Chapter 2 - The Name No One Was Meant to Hear
The emergency lights turned the library red.
I moved before I thought.
Fifteen years of surviving people who wanted me dead had taught my body to react faster than fear.
I pulled Isabelle and Lily behind the stone fireplace wall as another shot echoed through the mansion.
“Stay here.”
Isabelle grabbed my wrist.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Don’t go into the hall.”
Her grip tightened.
“They want you to.”
The certainty in her voice stopped me.
Outside, Nero barked again.
Then came the voice of my security chief, Marco.
“Mr. Duca!”
I reached beneath my desk and opened the biometric compartment.
Inside was a handgun.
I checked the monitor mounted behind a sliding panel.
The camera feeds were gone.
Every single one.
Not static.
Disabled.
Someone had deliberately shut down the internal surveillance network.
Isabelle stared at the screen.
“I told you.”
I looked at her.
“What exactly did your mother tell you?”
“That the person who betrayed your family survived.”
“That narrows it down to several hundred people.”
“She knew the traitor’s identity.”
I waited.
Isabelle glanced at Lily.
“Not in front of her.”
That answer was becoming very inconvenient.
“Mommy, I’m not a baby,” Lily whispered.
Isabelle touched her cheek.
“No, sweetheart. You’re not.”
There was another knock.
“Sir, it’s Marco.”
I checked the small analog peephole hidden inside the carved wood.
Marco stood outside with two guards.
Nero stood beside him.
No visible threat.
I opened the door halfway.
“What happened?”
“Transformer fault.”
“Gunshots?”
“One of the newer guards panicked when the lights died and discharged his weapon.”
Three times?
I stared at Marco.
He seemed to understand my skepticism.
“He’s being detained.”
“Cameras?”
“System reboot.”
Convenient.
“Where’s Renata?”
“She’s in her room.”
“Confirm it yourself.”
“I already did.”
That surprised me.
“Why?”
“Because Nero was growling at her earlier.”
Marco had been with me for nine years.
That was the kind of detail I paid him to notice.
“Lock the estate down,” I said. “Nobody leaves.”
“Guests?”
“Nobody.”
He nodded.
“And Marco?”
“Yes?”
“Assume we have an internal threat.”
His face became hard.
“Understood.”
I closed the door.
When I turned around, Isabelle was standing.
Lily remained wrapped in a blanket on the couch.
“You trust him,” Isabelle said.
“Marco?”
“Yes.”
“With my life.”
“Your father trusted people with his.”
“That warning is getting old.”
Her face tightened.
“I’m not trying to insult you.”
“No. You’re standing in my house wearing a pendant connected to the murder of my family, using a false identity, while somebody disables my security system. Forgive me if my patience is limited.”
Lily watched us.
I lowered my voice.
“Start from the beginning.”
Isabelle sat.
For several seconds, she looked at the floor.
Then she spoke.
“My mother worked for your family for twenty-three years.”
“I know.”
“She wasn’t just a housekeeper.”
“I know that too.”
Sofia Morelli had once broken a man’s wrist when he tried to drag my mother into a car.
My father trusted her more than some members of his security detail.
“My mother knew people hated your father,” Isabelle continued. “But weeks before the attack, she noticed things happening inside the estate. Security schedules being changed. Doors left unlocked. Deliveries arriving without records.”
“Why didn’t she tell him?”
“She did.”
That surprised me.
“And?”
“He began investigating.”
I remembered the weeks before the massacre.
My father had been tense.
Several dinners canceled.
Arguments behind closed doors.
As a thirteen-year-old boy, I assumed business problems were boring.
I had no idea someone was preparing to kill us.
“The night of the attack,” Isabelle continued, “your father realized the guards at the south entrance had disappeared.”
I remembered shouting.
Glass breaking.
My mother grabbing me.
Then gunfire.
“My mother found you near the kitchen.”
“She carried me through the service tunnel.”
“Yes.”
“She was shot.”
“Twice.”
I looked away.
Sofia had collapsed near the old chapel outside the estate grounds.
I remembered trying to keep her awake.
Then headlights appeared.
She told me to run.
I ran.
For fifteen years, I believed she died there.
“She didn’t,” Isabelle said.
“Who found her?”
“A farmer.”
“And she got to you?”
“Two days later.”
“How?”
“Barely.”
Isabelle swallowed.
“She came to my apartment bleeding through her bandages. I wanted to call an ambulance. She refused.”
“Why?”
“Because she believed people were watching hospitals.”
That sounded like Sofia.
“She gave me the pendant. A notebook. Three names.”
I leaned forward.
“What names?”
“One was a driver named Aldo Ferraro.”
I knew the name.
Aldo had died seven years earlier.
“The second?”
“Peter Salvi.”
Dead too.
Three years after the massacre.
Officially a boating accident.
I felt the pattern closing around me.
“The third?”
Isabelle looked toward the door.
“Renata Bellini.”
The room went silent.
I stared at her.
“That’s impossible.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Renata was twenty-four years old fifteen years ago. She didn’t work for my family.”
“She worked for somebody who did.”
“Who?”
“Your uncle Vittorio.”
I stood abruptly.
Vittorio Duca had been my father’s younger brother.
He was supposedly killed in the massacre.
His body was found in the wine cellar, burned beyond recognition.
“He died that night.”
Isabelle shook her head.
“My mother said he planned it.”
Every instinct in me rejected the statement.
Vittorio had taught me to ride horses.
He took me to my first baseball game.
He bought me a ridiculous red sports car model for my tenth birthday because my father said it was too expensive.
“He was found dead.”
“Was his identity confirmed?”
“Dental records.”
“Who provided them?”
I stopped.
Our family physician.
Dr. Paolo Serrano.
Dead twelve years now.
Heart attack.
Isabelle watched the answer appear on my face.
“She believed Vittorio arranged a substitute body.”
“You expect me to believe my uncle murdered his own brother and vanished?”
“I expect you to believe what people have killed to keep buried.”
“Where is the notebook?”
“Gone.”
“Convenient.”
“My apartment burned six months after my mother died.”
“And the pendant survived?”
“I never took it off.”
I paced slowly.
Renata.
Vittorio.
The planted clock.
The disabled cameras.
There were too many coincidences.
“Why come here now?”
Isabelle looked at Lily.
“Because they found me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“For fifteen years?”
“I changed names constantly. Cities. Jobs.”
“How did Renata recognize you?”
“My mother and I look alike.”
That was true.
Now that I knew, I could see Sofia in Isabelle’s eyes.
“Three weeks ago,” she continued, “Renata saw the pendant when Lily pulled my collar during breakfast service.”
“And then?”
“She started watching me.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“My daughter had pneumonia last winter. I spent every dollar I had.”
“So you stayed because you needed the salary?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
Her answer surprised me.
“Because I realized I was already inside.”
“Inside what?”
“The place my mother told me never to enter.”
“My house.”
“Your family.”
She took a breath.
“If Renata truly was connected to what happened, I thought maybe I could find proof.”
“That was reckless.”
“I know.”
“You have a child.”
“I know.”
“Then why risk her life?”
Pain flashed across Isabelle’s face.
“You think I don’t ask myself that every night?”
Lily shifted beside her.
Isabelle touched her hair.
“I wanted it to end. I’m tired of running.”
That, more than anything else she had said, sounded true.
A knock came at the library door.
Marco entered.
“The cameras are back.”
“What happened?”
“Someone manually disconnected a central relay.”
“Who had access?”
“Senior household staff and security management.”
“Renata?”
“Yes.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“You?”
He nodded.
“And three technicians.”
“Where are they?”
“One is on vacation. Two are downstairs.”
“Keep them there.”
Marco glanced at Isabelle.
“Anything else?”
I looked at him.
“Pull Renata’s employment history from before she worked here.”
“I already started.”
Good man.
He left.
Isabelle whispered, “If she knows I talked to you, she’ll run.”
“She can’t.”
“You don’t know Renata.”
“Neither do you.”
“I know enough.”
I walked toward the window.
Outside, rain had begun striking the glass.
My father used to love storms.
He said bad weather showed you which structures had been built properly.
For fifteen years, I believed the Duca empire survived because I had rebuilt it stronger.
But what if the foundation itself was poisoned?
Behind me, Lily spoke.
“Mr. Lorenzo?”
I turned.
Apparently my old name had officially returned.
“Yes?”
“Are you going to send Mommy away?”
“No.”
Isabelle looked at me.
That answer surprised both of us.
Lily nodded seriously.
“Good.”
“Why?”
“Because Renata scares her.”
Isabelle closed her eyes.
“Lily.”
“What?”
The little girl looked genuinely confused.
“You said telling the truth is important.”
I nearly smiled.
Apparently motherhood could be strategically inconvenient.
I crouched in front of Lily.
“What else did you see?”
Isabelle immediately stiffened.
“Lorenzo—”
“If this puts her at risk, she’s already at risk.”
I hated saying it.
It was still true.
Lily thought carefully.
“I saw Renata in Mommy’s locker room.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“Doing what?”
“She had the shiny clock.”
“Anything else?”
“She was talking to a man.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he work here?”
Lily shook her head.
“What did he look like?”
“Old.”
That was not particularly useful.
“Hair?”
“Gray.”
“Tall?”
She nodded.
“What were they saying?”
Lily’s small brow wrinkled.
“Renata said Mommy should have disappeared when she had the chance.”
Isabelle went white.
I felt cold spread through my chest.
“And the man?”
Lily hesitated.
“He said…”
“What?”
“He said Mr. Duca won’t survive another family funeral.”
The words hung between us.
Isabelle pulled Lily against her immediately.
I stood.
Fifteen years ago, someone had opened my family’s gates.
Now somebody had walked through mine.
And apparently they had not come only for the witness.
They had come to finish what they started.
My phone vibrated.
A message from Marco.
FOUND SOMETHING. COME ALONE.
I looked at Isabelle.
“Lock the door behind me.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find out who Renata really is.”
I opened the library door.
Nero followed me.
I had taken only three steps when Marco emerged from the hallway ahead.
He was holding a file.
And his face looked wrong.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“We searched Renata’s room.”
“And?”
“We found this.”
He handed me an old photograph.
I recognized my father immediately.
Beside him stood my uncle Vittorio.
And behind Vittorio, wearing a white dress and smiling into the camera, was a much younger Renata.
Her arm was wrapped around his waist.
May you like
On the back, written in Vittorio’s handwriting, were five words.
When Lorenzo is gone, everything changes.
