Chapter 8 - The Empty Pink Wheelchair.
.Luca's face lost all color.
"Where is Sofia?"
Victor laughed softly through the phone.
"Still walking, for now."
Anna lunged for the device.
"If you touch her, I swear—"
"Elena."
Victor used her real name like a weapon.
"You always were easier to control when the child was involved."
The line went dead.
At the same moment, two armed men advanced between the pews.
Luca fired once and forced them behind cover.
Anna pulled Nora toward the sacristy.
They escaped through a narrow rear door into an alley where another guard waited with a car.
The drive back to the safe apartment lasted twelve minutes.
Anna experienced every second like a separate punishment.
The front door was open when they arrived.
One guard lay unconscious in the hallway.
Rosa sat on the floor with blood on her forehead.
Sofia was gone.
The pink wheelchair remained beside the dining table.
Anna knelt beside it.
A sparkly hair clip rested on the seat.
She picked it up and closed her fist around it.
Rosa began to sob.
"They wore Luca's security badges. I thought they were ours."
Luca crouched beside her.
"This is not your fault. Tell me everything."
Rosa said Sofia had refused to sit in the wheelchair after the banquet.
She had been walking slowly around the apartment, holding furniture for support.
Two men arrived claiming Luca had ordered an emergency relocation.
When Rosa challenged them, a third man struck her from behind.
Sofia screamed and fought.
One of the kidnappers carried her out.
Anna stood.
"Victor wants the notebook."
Luca nodded.
"Then he will call."
"No. He wants more than the notebook."
A memory had returned while Anna stared at the empty chair.
Four years earlier, she had copied Victor's account records onto something smaller.
Not paper.
A memory card.
She had hidden it inside one of Sofia's toys before leaving for the clinic.
"A music box," Anna said.
Luca looked at her.
"The silver swan?"
Anna nodded.
"Where is it?"
Luca's expression changed.
"At the old house in Westchester. I moved most of Elena's things there after the funeral because I couldn't look at them."
Victor had once helped arrange that move.
If he had learned about the card, he might already be searching the house.
Luca assembled a small team of people Victor had no connection to.
Anna insisted on going.
Nora remained with Rosa and contacted a federal investigator she trusted from an old hospital fraud case.
Luca looked at Anna before they left.
"If we find the card, we can trade it for Sofia."
Anna clipped Sofia's hairpin to the front pocket of her shirt.
"We are not trading our daughter to a man who has lied for four years."
Luca paused at the word our.
Anna did not take it back.
They reached the abandoned Westchester house shortly before noon.
The front door hung open.
Inside, drawers had been dumped across the floor.
A child's bedroom waited at the end of the hall.
Anna entered first.
The silver swan music box sat untouched on the shelf.
She lifted it.
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Luca turned.
May you like
Dr. Voss stood in the doorway with both hands raised.
"If you want Sofia alive," he said, "you need to listen to me before Victor finds out I came here."
