a decade. Broken stained-glass windows cast colored shadows across the floor.
I found Emma’s red hair ribbon tied to the confessional door.
Inside the confessional was a telephone.
It rang.
I answered.
Vanessa’s voice whispered through the receiver.
“Tell Alessandro to give Vittorio the Moretti voting shares.”
“Where is my daughter?”
“She is safe for now.”
“You took her?”
“You humiliated me.”
“She is three years old!”
“And yet she destroyed my life with one sentence.”
Alessandro took the phone.
“If Emma is harmed, there is no country where you can hide.”
Vanessa laughed softly.
“You still think this is my plan.”
A child began crying in the background.
“Emma!”
“Mama!” she screamed.
The line disconnected.
I collapsed against the confessional wall.
Marco searched the telephone and found that the call had been routed through several locations.
Then Alessandro noticed something carved into the wood.
Three letters.
D.B.B.
Daniel Bennett’s initials.
Behind the panel was a small brass key and a handwritten note.
The handwriting belonged to my husband.
The truth is beneath the place where the Moretti empire began.
Alessandro stared toward the altar.
His grandfather had founded the Moretti organization inside that church.
We moved the altar carpet.
Beneath it was an iron door leading underground.
As Alessandro inserted Daniel’s key, we heard Emma crying below us.
May you like
Then a man’s voice said:
“Open that door, and the child dies.”
