Chapter 2
I carried Sophia inside before I asked anything else.
Food came first.
Water.
A warm blanket.
A doctor I trusted examined her privately while I waited outside the room with blood drying across my knuckles and Grant’s phone in my hand.
Three days.
I kept hearing that number.
Three days while I sat through Mafia meetings thinking my daughter was angry with me because Camilla had stopped answering. Three days while Sophia sat behind metal bars believing the exact opposite.
When the doctor finally opened the door, he told me she was weak and dehydrated but stable.
I thanked him.
Then I went back to the patio.
Lucia was seated as if she were waiting for dinner.
“You always did become irrational around the child,” she said.
I stopped across from her.
“She’s three.”
“That is exactly when children learn.”
“What?”
“Who leads.”
I almost laughed.
Instead I placed Sophia’s phone on the table.
“Who sent the message?”
Grant looked away.
Camilla answered.
“I did.”
That hurt differently.
Not because I still expected loyalty from my estranged wife.
Because Sophia did.
“You told our daughter I didn’t need her.”
Camilla’s eyes hardened.
“You stopped showing up.”
“I called every day.”
“You called.”
She emphasized the word like it meant nothing.
“You always call. Between meetings. Between dinners with capos. Between everything else you think matters more.”
There it was.
Old anger.
Real anger.
But real anger does not excuse locking a child in a cage.
Lucia intervened before Camilla could say more.
“The marriage was already dead, Raffaele. Sophia needed to stop waiting for you.”
“So you starved her of contact until she believed it?”
“It worked.”
I looked at my aunt.
She truly believed that was a defense.
Marco returned from the pool carrying another black waterproof bag.
He set it on the stone.
“This one’s heavier.”
Camilla stood immediately.
“Don’t open that.”
Nobody looked at her.
I cut the seal.
Inside were Camilla’s clothes.
Jewelry.
Cash.
Sophia’s birth photographs.
And a small wooden Bellandi family box I had not seen since my father died.
Lucia stopped smiling.
That interested me.
I opened it.
The old inner-circle pins were inside.
Six of them.
The symbols of a council I had dismantled when I became boss.
Now I understood.
May you like
They had not only planned to remove my daughter.
They were planning to bring something old back while she was gone.
