Chapter 25 - the dead woman's voice
Dominic’s face went ash-gray. He took half a step backward, his hand instinctively dropping toward the pocket of his trousers.
"Lorenzo, wait... that's impossible!" Dominic said, panic finally bleeding through his composed mask. "Francesca’s child died in the villa bombing! I saw the rubble! I saw the blood!"
Lorenzo took three slow, deliberate strides across the dining room floor. The paternal tenderness in his eyes transformed into pure, homicidal fury as he towered over his younger brother.
"You told me she was dead," Lorenzo whispered, his voice vibrating with lethal menace. "You liquidated Francesca's estate within forty-eight hours. You had Clara take baby Sofia to end my bloodline. And you hid my firstborn in an orphanage five hundred miles away!"
"No, Lorenzo, listen to me—" Dominic backed into the sideboard, rattling the crystal decanters.
Marco stepped silently behind Dominic, his hand resting firmly on the grip of his holstered pistol. "Don't move, Dominic."
Lorenzo grabbed Dominic by the lapels of his thousand-dollar suit, lifting him off his heels. "Who else was involved? Did you kill Francesca, Dominic? Did you bomb that villa?!"
"I didn't bomb anything!" Dominic choked out, his eyes darting toward the door in sheer terror. "I was following orders! You think I wanted this? You think I was the one who hated Francesca?!"
Elena stepped forward, her heart racing. "Orders from who?"
Before Dominic could answer, a sharp, muffled vibration buzzed from the pocket of Dominic's overcoat hanging on the coat rack near the dining room entrance.
Marco stepped over and reached into Dominic's coat, pulling out an encrypted satellite phone—a burner model that didn't match Dominic's regular business devices.
The screen lit up with an incoming call from an unlisted Sicilian landline.
Lorenzo let go of Dominic, who collapsed onto a dining chair, gasping for air.
"Put it on speaker, Marco," Lorenzo commanded.
Marco swiped the screen and tapped the speaker button, holding the phone in the middle of the table.
The line clicked open. A woman’s voice, raspy, aged, but unmistakably aristocratic, came through the speaker with chilling clarity:
"Dominic? The news from New York says Lorenzo took the baby back. Tell me you killed the girl from Buffalo before Lorenzo saw her face."
Elena gasped.
Lorenzo froze as if struck by lightning, his color completely draining away.
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He stared at the phone in horror, recognizing the voice he had mourned for twenty-four years.
"Francesca...?" Lorenzo whispered into the phone.
