Chapter 6 - The Name on the Death ListThe countdown reached three hours.
My mother refused to explain what would happen when it reached zero until Vincent had secured the room.
He assigned guards to the chapel entrance and ordered the mansion evacuated, leaving only people he trusted. I noticed he did not include Daniel's replacement, Marco, among the guards.
Marco had worked for Vincent for nine years.
He was also the man who had carried my luggage on the night of the wedding.
I had thought of him as harmless.
That changed when I found him standing outside the chapel, whispering into a telephone.
I could hear only one side of the conversation.
“No, sir. She hasn't opened it yet.”
A pause.
“Yes. Both daughters are here.”
He looked toward the security camera.
“Understood. The mother must be alive when we arrive.”
My blood went cold.
I retreated before he could see me.
Inside the room, Vincent was examining the stolen medical files. I showed him what I'd heard.
His expression darkened.
He typed a name.
“Marco Bellini.”
I recognized the surname from the notebook.
Marco wasn't simply a guard.
His family had worked with Dr. Vale for decades.
Before Vincent could react, the door opened.
Marco stood there holding a pistol.
“Boss,” he said carefully, moving his lips. “I need you to come with me.”
Vincent rose slowly.
Marco pointed the gun toward me.
“Don't make me do this.”
Vincent looked at him for several seconds.
Then he signed one word.
Why?
Marco's expression hardened.
“Because you were never supposed to survive long enough to become the boss.”
He revealed that the explosion twenty-six years earlier had been intended to kill Vincent. Anthony Moretti discovered that Vale had been selling confidential information about the criminal organization's activities to federal investigators and rival families.
Anthony planned to expose him.
Vale arranged the explosion to silence both father and son.
Anthony died months later under suspicious circumstances. Vincent survived because his mother pulled him from the burning vehicle before the fuel tank detonated.
But Vale reached the hospital first.
He implanted the device while Vincent was unconscious, then altered the surgical records to make the injury appear permanent.
He had spent decades using the recordings to manipulate the Moretti organization from a distance.
Marco's father had been Vale's security chief.
Now Marco was finishing the work.
“Give me the archive key,” he demanded.
Mother shook her head.
“I destroyed it.”
Marco smiled.
“No, Margaret. You hid it.”
He raised the pistol.
Vincent moved before I could scream.
He struck Marco's wrist, sending the gun sliding beneath the examination table. The two men crashed against the glass cabinet, shattering its doors.
I grabbed Anna and pulled her behind the bed.
Marco was younger, but Vincent was stronger. He drove Marco to the floor and pinned his arm behind his back.
Then Marco pressed a hidden button on his watch.
The room's lights turned red.
A metallic click sounded from the ceiling.
My mother shouted.
“Get away from the walls!”
Tiny ventilation panels opened overhead, releasing a fine white mist.
The doctor stumbled backward, coughing.
Vincent dragged Marco toward the door.
I pulled Anna after them, but the hallway beyond was already filling with armed men.
Not Vincent's guards.
These wore black tactical clothing and carried identical medical cases.
One pointed at my mother.
“Dr. Carter. You're coming with us.”
Vincent raised his pistol.
The man didn't flinch.
“You can shoot me, Moretti. The archive will still purge in two hours and forty minutes. Every recording, every account, every document connected to Project Echo will be destroyed.”
He glanced at me.
“And the only person who can prevent that is your wife.”
I stared at him.
“How do you know?”
He smiled.
“Because your father told us.”
The words struck harder than the gunshots.
I turned toward my mother.
She couldn't meet my eyes.
“What did Dad do?”
Mother swallowed.
“Your father gave them your medical records when you were a child. He wanted to ensure the system could recognize you.”
“Why?”
“Because he believed you might someday inherit everything.”
Everything.
The money.
The laboratory.
The criminal network.
The evidence of the crimes that had destroyed our family.
The man with the pistol stepped closer.
“Your father didn't sell you for fifty dollars, Emily. That was the final payment he received for delivering you to Vincent Moretti.”
I felt the floor disappear beneath me.
“And what did Vincent pay him?”
The man smiled.
“Nothing.”
He looked at Vincent.
“Your husband paid for you with his own life.”
Then he raised a second pistol, aimed it at Vincent's chest, and pulled the trigger.
The shot never came.
A deafening electronic whine filled the corridor.
Every screen in the mansion switched on simultaneously.
A woman's voice spoke through the speakers.
“Emergency authorization accepted.”
My mother went deathly pale.
She recognized the voice.
May you like
So did Vincent.
It belonged to his dead mother.
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