Chapter 3 - The Debt Between Their Families
Alessia did not remember crossing the hallway.
One moment she was hidden behind the doorway.
The next she was standing between them.
“What did you say?”
Nona’s face collapsed.
Enzo remained perfectly still.
“Nona.”
“Alessia—”
“You told me Papa died in an accident.”
“He did die.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Her grandmother reached for her.
Alessia stepped away.
For twenty-seven years, Nona had been the one person whose words she never questioned.
Now a bullet sat in their kitchen wall, her supposedly dead father had apparently entered Vieri Tower under another name, and Enzo Vieri’s father might have murdered him.
“Tell me the truth.”
Nona looked suddenly older.
“Not here.”
Enzo agreed.
They moved to the villa under heavy security.
Nona refused to speak until every guard left the sitting room except Luca.
Then she began.
Matteo Rinaldi had not been a criminal.
He had been an accountant.
Twenty-eight years earlier, he worked for Carlo Vieri.
Not directly for the illegal empire surrounding the Vieri name, but for one of its shipping companies.
Matteo discovered money disappearing through shell corporations.
At first, he believed Carlo was stealing.
Then he learned something worse.
Someone inside the Vieri organization was secretly financing a rival network.
Matteo copied the records.
Before he could expose them, he vanished.
Three days later, police found a burned vehicle containing a body identified as his.
Alessia’s mother died two years afterward.
Nona raised Alessia alone.
“Why blame Carlo?”
“Because he came to me.”
Nona’s voice shook.
“The night before your father disappeared.”
Enzo leaned forward.
“What did he say?”
“He told Matteo to stop asking questions.”
“That doesn’t prove he killed him.”
“No.”
Nona met his gaze.
“But after Matteo died, your father paid me to leave Milan.”
Alessia recoiled.
“You took his money?”
“To keep you alive.”
Nona began crying.
It was the first time Alessia remembered seeing her grandmother cry.
“I hated every euro. But you were six years old.”
Alessia sat beside her.
Anger remained, but love was stronger.
“What does any of this have to do with the elevator?”
Enzo answered.
“Someone believes Matteo left evidence.”
“Twenty-one years later?”
“People kill over secrets much older than that.”
Marco entered carrying a laptop.
“We found something.”
The elevator sabotage had not been intended to kill Enzo.
The brakes had been manipulated to force a shutdown between the thirty-first and thirty-second floors.
“Why there?” Alessia asked.
Marco enlarged the building plan.
Behind the elevator shaft was an obsolete maintenance compartment sealed during renovations eighteen years earlier.
Enzo looked toward Nona.
Her reaction answered before she spoke.
“You know about it.”
Nona whispered, “Matteo built it.”
Alessia stared at her.
“He helped design Vieri Tower?”
“The original building.”
Enzo stood.
“We’re going back.”
Alessia rose too.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You’re staying here.”
She folded her arms.
“The mystery involves my father.”
“And someone shot through your window.”
“Exactly. So I’m done being the last person to know what’s happening.”
Enzo recognized the expression.
It was the same one she had worn before knocking his hand away in the elevator.
“No.”
“Power isn’t permission, remember?”
Luca looked down to hide a smile.
Forty minutes later, Alessia was wearing a bulletproof vest.
Enzo hated every second of it.
They entered Vieri Tower through an underground garage.
The elevator remained shut down.
Technicians opened the shaft.
Behind a removable steel panel between floors thirty-one and thirty-two, they discovered a narrow compartment.
Inside sat a metal box.
Alessia’s hands trembled as Enzo carried it into a secure office.
The lock required four digits.
Nona had given them one possibility.
Alessia’s birthday.
It failed.
Her mother’s birthday failed.
Matteo’s supposed death date failed.
Alessia stared at the box.
Then remembered the strange line Nona had repeated throughout her childhood whenever life became difficult.
When everything stops, count backward from the beginning.
“Try 3103.”
Enzo looked at her.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
He entered the numbers.
The lock clicked.
Inside were financial ledgers, photographs, an old cassette tape, and a silver key.
Marco lifted the first document.
His face changed.
“These accounts continued after Matteo died.”
Enzo understood immediately.
“If Matteo created these records—”
“He survived,” Alessia whispered.
Then Luca found something taped beneath the lid.
A recent photograph.
Matteo—older, unmistakable—stood beside a newspaper dated six weeks earlier.
Alive.
Alessia sat down hard.
Her father had been alive all these years.
A handwritten message covered the back.
Alessia, if you found this, they found me first. Trust the man who chooses you over his name.
She read it again.
Enzo did too.
Before either could speak, the lights died.
Luca drew his weapon.
An explosion shook the floor below them.
Smoke rolled beneath the office door.
Marco shouted into his radio.
No answer.
The building’s security network had gone dark.
Again.
Enzo seized Alessia’s hand.
“This way.”
They moved through a private corridor.
At the stairwell, two armed men appeared below.
Enzo pulled Alessia behind him.
Shots cracked against concrete.
Luca returned fire.
“Roof!” Marco shouted.
They ran upward.
By the time they reached the top, a helicopter was already approaching.
Not Enzo’s.
Alessia looked at him.
“You called that?”
“No.”
The helicopter door opened.
A man aimed a rifle.
Enzo shoved Alessia behind a ventilation structure.
Gunfire shattered the rooftop.
Luca dragged Marco into cover.
Enzo pressed Alessia against the concrete, shielding her.
“You keep doing that,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Standing between me and bullets.”
His eyes held hers.
“Get used to it.”
The helicopter suddenly banked away.
Sirens screamed below.
Someone had deliberately attacked the most secure building in Milan.
And escaped.
Back inside the emergency stairwell, Marco received a message.
He handed the phone to Enzo.
The sender was unknown.
The photograph showed Nona sitting inside the villa.
A gun was pressed against her head.
Beneath it were six words.
BRING THE LEDGER. COME WITHOUT ALESSIA.
Alessia’s blood froze.
Then another message arrived.
May you like
This one was addressed to her.
YOUR FATHER IS WAITING TOO.
