Chapter 6 - THE ORPHAN IN THE ATTIC
The click of the deadbolt echoed like a gunshot in the cramped basement.
I rushed to the heavy oak door and pushed, but it didn't budge.
“Vanessa!” Luca roared, slamming his fist against the wood.
“Save your breath, darling,” her muffled voice came through the thick door. “This building is scheduled for demolition tomorrow morning at 6 A.M. I paid the foreman a lovely bonus to make sure they don’t check the basement.”
My chest tightened in panic.
“You won't get away with this!” I yelled.
“Oh, Emma,” Vanessa mocked. “I already have. By tomorrow, my tragic fiancé and his scandalous little maid will have run off together and disappeared. Such a sad story.”
Footsteps clicked away, fading up the stairs.
Silence fell over the dark room.
Luca turned away from the door. He didn't panic. He just looked at the little navy blue coat and the wooden rosary in his hands.
“She wants me dead because she knows I’d never stop looking for Leo,” Luca said quietly.
“If Leo was here,” I said, trying to steady my breathing, “and the orphanage closed three years ago... where is he now?”
“Vanessa has him,” Luca said, his jaw clenching. “She’s been hiding the true heir to the Moretti family to ensure she inherits everything when we married.”
I looked around the dark basement.
Filing cabinets. Broken desks. A single grated window near the ceiling, far too small for a person to fit through.
“Luca,” I said. “How are we getting out of here?”
He walked over to an old iron radiator pipe running along the wall.
“My father didn't raise a victim,” he said.
He wrapped his suit jacket around his hands, gripped the rusty pipe, and kicked backward at the joint with brutal force.
The pipe groaned.
He kicked it again. And again.
On the fourth strike, the cast iron cracked. Steam hissed out.
Luca grabbed the heavy broken piece of pipe, walked to the wooden door, and smashed the knob with a deafening crash.
The lock splintered. The door swung open.
We ran up the stairs and burst out the side exit into the freezing night air.
Luca pulled out his phone.
“Marco. Track Vanessa’s car. Now.”
Ten minutes later, we were speeding toward the north side of the city in Luca’s SUV.
“She’s heading to her private airstrip,” Luca said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “She’s trying to leave the country.”
“Would she take Leo with her?” I asked.
“No. He’s a liability.” Luca’s eyes darkened. “She’s keeping him somewhere safe. Somewhere nobody would look.”
I thought back to the child’s drawing my father had.
For Uncle Thomas. From Leo.
“Luca,” I said suddenly. “My father was a driver for the Bellini family. If Vanessa needed someone to hide a child… wouldn't she use someone she thought she could control?”
Luca looked at me.
“You said your father owned a bakery before he got sick.”
“He did,” I said, my heart racing. “The old flour mill on 4th Street. It’s been abandoned since his stroke. Nobody goes in there.”
Luca slammed the brakes and spun the SUV around in the middle of the empty street.
When we arrived at the bakery, the front windows were boarded up.
We forced the back door open.
The smell of stale flour and dust filled the air.
“Leo!” Luca yelled.
Nothing.
I ran up the narrow wooden stairs to the attic above the bakery.
The door was locked with a heavy padlock.
Luca grabbed a crowbar from the old tool bench and snapped the lock.
We pushed the door open.
Huddled in the corner, holding a small flashlight, was a seven-year-old boy.
He looked up at us with wide, terrified eyes.
He looked exactly like Luca.
“Leo?” Luca choked out, dropping to his knees.
May you like
The boy shrank back against the wall.
“Don't hurt me,” the boy whispered. “The red lady told me Uncle Luca hates me. She said if I make a sound, he’ll punish me.”
