Chapter 16 - The House Where the Moretti Family Buried the Truth
The estate stood two hours north of Chicago behind a wall of pine trees and frozen ground.
I knew because Nora showed me the drone feed from my hospital room.
Adrian had wanted me asleep.
I refused.
“You just had surgery,” Dr. Chen reminded me.
“I can recover and watch my ex-husband make terrible choices at the same time.”
“You two have an unusual relationship.”
“You have no idea.”
Lucia slept in the NICU twenty feet away, stable but still under oxygen support.
I sat beside her incubator with the tablet balanced on my knees.
Marco’s body camera showed snow, dark trees, and a massive stone house that looked more like an institution than a home.
Federal agents waited half a mile away.
Nora had negotiated a narrow arrangement: Adrian and Marco would approach first because Elias had sent an access code. Agents would move if they heard gunfire or lost the feed.
I thought that was a terrible plan.
Everyone agreed.
We did it anyway.
The front door opened before Adrian touched it.
Mara Bellini stood there with blood on her sleeve.
“Elias?” Adrian asked.
“Alive.”
“Lorenzo?”
“Also alive.”
“Unfortunately,” Marco muttered.
Mara led them through a hallway lined with old photographs.
Generations of Morettis stared down from gilt frames.
Then they reached a laboratory hidden behind a library wall.
I felt sick watching it.
Rows of freezers.
Sample vaults.
Medical files.
Photographs of children.
Some of Adrian.
Some of Rafael.
Some people I did not know.
One photograph stopped Adrian.
A girl standing beside a lake.
Me.
Age seventeen.
He lifted it from the board.
“Elena.”
I stared at my own younger face through the tablet.
“I’ve never seen that picture.”
Mara said, “Thomas gave it to me.”
“My grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He wanted me to know who I was never allowed to involve.”
“You involved me anyway.”
Mara looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
Adrian’s voice went cold. “She was seventeen.”
“I did not track her then. Lorenzo did.”
A door opened behind them.
Elias entered carrying a handgun.
Marco raised his weapon.
Elias raised both hands slowly and placed his gun on the floor.
“I’m not the enemy.”
Adrian looked at him.
The resemblance was even stronger in motion.
Elias stared back.
“Hello, brother.”
Adrian’s expression barely changed.
“You’re technically my half-uncle.”
Elias blinked.
Then laughed.
For some absurd reason, so did I.
Even Marco smiled.
“Family reunions are complicated,” Elias said.
“Where is Lorenzo?”
“Lower level.”
“Why keep him alive?”
“Because he has the encryption key to half the archive.”
Adrian looked at Mara. “And the other half?”
“I do.”
“So together you can expose everything.”
“Yes.”
A voice came through the room speakers.
“You always were too eager to simplify, Adrian.”
Lorenzo.
Lights flickered.
Steel shutters dropped over the windows.
Marco swore.
Mara went pale.
“He locked the system.”
Adrian looked around. “Where is he?”
“Control room.”
The speaker crackled.
“Bring Elena’s daughter here, and everyone walks away.”
My body went rigid.
Adrian looked directly into Marco’s camera as if he could see me.
“No.”
Lorenzo sighed. “You think this is about harming a child. It is about extending life.”
“Yours.”
“Mine first. Thousands later.”
“You murdered people for research.”
“Progress has always had a cost.”
Adrian’s face became calm.
That calm scared me.
“Then pay it yourself.”
He shot the speaker.
The feed exploded with noise.
A second later, armed men came through two side doors.
Gunfire erupted.
The tablet shook in my hands.
I wanted to look away.
I could not.
Marco pulled Adrian behind a steel cabinet.
Elias fired toward the hallway.
Mara crawled toward a security console.
Then the video froze.
“No.”
I tapped the screen.
“Nora!”
“I lost their feed.”
“Send the agents.”
“They’re moving.”
“How long?”
“Six minutes.”
Six minutes can be a lifetime.
I looked at Lucia.
Her chest rose and fell beneath the soft glow of the incubator.
“Your father better come back,” I whispered.
The feed returned thirty seconds later.
Marco was bleeding from the forehead.
Elias had been hit in the arm.
Adrian was alive.
I started crying from relief.
They pushed through a stairwell into the lower level.
The laboratory below was older.
Much older.
Paper records instead of servers.
Metal cabinets.
Refrigerated vaults.
At the far end sat Lorenzo in a motorized chair, oxygen beside him, one hand on a control panel.
He looked almost peaceful.
“You came,” he said.
Adrian stopped ten feet away.
“You wanted me.”
“I wanted Lucia.”
“You’ll never touch her.”
Lorenzo smiled.
“I already have.”
My blood froze.
“What does he mean?” I whispered.
Adrian’s face changed.
“What did you do?”
Lorenzo pressed a button.
A monitor lit up.
The screen showed Lucia’s NICU room.
Live.
My chair.
My daughter.
And behind me, just outside the camera angle, a nurse I had never seen before stepped into the room.
I turned.
She smiled.
Then locked the NICU door.
The nurse behind me moved slowly enough that nobody watching the monitor would have noticed anything wrong at first. She checked a clipboard, adjusted one of the room curtains, and glanced toward the hallway. Her badge looked legitimate. Her movements looked practiced.
That frightened me most.
I had learned to fear dramatic threats, but the people who had come closest to controlling my life rarely looked dramatic. They looked like doctors. relatives. bookstore owners. men in expensive suits explaining that a cruel decision was necessary for my safety.
I turned my wheelchair slightly so I could keep both Lucia and the nurse in view.
On the tablet, Adrian was still staring at Lorenzo.
“Who is she?” I whispered.
Lorenzo’s smile widened.
“Someone who understands what a parent will do to save a child.”
The nurse’s hand disappeared into her pocket.
May you like
When it came out, she was holding a syringe.
That was when I understood the attack at the estate had never been the real extraction plan. It was the distraction.
