Chapter 12 - the missing hour
Lorenzo looked at the brass key in Elena’s palm, then looked back up into her determined brown eyes.
“You’re out of your mind,” Marco muttered from the doorway. “Boss, we don't bring a civilian into an active breach. If something goes wrong, she’s dead, and Sofia loses the only person who can keep her calm.”
“Marco is right,” Lorenzo said quietly. “You’ve done enough, Elena. More than anyone could have asked.”
“Anthony’s men know your faces, Mr. Moretti,” Elena argued, stepping closer. “Every guard in that building knows Marco’s car and your security detail. But they see me every single morning with a laundry cart. If you try to force that building from the outside, Anthony wipes those servers and walks out through the subway tunnel before you even breach the lobby.”
Lorenzo stared at her for three long seconds. A faint, razor-thin smirk touched the corner of his weathered mouth.
“She’s smarter than half my captains, Marco,” Lorenzo said.
“Boss—”
“Prepare the unmarked transport,” Lorenzo ordered, his voice cutting off any further debate. “We leave in twenty minutes. Maria stays here with four armed guards locked inside the panic room with Sofia. If anyone so much as breathes near that door, shoot through the steel.”
Twenty minutes later, Elena was stripped of her bloody, torn apron and dressed in a clean, heavy black utility jacket provided by Lorenzo’s staff. Sofia was safely asleep inside the reinforced panic room, guarded by two loyal bodyguards with assault rifles.
Inside the back of an unmarked black cargo van moving silently through the dawn traffic, Lorenzo, Marco, and two trusted soldiers checked their weapons.
Elena sat opposite Lorenzo, studying the tactical blueprints of the St. Jude Hotel spread across a portable monitor.
“Something still doesn't fit, Mr. Moretti,” Elena said, tracing her finger along the basement corridor map.
Lorenzo looked up from his weapon. “What doesn't fit?”
“The timeline,” Elena said. “Maria said the cameras in the penthouse went black at midnight. But Sofia wasn't dropped in the alley until nearly two-thirty.”
Marco leaned forward. “We already established that Agent Miller intercepted the courier and held the baby while trying to set up his fake rescue.”
“Right,” Elena said, her eyes narrowing as she remembered the details from the alley. “But when I found Sofia, she was wearing Clara’s platinum medallion. You said Clara’s vault was accessed *inside* the Moretti Tower, right?”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said, his expression darkening.
“If Anthony took Sofia at midnight from the penthouse, and Miller intercepted her at the hotel at twelve-thirty… who opened Clara’s vault at one-fifteen?” Elena asked, looking directly at Lorenzo. “Because the security logs from your own tower, which Marco pulled earlier, showed Clara’s vault was opened forty-five minutes *after* Sofia was already out of the building.”
Marco froze, his hand stopping halfway to his holster.
Lorenzo’s eyes widened with a sudden, bone-chilling realization.
The person who took Clara’s medallion wasn't Anthony.
And it wasn't Agent Miller.
Someone had walked into the Moretti Tower, used Clara’s personal retina scan *after* the kidnapping was already underway, and carried that necklace out of the building while everyone was searching for the baby.
Before Lorenzo could speak, Marco’s phone buzzed with an incoming high-priority radio patch from the penthouse security team.
Marco hit speaker.
“Boss!” the guard’s voice crackled through static, panicked and breathless. “The panic room—someone just overrode the master electronic locks from the inside!”
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Lorenzo grabbed the radio with a roar. “What happened to Sofia?!”
“Maria is unconscious on the floor, boss! The baby is gone! And the woman who took her… she walked straight past the biometric scanners using Mrs. Clara Moretti’s private security clearance!”
