Chapter 13 - The Night Bellanote BurnedThe restaurant where it all began became a battlefield

Everything happened at once.

Dante fired.

Tony dragged Sophia backward.

Rosalia triggered the detonator.

The warehouse doors exploded.

Fire surged across the loading bay.

Smoke swallowed everything.

I lost sight of Dante.

I lost sight of Sophia.

Then I heard her scream.

I ran.

Someone grabbed my arm.

My mother.

"Not that way!"

"That's Sophia!"

"We need to get out."

"No."

I pulled free.

A burning beam crashed between us.

"DANTE!"

No answer.

I ran into the smoke.

Then a hand closed around mine.

Dante.

He was carrying Sophia.

Her face was covered in soot.

"Go!"

"What about Rosalia?"

"She's gone."

"Tony?"

"Also gone."

Sophia reached for me.

I took her.

Dante grabbed my shoulder.

"Move."

We escaped through the rear loading door.

Outside, sirens screamed.

Not police.

Fire trucks.

Someone must have called them.

Dante collapsed against a wall.

I caught him.

His eyes closed.

"Dante."

"I'm fine."

"You are absolutely not fine."

He smiled faintly.

"I've been better."

Then Sophia said something.

"The lady dropped this."

She held out a key.

A tiny silver key.

Dante stared.

"Where did you get that?"

"From Tony."

My mother stepped closer.

"The vault."

"What about it?"

"Tony must have removed something before it collapsed."

Dante took the key.

He noticed an engraving.

R.R.

Rosalia Russo.

Then my phone rang.

Unknown number.

I answered.

Tony's voice.

"You think you've won?"

"Where is my mother?"

"Safe."

"Where is Rosalia?"

"With the only person she fears."

"Who?"

Tony laughed.

"Lucia."

The line went dead.

Dante took the phone from my hand.

"We're going back."

"No."

"We are."

"You were poisoned."

"I'll survive."

"You have no idea what you're walking into."

He looked at me.

"Neither do you."

He stepped closer.

"For most of my life, I believed fear was the only thing that kept my family alive."

His eyes moved to Sophia.

"I was wrong."

He looked back at me.

"It was love."

Then we returned to Bellanote.

The restaurant was burning.

Flames climbed through the roof.

Firefighters tried to contain it.

Tony had sent us one final location.

The old bakery.

The place where everything began.

We arrived to find the doors open.

Inside was darkness.

The kitchen was empty.

The hidden basement had been reopened.

A trail of blood led downstairs.

Lucia's blood.

We followed it.

At the bottom, Dante stopped.

A voice came from behind the wall.

"Help me."

Lucia.

Dante hit the bricks.

Again.

Again.

The wall cracked.

He tore it open.

Lucia fell into his arms.

Alive.

But barely.

She grabbed his shirt.

"Rosalia has Sophia's birth certificate."

Dante stared.

"Why?"

"Because it contains the name of her real father."

I looked at Sophia.

Dante looked at me.

Lucia whispered the name.

"Matteo."

The room went silent.

Sophia was not Dante's daughter.

She was Matteo's.

Dante looked at his brother.

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Who had disappeared.

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