Chapter 5 - WHERE THEY PROMISED FOREVER
Luca reached the greenhouse in less than five minutes, with Emily and two guards close behind. Rain hammered the glass roof. The old climbing roses had grown wild, swallowing the stone path where he had once knelt and asked Isabella to marry him.
The door stood ajar.
Inside, the air smelled of wet soil and crushed leaves. No woman waited among the plants. But a lantern burned on the workbench, and beside it lay a fresh cup of tea.
“She was here,” Emily whispered.
Luca searched the room. Under a loose floor tile near the old fountain, he found a small metal box. The lock had been forced open. Inside lay a flash drive, a folded map, and a wedding photograph with the faces scratched out—except Isabella’s.
On the back, she had written: You promised forever. I believed you meant all of us.
Luca’s throat tightened. He had promised to protect her, but in the months before she vanished, he had buried himself in business, convinced that money and guards could keep his family safe. He had failed to notice how often she looked over her shoulder.
Emily plugged the drive into a secure laptop carried by one of the guards. It contained scanned ledgers, audio files, and a video dated three years earlier.
The video showed Isabella in the blue room, speaking to someone off-camera.
“You told me the money was being moved to protect the company,” she said. “But the names in these ledgers are not suppliers. They’re witnesses. People who disappeared.”
A man answered, “You don’t understand what our father built.”
Luca went rigid. It was Matteo’s voice.
“I understand enough,” Isabella said. “I’m taking Sophie to the police.”
“You can’t.”
“Watch me.”
The recording ended abruptly.
Luca played it again, listening for the detail he had missed. At the very end, beneath the sound of a chair scraping, he heard another voice—a deeper one, older, saying, “Then we do it tonight.”
The voice belonged to Daniel Moretti.
His dead father.
Luca stared at the screen. “That’s impossible.”
The guard looked uneasy. “Sir, the file metadata says it was created three years ago. It could have been edited.”
“Find out.”
Emily found a second audio file. Isabella’s voice was softer now, as though she were speaking in a car.
“If you’re hearing this, Luca, it means I couldn’t reach you. Matteo didn’t plan the whole thing, but he knew more than he admitted. He helped me leave the house. He thought he was sending me somewhere safe. He didn’t know who was waiting at the other end.”
Luca sat down hard.
Matteo had not simply betrayed him. He might have helped Isabella escape—and then abandoned her to the very people she feared.
A noise came from behind the greenhouse. The guards drew their weapons. Luca signaled them to hold position and moved toward the rear door.
A man stumbled into the lantern light, blood darkening his shirt.
Matteo.
He fell to one knee, gasping. “Don’t shoot.”
Luca raised his gun. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try again.”
Matteo looked at Emily, then back at his brother. “I helped Isabella leave. I arranged a car and a safe house. I thought she’d be with a woman who could get her out of the country.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I never met her. I was given a number. The night Isabella vanished, I got a call saying the transfer had gone wrong. When I went to the meeting place, the car was empty.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I was told they would kill you and Sophie if I did. I thought I could find her before they knew I was looking.”
“You led the search.”
“I used the search to cover my own investigation.”
Luca’s finger tightened on the trigger. “You let me believe my wife was dead.”
“I thought you would kill me before I could explain.”
“You were right.”
Matteo lowered his head. “I deserve that.”
Before Luca could answer, a shot shattered the greenhouse glass. One guard dropped. Emily screamed and pulled Luca behind a stone planter. Matteo threw himself across the workbench, shielding the flash drive.
Through the broken glass, a figure in a dark coat ran toward the tree line.
Luca fired once. The figure vanished into the rain.
When the guards rushed outside, they found only a silver serpent ring lying in the mud.
Matteo stared at it as though it were a snake ready to strike.
“That ring isn’t mine,” he whispered.
Luca looked at his brother’s bare hand.
“Then whose is it?”
May you like
Matteo’s face went gray.
“My father’s.”
