Chapter 2 - The Messages Grace Never Sent
Luca Moretti reached the underground room with six security men less than two minutes after my call.
He stopped when he saw Grace.
Luca had served beside me for twelve years. I had watched him stand calmly through shootings, arrests, and funerals.
The sight of my pregnant wife inside an iron cage drained the color from his face.
“Get Dr. Emilia Hart here,” I ordered. “No family doctor. No one selected by Isabella.”
My mother laughed bitterly.
“You are placing your wife’s life in the hands of strangers while insulting your own blood.”
I turned toward Luca.
“Take her phone.”
Isabella stepped back.
“You cannot imprison me.”
“You imprisoned Grace.”
“This estate belongs to the Rossi family.”
“It belongs to Rossi Holdings, and I control Rossi Holdings.”
“Until your son is born.”
The words came too quickly.
Everyone heard them.
Luca removed the phone from her hand.
I carried Grace upstairs.
She kept her face against my chest as though looking at the house might return her to the room below.
When we reached the marble foyer, she began fighting my arms.
“No hospital.”
“Grace, you need a doctor.”
“Not their hospital.”
“Emilia is not connected to them.”
“They all said that.”
I lowered myself onto the first stair while holding her.
“Look at me.”
Her breathing remained shallow.
“I am not taking you anywhere without telling you where, who will be there, and why.”
Her eyes met mine.
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
“You promised you would come home.”
The words struck harder than any accusation.
“I know.”
“You did not.”
“I tried.”
“She showed me your messages.”
“What messages?”
Grace’s hand tightened around my lapel.
“You said the mission mattered more. You said the baby was a mistake.”
I felt something inside me break.
“I never wrote that.”
“She played your voice.”
My mother had not relied only on forged text.
She had used recordings.
Dr. Emilia Hart entered twenty minutes later with an emergency nurse and portable monitoring equipment.
She was an obstetric specialist who had treated Grace before Isabella replaced the appointments with a family physician.
Emilia examined Grace in the guest suite while I remained where Grace could see me.
The baby’s heartbeat was fast but present.
Grace was dehydrated, underfed, and suffering irregular contractions.
The medications found downstairs included sedatives and a drug sometimes used to suppress premature labor.
The dosages written on the bottles were unsafe without supervision.
“Did you take these voluntarily?” Emilia asked.
Grace looked toward the door where Isabella stood between two guards.
“She crushed them into tea.”
My mother answered before anyone asked her.
“Grace became hysterical after Matteo abandoned her. The medicine protected the child.”
Emilia’s expression hardened.
“Were you treating her?”
“I followed medical instructions.”
“From whom?”
Isabella refused to answer.
Emilia recommended immediate transfer to a protected maternity unit.
Grace agreed only after I promised that Luca’s wife, Sofia, would remain with her and that no Rossi physician would receive access.
Before the ambulance arrived, I ordered the estate’s internal communications copied.
The message history showed hundreds of conversations between Grace and me.
Almost none matched the messages preserved on my secure phone.
My real messages had entered the estate server.
Someone intercepted them before they reached Grace.
The replacements used my name, profile, and voice.
The false voice recordings were built from private calls.
One said:
I need the heir, Grace. Do not confuse that with needing you.
Another said:
My mother will manage the child if you become difficult.
I listened once.
Then I stopped.
The voice sounded like me.
The pauses were wrong.
The anger was not.
Whoever created them had studied the way I spoke during negotiations and arguments.
Grace had been alone inside the estate, pregnant, frightened, and told that the man she loved had discarded her.
She had no reason to suspect technology or a family conspiracy.
I had given my mother administrative authority over the house while I was away.
I had placed the weapon in her hands.
Enzo remained inside the library under guard.
He had served the family since my childhood.
When I entered, he stood with both hands flat against the desk.
“Why did you not call me?”
His eyes filled.
“Every line was monitored.”
“You could have left.”
“They held my daughter.”
“Who?”
“Dominic.”
Enzo’s daughter, Clara, attended nursing school in Boston.
Dominic sent Enzo photographs of her apartment and daily route.
If Enzo warned me, Clara would disappear.
“What did you see?”
“Mrs. Rossi moved Grace from the bedroom seventeen days ago. They said she attacked a doctor.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
“Who helped?”
“Dominic. Dr. Paolo Ferri. Two men from the lower security unit.”
“Where is Dominic now?”
“The tunnels reach the wine cellar, the chapel, and the old greenhouse.”
Luca’s men had sealed all three exits.
No one emerged.
The passage behind the cage contained fresh blood, a torn jacket sleeve, and an open service hatch leading deeper beneath the estate.
Dominic had not escaped aboveground.
He remained somewhere below us.
Enzo placed a small device on the desk.
Grace’s original phone.
He found it inside Isabella’s bedroom after hearing my helicopter.
The device contained videos Grace attempted to send me.
In the first, she stood in the nursery with one hand over her stomach.
“Matteo, your mother says you do not want calls, but I need to hear that from you.”
In the second, a bruise darkened her wrist.
“I do not know what is happening. The staff will not let me leave.”
In the final video, Grace whispered from a bathroom.
“If you still love me, come home without telling anyone.”
The video had been recorded nineteen days earlier.
I had never received it.
A second file appeared beneath the videos.
An audio recording of Isabella speaking with Dominic.
Dominic said:
The council wants the signatures before the child arrives.
My mother answered:
May you like
Then the council should have chosen a weaker woman.
Continue to the next part: Matteo discovers that Isabella and Dominic were acting under orders from a council hidden inside the Rossi family structure.
