Chapter 7 - THE BETRAYAL
The plan failed.
Someone betrayed them.
The convoy was attacked before reaching the factory.
Two vehicles exploded.
Men scattered.
Vincent pulled Isabelle into a concrete building while bullets struck the walls.
"Stay behind me."
"I know."
Michael appeared.
"Someone leaked the route."
Vincent looked at Dominic.
"Who knew?"
"Six people."
"Names."
Dominic listed them.
Vincent listened.
Then his eyes landed on Dominic.
Dominic immediately understood.
"You think it's me?"
"I think someone is."
Dominic pulled his weapon.
"I've served you for fifteen years."
"And Vincent Russo served me for eleven."
The tension became unbearable.
Isabelle stepped between them.
"Stop."
Everyone looked at her.
She pointed toward the floor.
A phone was ringing.
Nobody recognized it.
Dominic picked it up.
A message appeared.
THE TRAITOR IS NOT ONE OF THE SIX.
Vincent frowned.
Another message arrived.
LOOK CLOSER.
The phone camera activated.
It showed the hospital.
Isabelle's hospital room.
Then the image changed.
A nurse.
A doctor.
A security guard.
And finally—
Daniel.
Alive.
Isabelle's knees nearly gave out.
"No."
Vincent caught her.
"Impossible."
The video showed Daniel walking through a warehouse.
He looked older.
But it was unmistakably him.
Michael stared.
"He's alive."
The video ended.
A voice came through the speaker.
"Hello, Isabelle."
She froze.
Daniel.
"I know you're with Vincent."
She began crying.
"Why?"
"Because I had no choice."
"You abandoned me."
"I was protecting you."
"You let me believe you were dead!"
"I needed the Falcones to believe it too."
Vincent took the phone.
"Where are you?"
Daniel laughed.
"Still protecting her, Moretti?"
Vincent's eyes became cold.
"Give me your location."
"I'll give you something better."
A photograph appeared.
Daniel stood beside Maria.
And between them was a hospital bassinet.
Isabelle stared.
"That's my baby."
"No," Daniel said.
"It's another child."
Her heart stopped.
Daniel continued:
"Your baby was never the target."
Vincent looked at Isabelle.
"What does that mean?"
Daniel's voice became grim.
"Someone switched the embryos before implantation."
Silence.
"The child inside Isabelle isn't the Moretti-Falcone heir."
Michael whispered:
"Then whose child is it?"
Daniel answered:
"The child of the one person Maria has been trying to kill for twenty years."
The call ended.
Vincent looked at Isabelle.
She looked at him.
Neither spoke.
Then Isabelle suddenly realized something.
The necklace.
Her mother's necklace.
The one the attacker had possessed.
She touched her neck.
"Wait."
"What?"
"My mother."
Vincent stared.
"What about her?"
"My mother wasn't an ordinary nurse."
She remembered old photographs.
A hospital badge.
A surname she hadn't understood.
A woman standing beside Maria Moretti.
May you like
Isabelle whispered:
"My mother worked for them."
