Chapter 3 - The Blood on the Marble
I reached the foyer to find one of my guards on the marble floor.
Blood spread beneath his shoulder.
The front security door remained locked, but the inner service entrance stood open.
Mrs. Harlow was gone.
So was the newborn.
Mia stood beside the staircase gripping the injured guard’s phone.
“She took him.”
“Mrs. Harlow?”
The girl shook her head.
“The dark haired woman.”
“You said she was upstairs.”
“She came through the floor.”
Victor’s men searched the service tunnel beneath the kitchen. It connected to the hidden room and continued toward the old greenhouse.
Mrs. Harlow had been found unconscious inside it.
She had not taken the baby.
Someone had struck her from behind.
I knelt beside her as Samuel examined the wound near her temple.
“Evelyn said not to trust you,” I told him.
His hands stopped.
“Evelyn is alive?”
“You answer first.”
Samuel removed his gloves.
“Twelve years ago, Luca asked me to transfer one of your samples out of Saint Adrian’s.”
“Why?”
“He believed your father planned to destroy them.”
“My father was dead.”
“His orders were not.”
My father, Antonio DeLuca, had built an empire from violence and fear. Even after cancer killed him, men continued obeying instructions he left behind.
Samuel said Antonio discovered Luca planned to leave the organization with Clara Harlow. Luca wanted a legitimate life.
My father considered departure betrayal.
He arranged the warehouse explosion.
I stared at Samuel.
“You knew.”
“Afterward.”
“And you remained silent for twelve years.”
“I had a wife and two children.”
“So did the men who died.”
Samuel looked away.
He admitted that Luca survived the explosion long enough to reach a private clinic. Clara survived too.
Evelyn helped hide them.
“What happened next?”
“I do not know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Luca disappeared from the clinic. Clara died from her injuries. Evelyn accused me of revealing the location.”
Mrs. Harlow opened her eyes.
“My daughter lived?”
Samuel turned toward her.
“For nine days.”
She made a sound I had never heard from another human being.
Not a scream.
Something lower.
Something torn from a place where grief had been buried too long.
“You told me she died instantly.”
“I was ordered to.”
“By whom?”
Samuel hesitated.
I pressed my gun against his chest.
“Answer her.”
“Luca.”
The room went silent.
Samuel claimed Luca ordered everyone to believe Clara died immediately because she had delivered a child in secret two months before the explosion.
Mrs. Harlow stared at him.
“A child?”
“A daughter.”
My gaze moved toward Mia.
She stood beside the fireplace, pale and wet haired, listening to every word.
Samuel looked at her too.
“No.”
Mrs. Harlow crossed the room.
She touched Mia’s cheek with trembling fingers.
The child pulled away.
“My grandmother said my mother died in a fire.”
“What was her name?” Mrs. Harlow whispered.
“Clara.”
The elderly woman nearly collapsed.
Mia was Clara Harlow’s daughter.
Luca’s daughter.
My niece.
The child who had carried my supposed son through the rain belonged to the brother I had buried.
Mia shook her head.
“My father was named Luke.”
Mrs. Harlow closed her eyes.
“Luca used that name when he wanted to sound American.”
Mia looked at me.
“You are his brother.”
“Yes.”
“Then why did he hide from you?”
I had no answer.
A radio call came from the greenhouse.
Victor had found the woman’s trail. She carried the baby into an underground garage beneath the chapel.
The garage housed one vehicle I believed had been destroyed years earlier.
Luca’s black sedan.
The engine was warm.
A message had been painted across the wall in fresh red letters.
ROMAN KILLED HIS BROTHER.
Mia read it.
Her face hardened.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“How do I know?”
I looked at the child whose father had spent twelve years teaching her to fear me without ever showing himself.
“You do not.”
Victor opened the sedan’s trunk.
Inside was a portable crib.
A blood stained coat.
And an identification card bearing Evelyn’s photograph under another name.
Dr. Elena Cross.
She had worked at Saint Adrian’s Research Clinic for the last eight years.
She had never been dead.
A phone inside the glove compartment began ringing.
I answered.
Evelyn’s voice spoke.
“If you want the baby alive, bring Mia to the abandoned warehouse before dawn.”
Mia heard.
She stepped closer.
“I am coming.”
“No.”
“He took my brother.”
I looked at her.
“What brother?”
May you like
“The baby.”
Continue to the next part: Mia claims the newborn is her brother, not Roman’s son, while Evelyn demands the child be exchanged for her.
