My Premature Son Finally Fed in My Maid’s Arms—Then She Found a Syringe Cap Hidden Beneath His Nursery Cart.

Elena was already sprinting before the phone clicked off.

Lorenzo caught her at the threshold of the hallway, gripping her arms firmly. "Elena! Stop!"

"They have both of them!" she screamed, thrashing against his grip with hysterical strength. "Leo and my baby! They have them in the vaults!"

"I know!" Lorenzo commanded, his voice piercing through her panic, his eyes locked onto hers with absolute, unyielding focus. "I know, Elena! Look at me!"

She stopped, chest heaving, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.

"Marcus will secure the upper exits," Lorenzo said, pulling a small, ceramic-composite blade from inside his boot and pressing it into Elena’s trembling palm. "Julian thinks I will go down there alone and unarmed. He thinks grief makes men weak. He doesn't know that it turns men into monsters."

Lorenzo turned to Marcus. "Cut the power to the lower levels on my mark. If anything moves that isn't me or Elena, exterminate it."

"Understood, Boss," Marcus said, racking the slide of his shotgun.

Lorenzo took Elena’s hand, leading her down the narrow, forgotten stone corridor behind the library that led directly to the estate's subterranean wine cellars and the historical family vaults beneath the bedrock.

The air grew freezing cold, smelling of ancient stone, damp moss, and copper.

They reached the heavy iron grate leading into the lowest chamber—the ancient crypt where three generations of the Rossi family lay interred in stone sarcophagi. Dim emergency lanterns flickered against the damp walls, casting long, monstrous shadows across the floor.

In the center of the chamber, sitting on an antique wooden crate between two marble tombs, sat a single portable bassinet. Inside it, both infants were bundled together, strangely silent.

Standing directly beside the bassinet was a figure dressed in high-end tactical gear, their face hidden behind a Kevlar balaclava, holding a remote detonator in one hand and a silenced automatic pistol in the other.

Lorenzo stepped out of the shadows into the lantern light, raising his empty hands. Elena stayed pressed against the shadows of the doorway, clutching the hidden blade, her breath frozen in her throat.

"Julian," Lorenzo called out, his voice echoing off the vaulted stone ceiling. "I'm here. Let the children go."

The figure didn't speak. Instead, they slowly reached up with their gloved left hand and pulled the balaclava off over their head.

Elena gasped in horror.

Lorenzo’s eyes widened in rare, genuine shock.

It was not Julian Moretti.

Standing over the two babies with a sadistic, triumphant smile was Maria—the sweet, elderly head housekeeper who had raised Lorenzo since he was a boy, and who had prepared every single bottle of milk for baby Leo since the day he was brought home from the hospital.

"Hello, Lorenzo," Maria said, her gentle voice now dripping with venomous mockery as her thumb rested lightly on the red switch of the detonator. "You should have checked who my daughter was before you killed her husband five years ago."