Chapter 7 - The Woman in the PhotographThe first shot shattered the glass partition.
I threw myself behind a concrete pillar and pulled Ellie down beside me. Samuel crawled beneath the metal counter, clutching the leather ledger to his chest.
Nico returned fire from the opposite side of the corridor.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed basement.
“Back entrance!” he shouted.
“There isn't one!” Samuel yelled.
Ellie pointed toward the row of drawers.
“There is!”
She had noticed a narrow maintenance panel behind the sixth drawer. Its screws were covered in layers of paint, almost invisible against the rusted wall.
I looked at Samuel.
“Can it open?”
“Possibly.”
“That's not an answer!”
He was already reaching for his tools.
While the shooting continued, he worked at the panel's edges. Ellie crouched beside him, studying the tiny lock.
“Grandpa, the spring is broken.”
Samuel stopped.
“How do you know?”
“Because it's supposed to push outward, but it moves inward.”
She pressed a bent section of metal.
The panel popped open.
A narrow crawlspace stretched beyond it.
Nico covered the corridor while I pushed Samuel and Ellie inside. The ledger went first, then the old recorder, then the watch.
I entered last.
Behind us, footsteps thundered through the morgue.
I heard Vittorio shouting orders.
Then his voice cut through the chaos.
“Do not kill Lorenzo! I want the boy alive!”
Boy.
I was thirty-two years old, had commanded hundreds of men, and had built an organization that stretched across three states.
Yet to Vittorio, I was still the nine-year-old he had once carried away from my father's funeral.
The crawlspace ended at an old laundry shaft. We climbed through a maintenance hatch and emerged into a courtyard behind the hospital.
My car waited near the road.
But when we reached it, Nico discovered that the tires had been slashed.
“They knew where we would exit,” he said.
I looked toward the hospital.
Vittorio's men were moving through the courtyard.
“We walk.”
We crossed three blocks before reaching a garage owned by one of my oldest associates. By nightfall, we had relocated to a private apartment under a false name.
I spent the next two hours studying the ledger.
One entry appeared repeatedly.
M. VOSS.
Every payment associated with that name had been followed by a small symbol: a circle containing four lines.
Ellie leaned over my shoulder.
“That's a clock.”
I examined the symbol.
“No. It's a compass.”
She shook her head.
“Look at the lines. They aren't pointing north. They're pointing to the hours.”
Samuel looked up sharply.
“My daughter drew that symbol.”
I turned toward him.
“Why?”
“She said it came from an old photograph she found in her mother's belongings. I never knew what it meant.”
I opened the pocket watch and compared the marks on its dial with the symbol.
Four lines.
Four hours.
One of the lines pointed toward 4.
Another pointed toward 1.
The remaining two pointed toward 9 and a tiny mark between the numbers.
It was a code.
Not a time.
An address.
Nico entered the numbers into an old property database. After several minutes, a single location appeared.
A residential building on Locust Street.
The name attached to the property was Marcella Voss.
My father's missing associate.
Dominic's supposedly dead wife.
We arrived just after midnight.
The building was ordinary, wedged between a closed pharmacy and a small grocery store. Three floors. Brick walls. No security cameras.
I knocked twice.
A woman opened the door.
She was in her late seventies, with silver hair tied behind her neck. Her face was thin, and a faint scar crossed her left cheek.
Her eyes went straight to the signet ring on my finger.
Then she looked at the watch.
For several seconds, she couldn't speak.
Finally, she stepped aside.
“Come in, Lorenzo.”
She knew my name.
She knew the watch.
And she had been expecting me.
The apartment was filled with clocks. Wall clocks, grandfather clocks, travel clocks, and dozens of tiny watches arranged behind glass. Every single one had stopped at 4:19.
“Why are all your clocks stopped?” I asked.
“Because the world keeps pretending that moment never happened.”
She locked the door.
Then she turned to Samuel.
“You look older.”
Samuel stared at her with disbelief.
“Marcella?”
She smiled sadly.
“Someone had to survive long enough to tell the truth.”
I placed the ledger on her table.
“Tell me what happened to my father.”
Marcella poured three cups of tea, though nobody drank.
“Your father discovered that Dominic had been working with Vittorio to seize control of the family. The plan was simple. They would kill Antonio, place Vittorio in charge, and remove any evidence that could threaten their arrangement.”
“Then why is Vittorio trying to kill me?”
“Because your father had already prepared a way to destroy their empire.”
She opened a drawer and removed a photograph.
It showed my father standing beside Marcella in front of the old clock tower.
Between them was a little girl with copper-colored hair.
Ellie stepped closer.
“That looks like Mama.”
Marcella nodded.
“Elena was only six when that photograph was taken. Your father adored her. He used to say she could hear the truth in a clock long before anyone else could hear it in a person.”
Samuel covered his mouth.
“You knew my daughter?”
“I helped her hide the first piece of evidence.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because telling you would have put Ellie in danger.”
I looked from the photograph to Marcella.
“How did my father's evidence reach Elena?”
Marcella's face grew pale.
“Because after Antonio disappeared from the hospital, Elena was the last person to see him alive.”
I felt the floor shift beneath me.
“That's impossible. She was six.”
“Children remember things adults force themselves to forget.”
Marcella leaned forward.
“Your father did not die at 4:19, Lorenzo. That was the moment everyone decided he was dead.”
She pointed toward a clock on the mantelpiece.
Its hands were frozen at the same time.
“Your father lived for another three days.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“Where was he?”
Marcella's voice dropped to a whisper.
“Hidden inside your uncle's house.”
Then she revealed the name of the person who had helped him escape the hospital.
A name I had never expected.
A name that made Samuel rise so abruptly that his chair toppled backward.
Elena Duca.
My father's sister.
May you like
My aunt.
The woman everyone had told me died before I was born.
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