Chapter 3 - THE HOUSE WITH NO UNLOCKED DOORSThree days later, I left the hospital wearing sweatpants that belonged to a nurse named Tasha and carrying a dinosaur under my arm.
Damian was waiting beside a black SUV.
So was my mother.
My mother, Patricia Carter, had spent fifty-eight years refusing to be impressed by anyone.
Movie stars.
Politicians.
Doctors.
Rich people.
Men with expensive watches.
Apparently that rule included Damian Vescari.
“You look tired,” she told him.
Damian blinked.
“I haven’t slept much.”
“You should.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And your driver needs to slow down.”
“My driver wasn’t—”
“He was.”
I almost smiled.
“Mom.”
“What? We nearly got killed changing lanes.”
Marco opened the back door without comment.
Damian’s estate sat forty minutes outside downtown Chicago, behind iron gates and enough security cameras to make a prison jealous.
The house itself was enormous without being flashy.
Gray stone.
Tall windows.
Dark roof.
Surrounded by forest.
Luca ran out before the SUV fully stopped.
“Emma!”
He wrapped his arms around my legs, then remembered I was injured and jumped backward.
“Sorry.”
“You’re okay.”
“I made you a room.”
“You made it?”
“I picked the blanket.”
“That’s serious work.”
“It has stars.”
Behind him, Damian watched us.
Something about his expression made me look away.
My mother noticed.
Mothers always notice.
Inside, I learned two things quickly.
First, Damian’s house was not run like a criminal fortress.
It was run like a place where a small boy lived with a father who didn’t know how to say no to Lego.
Second, almost everyone in the house was afraid of Damian except Luca and an elderly Italian woman named Rosa who had apparently changed Damian’s diapers and therefore considered herself immune.
“You,” Rosa said, pointing at him. “Eat.”
“I have calls.”
“Eat while calling.”
“Rosa—”
She slapped a plate of pasta onto the table.
Damian sat.
I liked her immediately.
The first evening passed quietly.
Too quietly.
I kept waiting for someone to crash through a window.
Instead, Luca convinced me to play dinosaurs on the living room rug while my mother and Rosa argued about the correct amount of garlic in tomato sauce.
Damian spent most of the evening on calls.
At nine, Luca fell asleep against my uninjured side.
Damian came in and stopped.
I whispered, “I think my arm is dead.”
“He does that.”
“Could you move him?”
Damian walked over, carefully lifted his son, and settled him against his chest.
Luca immediately buried his face against Damian’s neck.
The transformation was startling.
The feared man from Bellamy House vanished.
In his place was simply a father.
“He trusts you,” Damian said.
“He’s six.”
“He doesn’t trust everyone.”
Neither do you, I thought.
But I didn’t say it.
After Luca went to bed, Damian returned carrying a folder.
“We identified the woman.”
“Snake bracelet?”
He nodded.
“Vivian Moretti.”
The photograph showed the blonde from Bellamy House.
“Who is she?”
“Widow of Anthony Moretti.”
“And Anthony?”
“A man my father killed.”
There it was.
No euphemism.
No careful language.
My stomach tightened.
“Your father murdered someone?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
“Do you know why?”
“Yes.”
He sat opposite me.
“Anthony ordered the bombing that killed my older brother.”
The room grew colder.
“How old was your brother?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And your father retaliated.”
“Yes.”
I stared at the photograph.
“So Vivian has spent twenty years waiting to hurt your family?”
“Possibly.”
“Why now?”
“That’s the problem.”
He pushed another photograph toward me.
A younger woman stood beside Vivian.
“Her daughter, Elena.”
I studied her.
She looked strangely familiar.
Then recognition struck.
“I know her.”
Damian leaned forward.
“From where?”
“She worked at my college.”
“What?”
“Not exactly with me. Administration office. Financial aid, maybe.”
His eyes sharpened.
“When?”
“Eight years ago.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I remembered her because she had helped me appeal the cancellation of a scholarship after my father died.
She had been kind.
Quiet.
She had even brought me coffee once while I waited for paperwork.
Damian stood immediately.
“Marco.”
He didn’t shout.
He never needed to.
Marco appeared within seconds.
“Run Elena Moretti through Emma’s university records. Employment, access, everything.”
I felt sick.
“Why would she care about me?”
“We’re going to find out.”
The answer came before midnight.
Marco entered the library carrying a laptop.
“Elena Moretti worked in student services from 2014 to 2019.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“No. But this does.”
He turned the screen around.
An old digitized form appeared.
Emergency contacts.
My mother.
My father.
And below them, a name I had almost forgotten.
Dr. Samuel Carter.
“My dad.”
Marco enlarged another file.
“Your father wasn’t always Samuel Carter.”
My skin prickled.
“What are you talking about?”
“His legal name was Samuel Bellini until 1994.”
Damian stopped moving.
I noticed immediately.
“You know that name.”
He didn’t answer.
“Damian.”
His face had gone pale.
“Bellini?”
My heart began pounding.
“Tell me.”
Damian looked at Marco.
“Leave us.”
Marco obeyed.
My mother was asleep upstairs.
The house felt impossibly quiet.
“My father had a man working for him,” Damian said. “Accountant. Adviser. Friend.”
“What was his name?”
“Samuel Bellini.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“He disappeared twenty-six years ago.”
“My father didn’t disappear. He moved to Illinois.”
“With your mother?”
“Yes.”
Damian’s expression told me something worse was coming.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“My father died when I was twenty.”
“How?”
“Heart attack.”
“When?”
“Eight years ago.”
Damian slowly sat down.
“The same year Elena Moretti began accessing your records.”
The room tilted.
“That could be coincidence.”
“It could.”
But neither of us believed it.
I stood despite the pain.
“My father sold insurance. He coached softball. He complained about taxes and burned pancakes every Sunday.”
“He may also have known my father.”
“That does not make him part of whatever this is.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“You were thinking it.”
Damian’s voice softened.
“Emma.”
“No.”
My father had been safe.
Normal.
The parent who packed my lunches with terrible jokes written on napkins.
I wasn’t going to let Damian drag him into a world of revenge and dead brothers.
Then Marco returned.
He looked grim.
“What now?”
“We found something else.”
He placed an old photograph on the table.
Three men stood outside a warehouse.
One was Damian’s father.
One I didn’t recognize.
The third was mine.
Twenty years younger.
Same crooked smile.
Same eyes.
But there was a gun holstered beneath his jacket.
I sat down hard.
“No.”
Damian studied me rather than the photograph.
I could barely breathe.
“What did my father do?”
Marco answered carefully.
“He kept financial records for the Vescari organization.”
Organization.
Not company.
Not business.
Organization.
My father had been part of it.
“Why did he leave?”
Damian looked at the photograph.
“According to the story I was told, Samuel Bellini stole evidence and vanished.”
“Evidence of what?”
Damian’s eyes met mine.
“Enough to send several men to prison.”
“Did your father look for him?”
“For years.”
“Did he find him?”
“No.”
I almost laughed.
“My father lived under his own name.”
“Carter was your mother’s maiden name.”
“You researched that fast.”
“Your life is being threatened.”
“Stop saying that like it gives you permission to know everything about me.”
His jaw tightened.
“You’re right.”
The apology caught me off guard.
Then every light in the house went out.
Darkness swallowed the library.
Somewhere upstairs, Luca screamed.
Damian was moving before I could speak.
“Stay here.”
“Not happening.”
A red emergency light clicked on.
Then another.
Damian pulled a gun from beneath his jacket.
My breath stopped.
The man I had started seeing as Luca’s father suddenly became the man newspapers whispered about.
Marco’s voice crackled through Damian’s phone.
“Perimeter breach. East wall.”
“How many?”
“At least three.”
“Luca?”
“Rosa has him in the safe room.”
“My mother?”
“With them.”
Damian turned to me.
“Come with me.”
We moved through the dark hallway.
Before we reached the stairs, a window shattered.
Damian shoved me against the wall as something struck the opposite paneling.
A bullet.
My blood turned to ice.
“Stay behind me.”
Another shot.
Then security returned fire outside.
We reached the reinforced door to the safe room.
Damian entered a code.
Inside, Luca ran to him.
“Papa!”
“I’m here.”
He dropped to one knee and pulled his son close.
My mother grabbed my hand.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No.”
The emergency lights flickered.
Then Marco’s voice came through an intercom.
“Two intruders down. One ran.”
Damian stood.
“Alive?”
“One.”
“I want him alive.”
My mother stared at him.
I stared too.
Not because of his words.
Because suddenly I understood the truth.
Someone had attacked a guarded estate with armed men.
This wasn’t a warning.
It was war.
Twenty minutes later, Marco entered holding a phone recovered from one of the attackers.
“There’s a video.”
He pressed play.
Vivian Moretti appeared on-screen.
She looked directly into the camera.
“Damian, you have something that belongs to me.”
The video cut to black.
Then text appeared.
SAMUEL BELLINI’S DAUGHTER.
The air left my lungs.
Luca’s hand slipped into mine.
And Damian whispered one word.
“Emma.”
But I was staring at the dark screen.
Because for the first time, I understood.
They had never photographed me because I saved Luca.
They had been watching me before Bellamy House.
Before the glass.
Before Damian.
May you like
The attack that brought us together hadn’t made me a target.
I had already been one.
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