Chapter 5 - The Children Who Changed a Ruthless Man
I did not sleep that night.
Every creak of the farmhouse became a footstep.
Every sweep of headlights across the bedroom wall became Vanessa’s gray SUV returning.
Lena slept beside me with her hand curled beneath her cheek. Ash lay on my other side, clutching the wooden lion Luca had given him.
I stared into the darkness and remembered the months before I disappeared.
Vanessa had begun leaving comments like tiny cuts.
You look tired, Sarah.
Luca says you’ve been emotional lately.
Maybe you should talk to someone.
Once, she replaced my vitamins with pills in an unmarked bottle and claimed the pharmacy had made a mistake. Another time, she told Luca she had found me crying in the garage when I had never been there.
She had been building a story.
An unstable wife.
A troubled marriage.
A future death people could explain away.
At three in the morning, I went downstairs for water.
Luca sat at the kitchen table.
He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. A laptop glowed in front of him, but he was not reading it. He held one of Rosa’s old coffee mugs between both hands.
“You should be in the cottage,” I said.
“The security alarm showed movement inside the house.”
“That was me.”
“I know now.”
I poured water.
He closed the laptop.
“Sarah, I need to tell you something.”
“Tonight has already been generous.”
“It cannot wait.”
I remained by the counter.
“After you disappeared, I believed you were alive because no money had been touched. Then your car was found near the lake.”
I remembered abandoning it at a train station before leaving Illinois.
“Vanessa suggested you had driven into the water.”
“Of course she did.”
“Divers searched for nine days.”
The pain in his voice made me look at him.
“I stood on that shore every morning,” he said. “I kept imagining you trapped beneath the surface while I was still breathing.”
I said nothing.
“On the tenth day, I received a package. It contained your wedding ring.”
My hand moved instinctively to the bare place on my finger.
I had left the ring in the mansion’s library before escaping. I could not bear to sell it, but I could not wear it.
“Vanessa mailed it?”
“Yes. She included a note written to resemble your handwriting.”
“What did it say?”
“That you never wanted to be found.”
I closed my eyes.
“I didn’t write it.”
“I know that now.”
“Would it have mattered then?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in his answer angered me.
“You had already ignored me for months.”
“I was blind, not indifferent.”
“There isn’t much difference to the person being abandoned.”
He looked down.
“No.”
The room became quiet.
I noticed a scar near his wrist, a pale line I did not remember.
“What happened?”
He followed my gaze.
“Nothing important.”
“Luca.”
His mouth tightened.
“Six months after you left, Damian’s men forced my car off the road. They wanted the financial investigation stopped.”
“And?”
“I declined.”
“That scar is not from declining.”
“No.”
I waited.
“They held me for two days.”
My water glass touched the counter harder than intended.
“Why didn’t that appear in the news?”
“Because I did not want Damian to know how much evidence I had gathered.”
“What did they do?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters if it explains why someone is threatening our children.”
He met my eyes.
“They asked where you were. Damian believed I had hidden you.”
The truth settled between us.
Even while I had believed Luca and Vanessa were together, Damian had believed Luca was protecting me.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“Stop deciding what I’m supposed to know.”
“I’m trying.”
His frustration finally surfaced.
“I have spent three years learning that every decision I made for you without asking you became another reason you could not trust me.”
I folded my arms.
“At least you learned something.”
“I learned too late.”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
We both looked toward the ceiling.
Seconds later, Ash appeared on the staircase.
He held the lion in one hand and rubbed his eyes with the other.
“Mama?”
I went to him.
“Bad dream?”
He nodded.
Luca remained seated.
Ash looked toward him.
“The red lady took my lion.”
Luca’s face changed.
“What red lady?” I asked gently.
“In the dream.”
I lifted Ash into my arms.
He stared over my shoulder at Luca.
“She said Daddy doesn’t know the game.”
The kitchen went still.
“Did Vanessa say that to you in the alley?” Luca asked.
Ash hid his face against my neck.
I stroked his hair.
“You’re safe. Tell Mama what she said.”
His voice was barely audible.
“She said Daddy has to find the bird before the house burns.”
Luca stood so quickly that the chair struck the floor.
“What bird?”
Ash pointed toward the wooden lion.
“The one inside.”
Luca took the carving gently when Ash offered it.
He examined the base.
A thin seam ran around the wood.
“These were stored at the Lake Forest estate,” he said. “Vanessa had access to them.”
He twisted the base.
It opened.
A tiny electronic device fell into his palm.
A tracker.
I stared at it.
“She knew we came here.”
Luca reached for his phone.
At that moment, the security alarm screamed.
Red lights flashed along the hallway.
Lena began crying upstairs.
I ran for her while Luca shouted instructions into his phone.
Then the power failed.
The farmhouse dropped into darkness.
Smoke reached the second floor before I reached Lena’s bedroom.
Not from the kitchen.
From outside.
Fire burned beneath the porch, orange flames climbing the dry wooden beams.
“Sarah!” Luca shouted.
I grabbed Lena and rushed into the hallway.
Ash stood at the top of the stairs.
“Stay there!” I yelled.
A window shattered below.
Smoke rolled through the entrance.
Luca appeared through it, coughing.
“The front exit is blocked. We go through the back.”
He lifted Ash and took Lena from me.
“No,” I protested. “I can carry her.”
“Stay behind me.”
We reached the kitchen.
The back door would not open.
A metal bar had been wedged through the outside handle.
“This was planned,” Luca said.
Glass broke again.
Someone had thrown another burning bottle through the dining-room window.
Flames spread across the curtains.
Lena screamed.
Luca wrapped both children in a heavy wool blanket.
“The cellar,” he said.
“There’s no exit.”
“There’s an old storm tunnel.”
“How do you know?”
“My grandmother smuggled wine through it during Prohibition.”
Despite everything, a hysterical laugh rose in my throat.
Rosa Moretti continued saving our family years after her death.
We entered the cellar as smoke filled the kitchen. Luca kicked aside crates and pulled an iron ring embedded in the floor.
A square door lifted.
Cold air rose from below.
“You go first,” he told me.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I’m directly behind you.”
The tunnel was narrow, damp, and black. I descended the ladder, then reached for Lena. Luca handed her down, followed by Ash.
A crash shook the house.
The ceiling above Luca splintered.
A burning beam fell across the cellar entrance.
“Luca!”
He disappeared behind sparks.
Ash screamed for the first time.
“Daddy!”
The word echoed through the tunnel.
Luca shoved the beam aside with both hands. Fire caught his sleeve. He tore off his shirt and dropped into the tunnel, slamming the hatch above us.
We crawled through darkness.
Lena sobbed against my chest.
Ash clung to Luca’s back.
The tunnel opened nearly two hundred yards from the farmhouse, hidden behind a collapsed stone wall. We emerged into rain as flames consumed the roof.
Sheriff Daniels’s patrol car arrived minutes later.
Firefighters followed.
Luca stood shirtless in the field, one arm burned and bleeding from broken glass. He refused treatment until the twins were examined.
Ash would not release him.
When a paramedic tried to take the boy, Ash wrapped both arms around Luca’s neck.
“No.”
Luca froze.
“It’s okay,” I told Ash. “The doctor needs to check you.”
“Daddy comes.”
The paramedic looked at me.
So did Luca.
My heart broke in a new and unfamiliar way.
“Go with him,” I said.
Luca carried our son to the ambulance.
Sheriff Daniels approached holding a plastic evidence bag.
“We found this tied to the rear fence.”
Inside was a black feather.
Luca stared at it.
“The bird,” he said.
Daniels nodded.
“Does it mean something?”
Luca’s gaze moved toward the burning farmhouse.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“When Damian Vale worked for my family, his internal code name was Raven.”
The sheriff’s radio crackled.
A deputy’s voice reported an abandoned gray SUV three miles away.
There was blood on the driver’s seat.
No body.
Then another deputy shouted from near the road.
He had found a woman walking barefoot through the trees.
Vanessa emerged between two officers.
Her face was bruised. Her dress was torn, and her hands were bound with plastic restraints.
When she saw Luca, she collapsed.
“Damian did this,” she cried. “He knows about the children.”
I stepped toward her.
“You set the fire.”
“No.”
“You put the tracker inside Ash’s toy.”
“I was trying to warn you!”
“You threatened my son.”
“I needed Luca to listen.”
Vanessa looked around frantically.
“You don’t understand. Damian is here.”
A gunshot cracked through the field.
One of the patrol-car windows shattered.
Luca threw himself over Ash.
Officers drew their weapons.
Vanessa screamed.
Across the road, a dark figure disappeared among the trees.
Sheriff Daniels ordered everyone behind the ambulance.
As Luca shielded our children with his body, Vanessa grabbed my wrist.
Her nails cut into my skin.
“He doesn’t want Luca’s money,” she whispered.
“Then what does he want?”
Her terrified eyes moved toward Lena and Ash.
May you like
“He wants the Moretti bloodline to end.”
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