Chapter 4 - The Fire Beneath Moretti House
The tunnel lights turned red.
Elena held Sofia against her chest while Alessandro examined the sealed door.
“Can you open it?” she asked.
“Not from this side.”
“You said the pocket watch was the key.”
“It opens the tunnel. Carlo changed the internal locks.”
Sofia buried her face in her mother’s neck.
“Uncle Marco is bad?”
Alessandro looked at the speaker above them.
“No.”
Elena stared at him.
“We watched him hand Carlo my daughter’s ribbon.”
“We watched what Carlo wanted us to watch.”
“You still trust him?”
“I trust what he did not do.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Marco could have handed us over in the conservatory. Instead, he pushed us into the only tunnel Carlo cannot enter without opening the door.”
Smoke began flowing through the ventilation grate.
Alessandro touched the wall.
Carlo was trying to force them deeper into the passage.
He knew there was another exit.
“Move,” Alessandro said.
The tunnel descended beneath the mansion, narrow and unfinished.
Salvatore Moretti had built it during the war of 1989 as an escape route toward the river.
Alessandro had entered it only once as a child.
His father made him walk in darkness to teach him that fear disappeared when a man stopped expecting rescue.
Salvatore had been wrong.
Fear did not disappear.
People merely learned to carry it silently.
Behind them, the steel door opened.
Voices entered the passage.
Carlo had waited until they moved far enough away to become trapped between his men and the river exit.
Alessandro pushed Elena and Sofia ahead.
“Stay near the left wall.”
“Why?”
“The floor drops near the drainage channel.”
“How do you remember that?”
“I remember every place where I was once afraid.”
They reached a fork.
The right passage led toward the river.
The left climbed beneath the old chapel.
Alessandro chose the chapel route.
Carlo would expect him to escape toward the water.
A flashlight appeared behind them.
Men entered the tunnel.
Sofia began to cry.
Elena covered her mouth gently.
“Baby, we have to play the quiet game.”
Alessandro saw a narrow maintenance opening above the wall.
He lifted Elena first.
She pulled Sofia through.
Alessandro followed seconds before Carlo’s men reached the fork.
They remained still inside a cramped stone chamber as footsteps passed below.
Elena’s face was inches from Alessandro’s.
“You were right about Marco?”
“I hope so.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only honest one.”
They crawled toward the chapel.
Halfway through, Sofia touched the silver pocket watch inside Alessandro’s coat.
“Tick-tick.”
“Yes.”
“The other man had one.”
Alessandro stopped.
“What other man?”
“The man with the hurt voice.”
“Victor?”
She shook her head.
“The man under the house.”
Elena looked confused.
Sofia continued.
“Mr. Carlo took me to the yellow room. A man was behind the wall. He had your clock.”
Alessandro’s father’s watch had been one of a pair.
The matching watch belonged to Salvatore’s younger brother, Matteo Moretti, who supposedly died during the Brooklyn war eighteen years earlier.
Matteo’s body had never been recovered.
Alessandro had been sixteen.
His father forbade anyone from speaking the name again.
“Did you see his face?” Alessandro asked.
“He looked old. He said Carlo was a liar.”
A pounding noise came from behind the stone wall.
They followed it into a forgotten storage room beneath the chapel.
A man sat chained to a pipe.
His hair was gray, his face thin, and a scar crossed his left eye.
A silver pocket watch hung from his neck.
Alessandro stared at him.
“Uncle Matteo?”
The prisoner lifted his head.
“You have Salvatore’s eyes.”
Elena found Luca chained beside him.
She fell to her knees.
Her brother was weak but alive.
Carlo had kept both men beneath the estate.
Alessandro broke the chains with an iron tool from the wall.
“Why are you alive?” he asked Matteo.
“Because Carlo needed someone who knew where Salvatore hid the original family accounts.”
“Did Carlo kill my father?”
Matteo looked at the pocket watch.
“No.”
Alessandro’s chest tightened.
“Then who did?”
“Your father took the poison himself.”
Elena froze.
Matteo continued.
“Salvatore discovered Carlo’s betrayal. He also learned federal agents were preparing to charge the entire family. He chose death rather than prison.”
“Carlo arranged the doctor.”
“Yes. But Salvatore drank willingly.”
Alessandro stepped back.
For twelve years, he had imagined his father as a murdered king.
In reality, Salvatore had abandoned everyone rather than face the consequences of the empire he built.
Matteo reached for Alessandro’s sleeve.
“Carlo thinks power belongs to him because he survived your father’s wars. He has waited fifteen years to take the house.”
An explosion shook dust from the ceiling.
The mansion above them was burning.
Luca struggled to stand.
“Carlo placed fuel through the western walls. He plans to destroy the estate and every record inside.”
“Why keep you alive?” Elena asked.
“I found his accounts. He needed my passwords.”
Matteo lifted his matching watch.
“The original Moretti ledgers are hidden inside both watches. When placed together, they reveal the account codes.”
Alessandro removed Salvatore’s watch.
The cases connected magnetically.
Tiny numbers appeared around the joined rims.
Evidence of decades of bribery, extortion, and hidden assets.
Enough to destroy Carlo.
Enough to destroy Alessandro too.
“We take it to the federal government,” Elena said.
Matteo laughed bitterly.
“You think Alessandro will surrender his own empire?”
Everyone looked at him.
Alessandro watched firelight begin glowing through cracks in the chapel floor.
He had spent his life believing the Moretti name was the only thing no one could take.
Now it was burning above him while a child coughed in the smoke.
“Let it burn,” he said.
Matteo stared.
Alessandro placed both watches inside Elena’s hand.
“Those accounts belong to everyone my family harmed.”
Another explosion collapsed part of the passage.
A support beam fell between Alessandro and the others.
Flames moved through the opening.
Elena reached toward him.
“Alessandro!”
“Take Sofia and Luca to the river exit.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You are.”
“Why?”
“Because Carlo expects me to protect the empire.”
He looked at Sofia.
“Tonight, he learns what I will protect instead.”
Alessandro turned back toward the burning passage as Carlo’s men entered the chapel chamber.
Elena carried Sofia toward the river tunnel with Luca and Matteo.
Before disappearing, Sofia looked back.
“Come home, Mr. Moretti.”
Home.
Nobody had ever used that word for him before.
May you like
Alessandro faced the approaching men alone.
Above them, Moretti House collapsed into fire.
