Chapter 4 - THE ROME PRESCRIPTION
“Put the briefcase down, Claire.”
Matteo’s voice echoed through the concrete parking garage. He stepped into the harsh glow of the overhead lights, flanked by the three armed men. He wasn't wearing his suit jacket anymore. He looked dangerous, desperate.
Uncle Carlo immediately stepped in front of me, his hand reaching inside his coat for his weapon.
“Stand down, Matteo,” Carlo warned, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. “You’re making a mistake you can’t walk back from.”
“The mistake was letting her leave the house,” Matteo replied coldly. He looked past Carlo, his eyes locking onto mine. “Give me the briefcase, Claire. It belongs to my grandfather’s estate. It isn’t yours.”
My hands shook violently, but not from fear.
I was looking at the photograph in my hand. The picture of Vanessa meeting with the doctor in Rome three years ago. The doctor who told me my sudden fever and cramping was a natural complication. The doctor who told me I had lost my baby.
I stepped out from behind Carlo’s broad shoulders.
“Did you know?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
Matteo frowned. “Know what?”
I held up the photograph. “Did you know Vanessa paid the doctor in Rome to poison me? Did you know she killed our baby?”
For a single second, Matteo’s confident facade shattered. He stopped walking. His eyes darted to the photograph in my hand, then back to my face.
The silence in the garage was deafening.
“I...” Matteo started, his voice suddenly thick. “Claire, that isn't—”
“Don't lie to me!” I screamed, the grief of three years erupting from my chest. “You told me you didn't know Vanessa back then! You said the affair started six months ago! But she was in Rome, Matteo! She had my locket! She paid the man who killed my child!”
Matteo stared at me. He looked physically ill. And in that moment of hesitation, I knew the truth.
He hadn't known about the baby.
But he had known Vanessa much longer than he claimed.
Before Matteo could speak, a gunshot rang out.
The bullet shattered the window of Carlo’s SUV, missing my head by inches.
I screamed, dropping to the concrete. Carlo immediately drew his weapon, firing back at the armed men.
“Don't shoot her!” Matteo roared, turning on his own men.
But the men weren't listening to Matteo.
A sleek silver Mercedes pulled into the garage, stopping just behind the dark van. The window rolled down.
Vanessa sat in the passenger seat, a cold, elegant smile on her face. She held a suppressed pistol in her hand.
“Take the briefcase,” Vanessa ordered the armed men. “And kill them both.”
Matteo stared at Vanessa in absolute horror. “Vanessa, what are you doing? You told me you just wanted the proxy!”
“I lied, darling,” Vanessa sighed, examining her manicure. “My father doesn't want to merge with your family. He wants to absorb it. And as long as you and your little wife are breathing, the Moretti trust remains out of my reach.”
Matteo finally realized the trap he had walked into. He had betrayed his grandmother, his wife, and his legacy for a woman who was playing him from the very beginning.
He drew his own gun, aiming it at Vanessa. “Call them off.”
Vanessa laughed. She didn't look scared at all.
She pressed a button on her phone.
Suddenly, the doors to the hospital stairwell burst open. Five more armed men poured into the garage, surrounding us completely. They were wearing Bellini family colors.
Matteo was vastly outnumbered. His own men had been bought out.
Vanessa stepped out of the Mercedes, her red dress flowing around her ankles. She walked toward us, stopping safely behind her wall of guards.
“I have to thank you, Claire,” Vanessa smiled. “I spent months trying to find out where Rosa hid her husband’s blackmail files. I knew she kept the bronze key on her, but I couldn't get close enough to take it. You made it so easy.”
She held out her hand. “The briefcase. Now.”
I looked at Carlo. He was bleeding from a graze on his shoulder, his gun still raised, but he knew we were dead if we fought.
I looked at Matteo. The husband who had thrown me away. He was staring at Vanessa, the reality of his own destruction crashing down on him.
I slowly stood up, clutching the heavy leather briefcase to my chest.
“You want the files?” I asked, my voice steadying.
“I do,” Vanessa smiled.
I looked her dead in the eye.
“Then go fetch them.”
I turned and hurled the briefcase over the concrete barrier of the parking garage.
We were on the fifth floor.
Vanessa screamed in horror as the heavy leather case plummeted into the dark alley below.
“No!” she shrieked.
In the distraction, Carlo moved. He grabbed my arm and dragged me backward toward the heavy steel fire doors of the hospital stairwell.
“Shoot them!” Vanessa screamed, pointing wildly at us.
Gunfire erupted, sparking against the concrete walls. But before the bullets could reach us, someone stepped into the line of fire.
Matteo.
He raised his weapon and fired at Vanessa’s men, providing cover fire as Carlo shoved me through the stairwell doors.
“Go!” Matteo yelled, blood blooming on his white dress shirt as a bullet caught him in the side. “Get to Rosa! Go!”
I stared at him through the closing door, watching my husband fall to his knees, still firing, defending the wife he had betrayed.
The heavy steel door slammed shut, locking behind us.
“Keep moving, Claire!” Carlo grunted, pushing me up the stairs.
We ran up two flights, my lungs burning, the sound of muffled gunfire echoing from the garage below.
We reached the seventh floor. The ICU.
We burst through the doors, rushing down the sterile white hallway toward Rosa’s room.
“We have to move her,” Carlo said, holding his bleeding shoulder. “Vanessa will send her men up here to finish the job.”
I threw open the door to Rosa’s hospital room, fully prepared to unhook her monitors and push her bed to the service elevator.
But I froze in the doorway.
The heart monitor was quietly humming. The bed was neatly made.
But the bed was empty.
Rosa was gone.
And sitting in the guest chair beside the window, holding a freshly peeled apple and a pocket knife, was a man I hadn't seen in twenty years.
May you like
My father.
TITLE: The Burned Letters
