Chapter 10
The House of Bells
The next day moved like a blade drawing slowly from a sheath.
Carlo had fled, but not far. Men loyal to Salvatore spread through the city and surrounding roads before dawn, asking questions in the old way and listening with more than ears. By noon, one of Luca’s contacts confirmed what Salvatore had already guessed. Carlo had not run from the war. He had moved to ground he thought sacred enough to force terms.
The old Saint Bartholomew estate chapel.
It had once belonged to Salvatore’s grandfather and was no longer used for public ceremonies, only for occasional private memorials. More importantly, it connected through sealed crypt passages to an abandoned storage wing beneath the family’s first council house. Few living people knew the place well.
Carlo did.
Emily sat in Salvatore’s study as the plan formed around her. Luca wanted a direct strike. Salvatore wanted Carlo taken alive if possible. Bianca wanted Emily nowhere near any of it. Mirella wanted her in bed. Emily wanted one thing only.
“He expects me,” she said.
“No,” Salvatore answered. “He expects leverage.”
“He wrote about the child, not me. That means he still needs me close enough to use.”
Salvatore’s gaze hardened. “I will not bait my pregnant daughter in a crypt because a traitor thinks himself sentimental.”
Emily went to the desk and placed Lucia’s embroidered bonnet on the wood between them. “He built a nursery under your council wing and stitched my mother’s name into it. This stopped being only your war a long time ago.”
They stared at each other across the desk until Salvatore exhaled once through his nose, not surrendering, but accepting that refusal would only drive her into action without his protection.
So a trap was set.
By evening, word was allowed to leak that Emily, frightened by the chapel attack and exhausted by stress, had agreed to leave with only a light escort to a private maternity clinic outside the city. The convoy route leaked through channels still dirty enough to tempt a watcher. The real movement happened elsewhere. Under a dark coat and with a scarf drawn high, Emily traveled in Salvatore’s own car toward Saint Bartholomew with Luca in front and Bianca at her side.
The chapel loomed out of the winter dusk like a forgotten oath. Stone bell tower. Iron gates. Bare trees scraping at the sky.
Inside, the main sanctuary was dark. Only side candles burned. Somewhere below, a bell began to toll, slow and measured.
“One of the crypt doors,” Luca murmured. “It’s manual. Someone’s pulling the old line.”
They descended by a narrow stair behind the altar.
The air below was cold and damp. Stone swallowed sound. At the base of the stairs a corridor opened into burial chambers and storage alcoves, some empty, some lined with old shelves. Light glowed under one far door.
When they reached it, they found not Carlo, but Linda.
She stood in the center of a small vaulted room, one hand wrapped around a detonator switch wired crudely to charges fixed along the opposite wall. The sight of them transformed her face into something almost peaceful.
“You always were his weakness,” she said to Salvatore. “First Lucia. Then this one.”
Emily stepped forward before anyone could stop her. “Where is Carlo?”
Linda’s eyes slid to her belly. “Near enough.”
Salvatore lifted one hand, a warning both to his men and to Linda. “If you kill my daughter, Carlo dies badly.”
Linda laughed softly. “He already knows that.”
A voice answered from the passage beyond the wall speaker, amplified by the stone.
“Then keep her alive, Linda.”
Carlo.
His voice came from somewhere deeper in the crypt, impossible to place exactly. The old intercom system, Emily realized—the same kind that had carried Ryan’s message days before.
“Send Emily in,” Carlo said. “Alone, and no one here has to drown in rubble.”
Salvatore’s expression did not change. But Emily felt the decision moving through him, brutal and exact.
Then, from the dark side corridor, another sound came—staggering footsteps, wet breathing.
Ryan, bandaged and half-bent from the knife wound, appeared with one hand braced against the stone.
Linda stared at him as if seeing a corpse walk.
Ryan looked at Salvatore, then at Emily, then at his mother. “He lied to all of us,” he said hoarsely. “The charges are a bluff. The real exit’s behind the crypt wall.”
May you like
Linda’s thumb twitched on the switch.
Luca moved.
